The Worst Apple Products of All Time

An anonymous reader writes "While Apple is frequently referred to as a leader in consumer electronic product design, the history of the company is filled with examples of poor design and questionable product strategies. This list of Apple's worst ever products includes some interesting trivia, including Apple's overpriced eWorld Internet service, their painfully bad attempt at a 'value' computer (the Performa), the much-loathed 'hockey puck' mouse, and the Apple Pippin gaming platform. The article also includes the infamous Apple III, which overheated so badly that it prompted one of the strangest repair techniques ever: 'Users were advised to pick the computer up a few inches off the ground and then drop it, hopefully jostling the chips back into position.'"

Comments

What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame, guys... shame.

Re:What, no iPad?

[carlhaagen]

Really, why tag this "insightful"? Doesn't the "grannies of /." have anything better to lunge at from under their stones? It's been just days since the iPad was unveiled, it has not even hit the friggin' market, yet some caveman of a "market expert" pulls a joke and, behold! other cavemen chimes in by second-guessing the product's outcome before its release. Much can be guessed when it comes to products, but what can be said for certain is that there just is no end to the naiveness and stupidity among the haters obsessed with this and that brand of product.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

insightful? why? how? maybe you should wait for the product to even appear in the shops and have a chance to flop before you spew your stinking gall, you silly, narrowminded linux tossers. (and yes it's always the conservative old dogs among the linux crowd who prematurely squirt their hate)

Re:What, no iPad?

[squiggleslash]

It's because beyond the "I'll probably buy one anyway" Apple fans, nobody in their right mind thinks there's a market for a $500 10" iPod Touch/$700 10" iPhone that doesn't make phone calls.

Re:What, no iPad?

[OzPeter]

Doesn't Apple typically have products ready to sell the day that they are released? There is a shitload of work that they could do between January and whenever the product actually hits the stores. So until you can slap down your money and buy and iPad about the only thing you can say is that its minimum specs were advertised on Jan 26. Especially with things like the pics floating around of the frame that seems to fit a camera.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Carewolf]

While the iPad seems pointless, it doesn't appear bad. The iPad predecessor the forgotten Newt would be more a much more likely candidate.

Re:What, no iPad?

[carlhaagen]

I bet you said the same when os x was introduced, when the ipod was introduced, when the ibooks were introduced, when the macbooks were introduced, and when the iphone was introduced, and now, 10 years later, neither you nor any of the others in your "pack" have nailed a single right with your gleaming, sharp market insight, seeing as how all these products are bought by the millions by people all over the world - but I guess you're just the clever one here, and all the millions of customers out there are the dumb ones. It's not about being a mactard; hell, apart from me owning one of the smaller iPods, I don't use any of their products other than when required to. It's about having the sanity to not trying to guess things' outcome prematurely, regardless of the brands' previous track record.

Re:What, no iPad?

[jo_ham]

"No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame"

Yes, I really trust the slashdot elite to predict the success or failure of a product that *hasn't even been released yet*.

Putting it on a "worst apple products of all time" list is just ludicrously premature and speculative.

Re:What, no iPad?

[mdwh2]

Vaporware doesn't make the list, I guess... Can't be bad if it isn't even released.

Re:What, no iPad?

[jedidiah]

Nah. There are larger media players out there. They are even as much as $500 or more.

They just aren't marketed as the second coming.

It's not the device (so much). It's the mindless fanboy hype and lack of independent thought surrounding it.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Publikwerks]

How about the sanity not to overreact to a first post? And I don't think the criticism is unwarranted, based on what has been demonstrated by Apple.

Re:What, no iPad?

[dfghjk]

If Apple had stuck with the limitations of the first generation iPod it would have been a failure. It's popular to see this quote somehow disproving Apple criticism but it does no such thing.

Imagine how the iPod could have today's dominant position while only working on a computer platform with a 10% marketshare. The first iPod was lame.

Re:What, no iPad?

[erroneus]

...and *I* bet you wake up at night and run around scaring children peeking in their windows!

What huge and wild speculation you make there? You make a wild speculation and then presume it is true and then go about drawing further conclusions as if the wild speculations were established fact.

I think you will agree that Vista was a failure before it started. Why? Because as release time got nearer, amazing new features were pulled one by one from the list of new features and it simply disappointed and underwhelmed the public that was craving something amazing. In the end, the public got Windows XP with DRM up the wazoo and the Aero window dressing that could barely run on new PCs. Now let's look at iPad. People wanted an Apple netbook. They have been speculating about it for years and even created Netbooks running Mac OS X for themselves that they were very happy with. People doing things for themselves for a great deal of time did a better job that Apple did when they created their giant iPod.

You can't seriously be suggesting that we "wait to see what the people will do" can you?

I predict the following will happen-- Apple will quietly drop the iPad. They are too proud to discount them. If they dropped them in price to make them more attractive, people will buy them up, install regular Mac OS X on them and create the netbooks they have been asking for all along. Apple will have none of that. Apple does not want users creating things for themselves.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you measure the quality of a product by the number of users it has, then Microsoft, HP and Nokia must make products that are immensely better than any of the things you listed.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole story invites trolling. By trolling I mean anyone who says anything that doesn't praise Apple/Mac.
Think of someone who drops a bundle on a trendy product only to find out it's just a legal swindle.
This causes a community of bonding. The AMC Gremlin and the Yugo are good examples.
Their aficionados will spend all day pointing out the benefits of owning a disposable lighter on wheels.
They will gloat over their purchases. They will continue to buy accessories and parts to keep them on the road.
Theirs is a fragile state of mind where they can't just admit a faux passe and continue on with life.
Scientology may be another example.AOL another. Democrats ,yet another.
This is the sort of behavior that keeps bad products and ideas afloat, tainting mankinds progress.
Maybe science will localize the brainfart and medicate it. We can only hope.

Re:What, no iPad?

[XxtraLarGe]

I think you will agree that Vista was a failure before it started. Why? Because as release time got nearer, amazing new features were pulled one by one from the list of new features and it simply disappointed and underwhelmed the public that was craving something amazing. In the end, the public got Windows XP with DRM up the wazoo and the Aero window dressing that could barely run on new PCs. Now let's look at iPad. People wanted an Apple netbook.

There's no doubt the iPad is underwhelming, but you've over looked the obvious problem with your comparison. Vista was hyped by Microsoft and under-delivered. The iPad was hyped by the press (not Apple), and didn't meet up to lofty expectations. Apple has created a nice internet appliance that will find its niche, and eventually improve in features, price & performance with each iteration, just like the iPod has.

Re:What, no iPad?

[squiggleslash]

Yes, I really trust the slashdot elite to predict the success or failure of a product that *hasn't even been released yet*.

Never made the quote about the iPod, FWIW, but I appreciate your putting me into some kind of elite, even if it's on Slashdot whose elite is a very low bar to shoot for.

I take it you think there is a market for a 10" iPod Touch/iPhone? Or were you just flaming me to be a jackass?

Re:What, no iPad?

[jo_ham]

So, when did they add wireless to it? The iPod Touch?

When did it overtake the Nomad in space terms?

The design didn't change much at all before it became available for Windows - they just enabled the software to run on HFS+ or Fat32 formatted drives.

It still had fewer features, less space than a Nomad and no wireless when it was available to Windows users.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir, sound like a typical mactard.

You know, appending "tard" to the end of words doesn't make you sound clever. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Shouldn't you be serving someone fries right about now?

Re:What, no iPad?

[Gilmoure]

My Newton 2100 is still running, can surf the web wirelessly, play mp3s and I can even run a web server on it. Yeah, v. 1.0 was pretty sucky but over all, from the 120 on up, they've ok devices.

Re:What, no iPad?

[jo_ham]

I have no idea if there is a market or not. I'm not going to state definitively that there *isn't* though, just because you can never see yourself buying one.

I can't see the point of spending $500 on uncomfortable designer shoes - no one in their right mind would wear such uncomfortable shoes that aren't even comfortable for a night out, but there is clearly a market there.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Hognoxious]

Vista was hyped by Microsoft and under-delivered. The iPad was hyped by the press (not Apple)

Perhaps. But perhaps not.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Hognoxious]

No, McTard, that'd be you.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Duradin]

So far the vast majority of the people claiming that the iPad is the second coming are the haters not the fanboys. I'd say most of the people doing Apple hype in general are the haters, just so they have something they can whinge about.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Sancho]

Though CmdrTaco probably thought it would be a failure, that's not what he said. What he said was "lame." That's an opinion that really can't be right or wrong. Presumably, he still thinks it's lame in comparison to other, similar devices.

That said, in the past decade it's been clear that you can't predict an Apple product's success based solely on features. There's a huge PR and marketing element involved, too. These days, it's hip to have an Apple computer/iPod/phone. Just like a $10 purse from Wal Mart has as much or more utility than a Gucci bag, you can find more utility in Apple's competitors. But you can't underestimate the "cool" factor.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Goaway]

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

Re:What, no iPad?

[davester666]

Yes, they typically do.

However, the iPad (at least some models of it), like the iPhone, have cell-network access, and require FCC approval. As part of this approval process, basic documentation about the device become public. Apple prefers to announce their devices themselves, not announce their devices that already have some basic information about them already widely publicized.

This is contrast with Microsoft's announcement process, which announces software which may or may not have any relation to anything they may or may not actually intend to ship.

Re:What, no iPad?

[HeronBlademaster]

Perhaps not, but there's definitely a market for a 10" touchscreen ebook reader that is, in many ways, superior to the Kindle at virtually the same price... and as a bonus it also does everything an iPod Touch does.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess the words "magical" and "revolutionary" don't count as hyping?

Re:What, no iPad?

[Taevin]

The iPad was hyped by the press (not Apple), and didn't meet up to lofty expectations.

I love how we're using the past tense to describe a future product.

Re:What, no iPad?

[EvilBudMan]

We'll, I don't think it really matters if it succeeds or not. I wouldn't say worst product of all time but the iPOD would have been nothing without iTUNES. How could we predict that Jobs could could get a deal like that? I think if Microsoft were to suddenly come out with a player that you could legally download everything the Apple store will let plus lets say "the beatles", then they would be deemed popular just because of that.

Any other company would have been killed out by all off the poor equipment that Apple used to make. Crazy baby boomers is all I can say. So that's their market and the boomers have money. So maybe that's a good one to tap.

Re:What, no iPad?

[jo_ham]

That would be the Zune, with all those competing music stores that had similar catalogs to the iTunes store. Not many of those around.

We also have no idea what the iPad app store is going to come up with - there have been some exceptional iPhone apps, so no doubt some third party app will amaze us.

Also, conveniently, Apple has some cracking deals with video content providers - sort of ideal for a 10" screen, wouldn't you say?

Re:What, no iPad?

[EvilBudMan]

That's the thing that should have sold well. Poor marketing I guess. You get those music guys behind it and it will sell whatever it is. Apple seems to have them in their pocket at the moment. People don't wont to buy stuff to do work. They want entertainment so that they can forget about how damn hard they are working to buy something stupid that is going to be a doorstop in a few days. I think the proper term is market economy.

Stuff needs to be made good but not too good and if no one knows about it, how can you sell even one? So marketing is important though a tad evil.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Gilmoure]

In the 90's, Apple got kinda' schizo, with projects and products showing up all over the map. Having a string of CEO's didn't help matters. If nothing else, Jobs should be studied as to how to focus a company on core services and implementation.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go back to Europe, we don't whinge here, we whine:) The vast majority of people are not proclaiming that the iPad is the second coming, they are proclaiming that the iPad is being portrayed as the second coming. Big difference there. And I think volumes are unspoken by the fanboys not expressing their support. Even you do not offer support, you only talk about "haters". Enlighten us, what is good about the iPad?

Re:What, no iPad?

[jedidiah]

That's right. Keep on kidding yourself. Try to drown out all of the alternate voices that might shatter your faith in the one true Jobs.

Re:What, no iPad?

[squiggleslash]

Sure, there's a market for something "better than a Kindle", but we're talking about the iPad here.

The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle. It doesn't have the eInk screen. Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life. The cheapest iPad doesn't have an always-on Internet connection, and if you buy the version that does (at which point the price is now 3x the Kindle), you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.

If the Kindle ever drops below $100 I'll consider buying it. If the iPad drops below $100... I'll pass. Not seeing the point in it.

Re:What, no iPad?

[HeronBlademaster]

The cheapest iPad costs more than twice the price of a Kindle.

Sure, if you're talking about the dinky 6" original Kindle. The Kindle DX, which is more comparable in screen size, costs $489, which is only $10 cheaper. Perhaps you could compare the iPad with that Kindle like I was, as I implied with my comment "for virtually the same price"?

As for your comment that the Kindle comes with free wireless, well... yes and no. Browsing the internet on the Kindle's eInk screen is hardly optimal (and that's the nicest way I can put it). The screen's refresh rate is rather slow, for one, and for another, you have to hack the device to get it to browse "the internet" (that is, if you want to do something besides buy Kindle books with it).

It also can't do some of the more interesting things you might want to do with a device like the iPad - e-mail, photo organization, educational tools, and so on.

If all you're looking for is a cheap e-reader, then no, the iPad is not for you, but that doesn't make it a stupid, pointless device, it just means it's not for you. There are a lot of devices I would never buy, but that doesn't mean they're stupid and pointless.

It doesn't have the eInk screen.

That could be considered a benefit of the iPad. People have widely varying opinions of eInk screens; some of the more friendly ones I've read can be summed up as "meh".

Personally I don't have eye strain issues, so eInk isn't really an issue for me.

Its battery life is a tragic fraction of the Kindle's 7-14 day battery life.

That's probably true. But 10 hours is pretty good for a full-color non-eInk screen, and if you're going to complain about having to plug it in real quick before you go to bed, then you're just being lazy. How many people actively read their Kindle for 10 hours in a single day? How many iPad users will do that? My guess is "very few".

I'm not saying that makes it somehow "better" than the Kindle, I'm just saying it makes the "battery life" complaint a largely moot point.

You're also pretending the iPad doesn't have any advantages over the Kindle: "it has a touchscreen" is itself a rather important one. I'm looking forward to seeing the things people do with portable 10" touchscreens - and here I'm referring to all 10" multitouch devices, not just iPads.

If you still don't see the point of the iPad, then maybe it's really not targeted at you ;)

you have to pay $20 a month for Internet service.

Or you could just stick with wifi ;) 3G internet on my iPhone is nice as far as it goes, but... it's so slow. I'd much rather go find a wifi access point to browse the internet. I suspect I'll feel the same about the iPad.

I'm really not trying to convince you to buy an iPad. I'm among the first to say "The iPad isn't for everyone". But it does have some interesting possible uses (at least, 10" touchscreen devices do), and for a 10" touchscreen, it's not the worst choice out there. The fact that it can also take over for the Kindle is just a bonus. I was considering a Kindle; now I don't have a reason to, especially since the iPad will also have access to the entire Kindle library via the Kindle app.

Re:What, no iPad?

[carlhaagen]

and *i* bet your prediction of the ipad failling won't come true. i also bet that you've "predicted" lots of other bad outcomes that never came true. scurry back to under your bridge, linux granny.

Re:What, no iPad?

[HeronBlademaster]

There are three opinions I've seen (besides "meh, who cares?" and "an i-what?"):

I have one friend who is generally pretty level-headed about Apple, but who for some reason has decided the iPad is the second coming. We got in a huge argument about it - I was just saying "it's interesting, but not revolutionary", but he wouldn't accept that. He refused to back down from his position that there is absolutely nothing about the iPad that could be construed as anything less than revolutionary.

On the other hand, I have another friend who sees the iPad for what it pretty much is - a giant iPod Touch - and that's what excites him. He thinks about it this way: You buy an iPod Touch or an iPhone, you use it for a few months, and you start thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do $TASK on this? I guess I would need a larger screen..." ... and now such a device exists. All those larger-screen-requiring $TASKs will now be possible on a device the general public will be willing to buy.

On the other other hand, there are all the Apple-haters you're talking about. I have several friends of this opinion. They won't even allow for the possibility that the iPad might be an interesting but not revolutionary device; to them, it must be completely pointless and stupid. They see no reason anyone should ever under any circumstances buy an iPad.

I pointed out to one such friend that if Google had released a device that was identical to the iPad in hardware and price but ran Android as its OS, he wouldn't be complaining - he'd be excited about it. (He admitted that was probably true, so he's perhaps more level-headed than some of the Apple-haters out there.)

A lot of this is just generic Apple-hate that people are applying to the iPad because they feel obligated to hate on anything Apple makes. People of this opinion do seem to be most numerous.

(And, for the record, I'm no Apple fanboy; I find Apple's Mac vs PC commercials to be misleading when they're not outright lying, and their overpriced hardware leaves me with very little reason to buy their computers; I really don't care about the "cool" factor. I bought an iPhone merely because I wanted a usable touchscreen phone, and I haven't been impressed by Android-based phones.)

Re:What, no iPad?

[erroneus]

I have been right and I have been wrong. My greatest correct prediction to date was claiming that Vista will be the new WindowsME. I was modded "troll" here at least half a dozen times over that prediction. Low and behold, people actually started calling Windows Vista "The new Windows ME." Color me gratified. In this case, [the case of the iPad] the general consensus backs my observation about iPad, however. People wanted and expected an Apple Netbook. What they are seeing is a giant iPod. They don't want a giant iPod.

I own Apple computers... 3 of them at present. I would have bought two iPads if they were Netbooks that could stand alone. I still might if some clever people manage to hack it into a stand-alone netbook. But as it is, it requires a computer to make it useful. It's a big giant iPod. No one needs it. Still. It could be fun if it were hacked into, say, a big universal remote with some sort of wifi-based base station that actually controlled things. Devices like the iPad could be very useful indeed. The trouble is, Apple wants ALL the credit for anything good that comes from an Apple product.

Apple is controlling all the fun out of their products.

You can quote me on that one.

Re:What, no iPad?

[mjwx]

It's been just days since the iPad was unveiled, it has not even hit the friggin' market, yet some caveman of a "market expert

Awaken from your dreamy state fanboy.

The world has already seen the ipad for what it is, an oversized ipod touch.

The market has zero interest in the ipad, tablet PC's have been around for many years now and have not had the demand for increased production (which is why Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba tablet PC's remain around the A$2.5-3K mark). Tablet PC's remain a niche market because they only have a few specialised uses. So this will be competing for the geek crowd with the Dell mini 5 and Archos media tablet, which will be cheaper and more capable. Google is making a concerted push with ChromeOS and Android towards general consumers, which is cheaper and more capable. Accept it, the ipad will be relegated to the fanboys.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The specs are out, pillow-biter.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Hognoxious]

As an E71 owner let me assure you that at least one of those is wrong.

Re:What, no iPad?

[Hognoxious]

and you start thinking, "Wouldn't it be cool if I could do $TASK on this? I guess I would need a larger screen..."

just so long as you don't want to do $OTHER_TASK at the same time. How fucking lame is that?

Re:What, no iPad?

[HeronBlademaster]

The vast majority of people are just going to want to swap between Safari and Mail and maybe one of the iWork apps; those apps act like there's multitasking (when you switch back to Safari from somewhere else, it's still on the same page scrolled to the same place as when you left it), so the real-world difference perceived by these users is virtually nonexistent.

It's only those of us who may want to actually run things in the background that'll care; so, no running Skype or a messenger client in the background while we surf the web.

It's unfortunate for us, but for most users that's not going to be a problem, and personally, I don't need to run messenger in the background when I've got other devices that can do it for me, and when people who need to contact me when I'm afk can do so by phone or text message or e-mail anyway.

Re:What, no iPad?

[EvilBudMan]

The Zune don't have "the beatles". I thought about that and yeah if there are some iPAD apps they will succeed. A lot depends upon the developers.

Re:What, no iPad?

[EvilBudMan]

I'm not saying he ain't a little bit cool, but not totally. He's a poor dresser. I don't care what anyone says, yuck.

iPad Jeans!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.hardocp.com/images/news/12660187292Jl4tMdA4w_1_1_l.jpg

The List

[c0mpliant]

10 QuickTake
9 Pippin
8 iPod Hi-Fi
7 Power PC
6 Mac OS9
5 eWorld
4 Performa line
3 "Hockey Puck" mouse
2 20th Anniversary Mac
1 Apple III

Honourable Mentions: Color Classic and the Mac Portable

Re:The List

[u38cg]

Huh. My first computer was a recycled Apple III and I had a lot of fun with it. Never overheated once, although it wasn't until after several years I got curious and popped off the case, and discovered a second memory module which had been rattling around loose all the time I had owned it. And nothing says technology like a 5MB hard drive.

Re:The List

[EdZ]

No Quicktime Player? It's a turd of a program on either OS, but the windows version definitely stand out as a major PITA.

Re:The List

[Wingsy]

I notice that all these products are from quite a few years ago. They couldn't find anything recent?

Re:The List

[vlm]

No mention of the latest generation ipod shuffle? The one where they figured control buttons would "clutter up" the design, so instead you have to buy special, expensive apple earbuds/headphones that are all cluttered up with inline controls and only cost ten times the cost of normal headphones? So the shuffle plus a pair of "special" headphones costs more than a nano?

I'd buy a shuffle in an instant, if it had volume up / volume down / play-pause buttons on the device.

I know adapter cables are sold, and I guess I could duct tape / hot glue gun the adapter onto the shuffle, to make an almost usable "exercise ipod". But having to pay the "apple tax" and then whip out the duct tape and hot glue gun to make it usable is just going too far.

Note I'm not an apple hater, I enjoy by nano for exercise listening and my ipod touch for PDA and video use, but the shuffle is just a design disaster.

Re:The List

[beelsebob]

Except that Quicktime Player 1-3 and Quicktime Player X are excellent programs. I would agree with you for everything between Quicktime Player 4 and Quicktime Player 7.

Re:The List

[tehcyder]

No Quicktime Player? It's a turd of a program on either OS, but the windows version definitely stand out as a major PITA.

Beaten only by iTunes, also strangely not on the list.
I don't care how cool iPods are, or how well the iTunes store works, the software is horrible on Windows.

Re:The List

[aaaaaaargh!]

As someone who has been using Macs since around 1990 I disagree with quite a number of points on this list. First of all, the worst Apple product ever is without any doubt the Performa 5200, but not the whole performa line. I've owned several performas that were very good and compact machines. Regarding the 5200, it is true that just about everything about this machine was wrong: its weight, its design, the built-in monitor, the speed (Powermac, but slower than most 68k Macs). The next point: OS 9 was an absolutely great OS and IMHO only OS 6 was better at its time. At least, unlike OS X, OS 9 is able to remember window sizes and positions. As for the "honorable mention" color classic, this still is a great machine. I once had one and have always regretted that I had sold it. It was completely silent and with a few modifications would be quite suitable for text processing today.

Moreover, given that the author of this article claims that Power PC (especially the B/W Macs) were a failure, I doubt whether he has ever owned a Mac at all. I bought a b/w Power PC Mac just when it came out, it absolutely rocked, and was usable for around 10 years. Generally speaking, the built quality of Power PC Macs was much better (except for the Performa 5200) than today's Macs. (To be fair, the b/w Mac keyboard really sucked.) In fact, the built quality of Macs has declined constantly since the Mac Plus (I have one standing on my shelf, it still boots without problems) and is worse than ever now with the exception of that of the overprized Mac Pro.

To cut a long story short, some of the items in the list are fairly incomprehensible and I suspect the author of the article has never owned or used them.

Re:The List

[jo_ham]

What's wrong with it on OS X?

Re:The List

[EdZ]

X is just as bad as it's predecessors. Does it still require you to install various browser plugins, an updater (that continuously prompts you to install Safari as a default 'update'), give playback permission to the Quicktime Player (good luck disabling it without uninstalling everything entirely), etc just to be able to open the .mov container? Never mind that as a player it's pretty poor compared to, well, everything. VLC, MPC, Mplayer even Windows Media Player has better luck playing back a reasonable range of formats.

Re:The List

[SpeZek]

No, because it's OS X only.

Re:The List

[loutr]

I think QuickTime X is only available on Snow Leopard, so it's preinstalled, you just need to install a codec pack (Perian is pretty good). After that it works quite well, the UI is minimalist yet pretty : the video takes up the whole window (including borders) and the controls fade in if you hover over the video.

Re:The List

[SpeZek]

I'd buy a shuffle in an instant, if it had volume up / volume down / play-pause buttons on the device.

Why?
It's an MP3 player only the ability to play songs randomly. No playlists, no equalizer, no flippin' screen, yet it costs at least double what any other device with twice (or more) the memory (and many more features) and headphones that are probably less crappy than the apple earbuds that blow after a month.

The shuffle is seriously the crappiest MP3 player ever designed by anyone, from any perspective except that of apple (who I'm sure were very happy with the "me too" market).

Re:The List

[mikael_j]

You should try using Quicktime on OS X instead of on Windows, just like iTunes and Safari it is a lot better on OS X than it is on Windows.

/Mikael

Re:The List

[Sycraft-fu]

I disagree with OS9. While it certainly was the best of the original MacOSes, which one would hope being the latest generation, it wasn't a good OS overall given when it was released.

The time had long passed since the whole "cooperative multitasking, no memory protection, static memory allocation," thing was a good idea in OSes. It was more than past time to move on. MS was in full swing doing that. Windows NT, released in 1993, went full on with features like that you should have in a modern OS. Windows 95, released in the year of its name was their attempt to start unifying the NT and old Windows lines. Though it wasn't perfect, it still had better protection and features than OS9. Windows 2000, which came out about the same time as OS 9, was fully based on NT but ran nearly all Windows 9x software. MS was basically entering the end of their transition period (Windows XP was what finished it) when Apple released a new OS that didn't even get started.

It was just behind the times on a low level. The OS needed a low level update, Apple knew it and had been working on it, but had killed the project (Rhapsody) for some reason. Finally they did get OS-X, a new project with the same goal out but it was a rather painful transition if you remember.

So while OS9 may have been the slickest classic MacOS, it wasn't a good product to be releasing then. Mac users wanted the long promised new MacOS, and this was just a rehash. Meanwhile it had to compete with an updated version of NT (Windows 2000) that was extremely stable.

The problem with OS9 wasn't the user interface. To be honest, I'll never get why Apple tossed that with OS-X, it was one of their better features. The problem was the OS was unstable and had difficulty coping with things being asked of modern OSes. The low end, not the high end.

Re:The List

[jedidiah]

Even if you do install Perian there will be formats that Quicktime doesn't play.

VLC is still better than an enhanced version of Quicktime. (Same goes for Plex)

Re:The List

[beelsebob]

Perian pretty much covers everything VLC covers, the only one I know to be missing is flac, and that's easily added with another plugin.

Re:The List

[EdZ]

Whoops, I'd assumed it was just a newer version for all platforms.

Re:The List

[EastCoastSurfer]

I initially ripped on the controls on the ear phone cable until I started using them with my iPhone. Now I think about how stupid it is to have to pull the device out of my pocket or go searching around on my waistband just to skip a song or adjust the volume. For example, last time I was snowboarding I wanted to adjust the song. Instead of having to go digging through my jacket I was able to just change it from the ear buds. That also alleviated the need to pull the device out in the cold air and have it shut down from the cold (0F doesn't get along with the batteries in most devices).

I also have one of the shuffles with the controls still on it that I use for the gym. It's perfect for it is and for what I use it for. I wish it could be controlled by the headphone controls though.

Re:The List

[EdZ]

Enjoy buffering an entire mkv file before correct playback.

Re:The List

[ArcherB]

Huh. My first computer was a recycled Apple III and I had a lot of fun with it. Never overheated once, although it wasn't until after several years I got curious and popped off the case, and discovered a second memory module which had been rattling around loose all the time I had owned it. And nothing says technology like a 5MB hard drive.

I believe one of Apple's biggest failures was dumping that Apple line. They never made the Apple IV and moved the resources into the Mac. Granted, the Mac was good, but I still liked the "openness" of the Apple I's, II's and III's. You could open the case and put whatever you wanted into them. They were very powerful machines for their day and could have been a worthy competitor to all the "IBM clones" that came out shortly afterward.

Unfortunately, they dumped it to keep it from competing with the new Lisa and Mac machines (competing on the market as well as competing for internal investment dollars). BTW, the Lisa didn't make the list for some reason. I think Apple could have filled two niches here. The Apple IV's could have been the enthusiast/server machine with the Macs acting as the end user stations both for home use and workstations in businesses. The Apple IV line would have been cheap, open, and scalable whereas the Mac line would have be the usual Mac-in-the-Box machines that were "what-you-buy-is-what-you-get" computers that they are today.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realise that the thing comes with Apple headphones with inline controls, right? The market for iPod users who use anything other than the default headphones is not, outside the tech and audiophile community, very large. Belkin also sell an adapter for something like $20, which is what I use with my 3G shuffle at the gym with alternative headphones, and I'm very happy with it.

Re:The List

[JBdH]

The father of a friend of mine had an Apple /// and it never overheated. I doubt any Apple /// would ever overheat. We opened it once, the case was filled around 20 percent. Yes, he also had the vcr-sized harddisk 8Mb in size. This was expensive shit BTW. Also, how hot can a 3Mhz CPu run?

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm quite surprised to see the performa on the list but not the LC, which stood quite literally for 'Low Cost'. I have at least two performas in my garage in prime working condition - the 5400 has the still-awesome feature of a separate PC card, so it'll run separate operating systems on separate hardware simultaneously. For the price, it was absolutely mindblowing.

I'd count the performa line as a failure in the same way the mac mini is a failure. It isn't their biggest selling product by far, but it certainly has a market, and it's generally well regarded.

Re:The List

[loutr]

Of course I mainly use VLC, but when I bought my Macbook 3 months ago I thought I'd give the new Quicktime a try, and was surprised that it wasn't the pile of crap I remembered from some years ago.

Re:The List

[joeyblades]

MacOS 9 was trapped by the legacy that was pre-MacOS X. If you're going to fault MacOS9 for being a weak OS for being released in that era, then you really have to slam Win2K, XP, Vista, and Windows7 - all trapped by the legacy that was WindowsNT.

Making a significant change to an OS such as MacOS 9 to MacOS X is a big gamble. You take a chance of completely alienating your loyal fans. Apple took that risk and won, Microsoft on the other hand has not. However, they have a lot more to lose.

Re:The List

[Saint Fnordius]

Gotta agree with you there.But the PowerPC chips kept the Mac alive longer than a switch to any other processor at the time; they were close enough to the Motorola 680x0 line that the OS could be ported with decent emulation to run older binaries. It was only near the end, when Motorola and IBM lost interest in going head to head with intel that Apple decided to switch again.

I think the Performa got singled out as a line despite there being gems in the mix due to how terrible it was for the stores to sell. Looking back now it was muddled, and infuriating. The only thing that made it worse was when Apple began to license System 7.5 to other manufacturers, and effectively shot themselves in the foot. As a series, it was a mess. I had one of those awful 5200 machines, mainly because it also doubled as my television.

I also don't see Mac OS 9 as a failure, as it was built specifically to be the "classic" part of Mac OS X. In that role, especially as Mac OS 9.2, it performed admirably. I still use it now and then to run vintage games.

I am surprised to see that the G4 Mac Cube wasn't mentioned, nor the Newton. Both of those products were cases of Apple falling flat, though the Cube did turn out to be a "break even" model for Apple that was overhyped.

Re:The List

[vlm]

It's an MP3 player only the ability to play songs randomly.

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/features.html

"Flip it to the middle, and your songs play in order."

No playlists

http://www.apple.com/ipodshuffle/features.html

"And there's room for multiple playlists and audiobooks, too."

no equalizer

No interest at all to me.

no flippin' screen

If I'm watching the "flippin' screen" while chopping wood, lack of an equalizer is rapidly going to be the least of my concerns... I explicitly don't want a video watching appliance, only music and/or maybe an audiobook or itunesU series or podcast. I am easily wealthy enough to afford the right tool for each job so I don't need to compromise on a "swiss army" "SUV" style compromise.

yet it costs at least double what any other device

I checked out bestbuy.com and the closest thing to an aluminum 2G $60 shuffle is an all plastic samsung 2G for $40. Add some hacking to make it work with itunes, replace on a regular basis because the plastic case will break, eh.... I'll get the shuffle and save the hassle. Errr, except that the user interface for the shuffle sucks beyond all compare, so I guess I won't buy one. I'll wait until apple sells the 4th gen shuffle, or however long it takes to sell one that doesn't suck.

Now I will concede the point that $80 for a 4 gig shuffle plus $30 for an adapter cable so real headphones/earbuds can be used, plus some shipping/sales tax equals about $120 which is insane for a product with a sucky user interface, when an 8G nano is $150.

Re:The List

[pavon]

MacOS 9 was trapped by the legacy that was pre-MacOS X. If you're going to fault MacOS9 for being a weak OS for being released in that era, then you really have to slam Win2K, XP, Vista, and Windows7 - all trapped by the legacy that was WindowsNT.

Except that NT was a perfectly capable legacy to be trapped in - it had all the technical underpinnings needed for a good operating system, and it just took a while to get the user shell to the same level. On the other-hand, System 7 was lacking some very basic things like pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory. It may have been enough to compete with Win 9x, which had enough serious bugs to overshadow it's benefits on paper, but it was a joke compared to Win2k and XP.

Making a significant change to an OS such as MacOS 9 to MacOS X is a big gamble. Apple took that risk and won, Microsoft on the other hand has not.

Microsoft has never had to make that risk because they never backed themselves into a corner the way Apple did. They transitioned from Win 9x to Win NT, a major technical improvement, while Apple was floundering with Copland and did a very smooth job at it. The transition to Vista saw drops in performance and compatibility issues, but they were much less than the transition to OS X. The main problem with the Vista transition was that there just wasn't enough improvement to justify the regressions to users, unlike OS X.

Re:The List

[Sponge Bath]

I've heard that repeated plenty of times, but iTunes on Windows has been adequate for me. It is large and sometimes sluggish. The UI is a little awkward but can be learned. It gets the job of searching, navigating, and organizing my large library done well enough. Overall, it is functional and provides integration with the two entities you admit could have merit: iPod (iPhone) and iTunes store.

I would like to see Apple integrate the Milkdrop 2 visualization, but I have never felt using iTunes was "horrible".

Re:The List

[joeyblades]

The author's main complaint on the PowerPC was that it was not the ubiquitous Intel... I hardly think that makes it a mistake by Apple. The change to the Intel architecture does seem to have been a good one, but that doesn't make the long time support of the PowerPC was a bad one.

In fact, if Apple would have switched from the 68K architecture to an available Intel architecture at the time, it would have been crippling. There would not have been enough horsepower to support classic emulation. Until the MMX, the Intel architecture's pipelining was just not efficient enough and even then it was marginal. So in terms of performance, the PowerPC architecture was several years ahead of the Intel architecture.

The author's comment about the PowerPC power consumption is mystifying. Compared to the Intel offereings at the time, it was best in class.

Re:The List

[Coopjust]

It is large and sometimes sluggish

An understatement, to say the least. iTunes feature creep has made it a massive piece of bloatware- Bonjour, QuickTime, Mobile Device Service, iPodhelper, etc... not to mention the main applicaiton.

The number of ways in which iTunes can break, just giving a cryptic error code is pretty pathetic.

The UI is a little awkward but can be learned.

Good UI shouldn't be awkward. Granted, for the amount shoved into iTunes, very few functions are completely broken interface-wise.

It gets the job of searching, navigating, and organizing my large library done well enough.

There are much better alternatives, trust me.

Overall, it is functional and provides integration with the two entities you admit could have merit: iPod (iPhone) and iTunes store.

I know you were talking to the OP, but I can't give you the latter. Foobar2k and numerous other players have full iPod support, are much less bloated, and actually write tags back to music instead of a database (so you can switch audio applications easily). I would have to give you the latter since Apple's move to lossless DRM free music.

Re:The List

[iscgy]

How about

0 The one with half a worm....

Re:The List

[fprintf]

We love our iPod Hi-Fi. The sounds is decent enough and is way better than any of the competing products that were available at the time (iHome among others). Sure we could have easily hooked up the iPod through a dock to the stereo, but we like the remote control but especially how it looks on the table top. And iPod in a dock hooked up to the non-remote-enabled stereo would have been worse. I am still a fan of it!

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

No Quicktime Player? It's a turd of a program on either OS, but the windows version definitely stand out as a major PITA.

As opposed to Windows Media Player which doesn't appear able to play media of any type? Sorry but when it comes to playing video Quicktime actually works. It usually sucks playing Microsoft movie files, WMVs, but I'm not sure if it's that's a Mac or a Microsoft issue since even Windows has issues playing them at times. For functionality I've seen better players than either but given the choice I'd stick to Quicktime. Windows just plain sucks for playing media. Now I do have a complaint that Apple decided to cripple Quicktime so if you want to do anything useful with it you have to buy Quicktime Pro. That's annoying. It costs as much as the Snow Leopard upgrade. The problem with apple players is a lack of options, kind of like anything Apple. I refer to Apple products as being like a Club Med vacation. Very regimented. I hope you like doing things their way because there are no options. I think more than anything that's why the Slashdot crowd tends to be heavily anti Apple. I used to like Windows but Vista turned me to the dark side. Vista is twitchy, unstable and the UI just plain sucks! It's the worst of Mac with none of the cool stuff. I think if more people tried Quicktime on a Mac they'd change their tune. I rarely run onto a video file on the web I can't play and even then it's usually an issue with the site. WMV codec sucks on a Mac but hey the codec kind of sucks period. There are far better codecs out there but Microsoft won't let go of it.

Re:The List

[david_thornley]

The worst thing about the Apple III was that Apple stopped pushing Apple II development, and (according to a Byte article I read at the time) artificially limited the Apple II's capabilities to make more of a market for the III. So, instead of being an overpriced and underdeveloped dog of a product, it actively hurt the company's main product.

The PowerPC was not a mistake, although we could argue about the exact best time to go x86. At the time, it offered much better performance than Intel could (anybody remember the Mac as a munition commercial?), and compatibility with Intel-based software wasn't all that important.

I don't remember anything wrong with Mac OS9 compared to the rest of the pre-OSX systems, except the age. Like MS-DOS and non-NT versions of Windows, MacOS was a relic from the old days of personal computing. The problem was not Mac OS9 in particular, but that there was nothing to replace it (like Rhapsody). It did introduce the much-needed Carbon simplification of the MacOS API.

As far as other contenders go, there's a rather sordid history of Apple pushing development environments, only to drop them shortly thereafter (OpenDoc comes to mind), and the Macintosh Programmer's Workshop was very peculiar, although liked by some people. The Lisa was very nice, and sold reasonably well as the Macintosh XL once Apple slashed the price.

Speaking of price, if you consider Apple pricing to be an Apple product, going high rather than low with the original Macintosh price was, I think, just plain dumb.

Re:The List

[Hatta]

For once, it's a top ten list that's all on one page. Go ahead, click through, it won't hurt!

Re:The List

[guruevi]

As a Linux/Mac user I would say ANY software is horrible on Windows. The issue with Windows is that the programmer has to draw all the GUI theming stuff themselves (buttons, sliders, windows, ...) and that can be done for good or for bad. On Mac OS X and Gnome/KDE - if you follow the guidelines - any theme will work with your program, the buttons will be concise.

Windows GUI programming is like a webpage where you have to write all the HTML/CSS yourself.
Linux/Mac GUI programming is like a webpage based on Drupal where you get all the HTML/CSS predefined and you're pretty stupid if you roll your own.

Re:The List

[0123456789]

Now I do have a complaint that Apple decided to cripple Quicktime so if you want to do anything useful with it you have to buy Quicktime Pro. That's annoying. It costs as much as the Snow Leopard upgrade.

Quicktime pro was abandoned when quicktime X came out - although I don't think there's a windows version of quicktime X, it is built in to Snow Leopard so is included in that Snow Leopard upgrade.

Re:The List

[pubwvj]

PowerPC and MacOS9 were fine. I would replace them with Lisa and MacOSX10.5/10.6/10.7/10....

Re:The List

[AshtangiMan]

I'm surprised that the Lisa did not show up on the list. At the time it became the favorite whipping boy . . . like the newton it was a really great concept, ahead of the technology, but both have informed the products that are great successes today. So hindsight took both off the list perhaps.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe one of Apple's biggest failures was dumping that Apple line. They never made the Apple IV and moved the resources into the Mac. Granted, the Mac was good, but I still liked the "openness" of the Apple I's, II's and III's. You could open the case and put whatever you wanted into them.

Don't forget the Apple IIgs. They sold that through 1992, and it was expandable. The IIc, on the other hand, took the venerable platform and closed it.

BTW, the Lisa didn't make the list for some reason.

Yeah, I was surprised by that too. Slow, incompatible, lacking color, HUGELY expensive - about the only thing it had to offer was the GUI.

I think Apple could have filled two niches here. The Apple IV's could have been the enthusiast/server machine with the Macs acting as the end user stations both for home use and workstations in businesses.

Unfortunately, business is where Apple was out of their depth. They had grown the micro market pretty much from scratch, and had no experience in catering to the enterprise. Instead of hiring old-timer computer guys who knew the market, Apple thought they could compete with IBM just by offering a slicker product. It's hardly surprising that the Lisa and Apple III failed to gain any ground against the PC. Apple engineers described IBM's design as "laughably bad," but IBM had the map and knew which direction to go, and Apple didn't.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple line used an 8-bit 6502 processor. It died for the same reason the Commodore 64 died. No viable upgrade path. Motorola 68k series was 32-bit with 16-bit memory addressing, followed by full 32-bit processors.

Re:The List

[andi75]

>> It gets the job of searching, navigating, and organizing my large library done well enough.

> There are much better alternatives, trust me.

This got you an 'insightful' mod?

Please mention a few of those 'better alternatives' (not that I particularily like iTunes, but I've yet to see a decent programm to manage a large music collection).

Re:The List

[Sancho]

I think the issue with a lack of screen is twofold:
1) Screens cost a lot. Apple should be able to bring the cost of this down since they don't have a screen.
2) Screens are the most tried-and-true way for sight-enabled people to quickly navigate through a list of items. Such as songs that you might want to play.

If you're chopping wood, sure, you're not going to look at the screen. You might flip to a new playlist and then resume chopping wood. How long will it take to scroll through to a new playlist on a Nano compared to a Shuffle?

Re:The List

[tmp31416]

if this is "the list", then it is badly chosen (to be polite).

the powerpc was not a bad product. in fact, at first, it beat intel's offerings easily (faster, etc.). it is only moto's incapability to get its act together, along with ibm's unwillingness to continue developing the product that prevented the powerpc from staying competitive.

os9 was a perfectly serviceable version of "macos classic".

two turkeys (imnsho) that should have been there instead are: the 1990 mac classic and the mac iisi. two products made by cost-cutting and hobbling existing designs to prevent them to compete with existing "better" products (the iici, in this case). oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it.

i guess it was too much work to improve the "mainstream" machine of the time (the iici) so that the new low-cost offerings could be feature competitive with what the pc crowd were seeing on their side of the fence. but what can you expect when bean-counting marketroids run the show?

Re:The List

[tmp31416]

(ack! where's the "edit" button when you need it?)

instead of "oh, we can the original mac lc whilst we're at it" i meant "oh, we can add the original mac lc to the list whilst we're at it". sorry about that.

funny as you only see some typos and such *after* you click "submit"...

Re:The List

[joeyblades]

Well, if you think Windows isn't backed into a corner, then I guess you and I have different standards for an operating system.

Re:The List

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You may not remember this, but there was a point when Quicktime was pretty much the only decent video player available on any platform. The product as a whole is more likely to end up on a best-of than a worst-of list, regardless of how lousy recent versions have been.

Re:The List

[jonbryce]

I use Samba to organise my music collection. I organise my music in directories by Artist / Album / Track. Works well for me anyway.

Re:The List

[Coopjust]

I mentioned Foobar2k, which is what use for my library & iPod sync. Songbird, MediaMonkey, and Amarok also work well.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

iTunes writes id3 tags to the files themselves.

Always has.

Re:The List

[jo_ham]

That's a limitation of the old QT framework - I believe this has changed in QT X, although I don't use it to play mkv, so I am not certain. They rewrote X from scratch.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

True there was no Apple IV, but there was the Apple //gs. That was a major advance on the ][ line in that it had good-for-then sound and an expanded Apple DOS that had a (somewhat) usable Mac-like interface. If I remember correctly, this period was between the Lisa and the Mac intro. At its introduction, the cover of one computer magazine featured the mighty Woz holding it up with a large SEG on his face.

Re:The List

[u38cg]

Upon researching, apparently the initial run were prone to problems, and it was fixed after a debacle of a recall. Presumably mine was either manufactured after this, or fixed. As for heat, just depends on the efficiency....

Re:The List

[spire3661]

In the last 10 years, QT has been nothing but useless to me. I keep installing it to watch trailers and then promptly remember why i uninstalled it.

Re:The List

[spire3661]

Inline controls are nothing new, I had em on my walkman ages ago. Whats new is that Apple decided that on-device buttons were icky. No one is saying that inline controls arent nice, but rather that ONLY inline controls suck. Hell even the sony inline controls had a SCREEN on them.

Re:The List

[Coopjust]

Not in my experience.

I corrected a number of files in iTunes. When I move to Foobar, none of the changes I made to the tags were present.

I tried Amarok to make sure it wasn't a weird Foobar bug- sure enough, ID3 tags were untouched.

Re:The List

[chthonicdaemon]

Strangely, I am very happy with the shuffle. I use it for running and find the on-wire controls far easier to use than on device ones. Turns out that I am not alone, as the shuffle seems to be selling well. The only real measure of product failure is bad sales.

Re:The List

[Just Some Guy]

Also, how hot can a 3Mhz CPu run?

The power supply was also inside the case. It's not that either made so much heat as that there was nowhere for the head to go.

Re:The List

[hey!]

Most minor UI faults aren't rally that important. It's how it all *works*.

Now my take on iTunes is that it shows how Apple has succumbed to the problem that doomed Windows to be an inferior UI. Windows isn't about catering to the user. It throws enough bones to the user to put up a credible looking facade of being user friendly. But Windows is really about catering to people who are chokepoints in the buying process: vendors and people who buy and manage systems for other people. But even Microsoft doesn't have enough money to be all things to all people. Some stakeholders have to be more equal than others.

For years Apple survived on publishing and purchases by individuals and very small businesses where user satisfaction was a critical factor. It had no OEMs to appease, nor any chance in the IT game.

When Jobs returned, he did a lot for Apple's business strategy, but the Apple UI purist was over. Apple now has its own third party masters: content owners.

When I use iTunes wth the iTunes store, it's simply wonderful for doing things which are very profitable for Apple's mass market content partners. It's not so great if I want to find things that aren't the latest episode of some popular TV show. It's glitzy, but that doesn't really matter, because it's a *tool*, one that is really on the sidelines of what users want, but also a place where users can be steered to Apple favored content.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

No mention of the latest generation ipod shuffle? The one where they figured control buttons would "clutter up" the design, so instead you have to buy special, expensive apple earbuds/headphones that are all cluttered up with inline controls and only cost ten times the cost of normal headphones? So the shuffle plus a pair of "special" headphones costs more than a nano?

You do realize the shuffle comes with those "special" headphones right? Separately, they cost 30 dollars... even the most expensive shuffle (the 100 dollar steel one) and those headphones (30 dollars) is still less than the least expensive nano (150 dollars).

Don't like the basic ones? Buy the ones made by dozens of other companies that also include the in-line remote, which by the way is not some special Apple thing. Some Blackberries also use an identical connector/remote style, and I'm sure other mp3 players must support it.

I can tolerate a little bit of exaggeration to illustrate a point but really, when your entire argument is exaggeration? Just stop posting.

Re:The List

[ari_j]

Do you (or does anyone else) have recommendations for a good iTunes replacement on the Mac that doesn't throw out features?

Re:The List

[LanMan04]

I don't care how cool iPods are, or how well the iTunes store works, the software is horrible on Windows.

I think that's on purpose.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

There are much better alternatives, trust me.

Awesome - could you please list these alternatives for Mac OS X?

Re:The List

[EvilBudMan]

Finally, someone gets an A+. That damn program is more annoying than almost anything else. It's almost spyware, trying to get me to add iTUNES or buy the paid version. Completely all opt out and no opt in at least on the PC. I wouldn't know about Apple since I dunno who is worse right now. Microsoft adding plugins to firefox is probably just as bad. Even Google is getting evil these days. I like the old days better when the entertainment companies didn't try to make things too.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing the point though - OS9 came out prior to the release of OSX (Next repackaged). OS9 was never intended to have all the modern features that could compete with Win2k or Linux. It was just an interim release to bring a few more internet related features, and to fix a few issues from OS8. OSX was the OS that was intended to address all the shortcomings that you describe, but it wasn't ready for prime time for quite a while (hell, it wasn't really useable until 10.1) and thus Apple felt the need to release something in the meantime.

Re:The List

[EvilBudMan]

Foobar is much better now that Apple has done that at least for the PC.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all, the worst Apple product ever is without any doubt the Performa 5200, but not the whole performa line.

Hell, what was so bad about the 5200 even? Seems if the list had to include Performa, the article was reaching pretty hard. We're not talking lemons here like WinMe, we're talking machines that just weren't great from a geek point of view. They worked okay as general consumer machines, though I thought they were rather expensive.

I /can/ bitch about the beige era. Opening those boxes and monitors with all their secret-handshake tabs to avoid the odd sensible machine bolt was the worst sort of inbred designer-wants-award-from-other-designers crap. That still makes me twitch when I think about it. But they worked. People used them, people mostly liked them. They were okay, just not great. A "worst" list ought to be about real stinkers.

Re:The List

[Stormwatch]

I am surprised to see that the G4 Mac Cube wasn't mentioned, nor the Newton.

The article is about bad products; the Cube and the MessagePad were fine products that just happened to flop.

("Newton" refers to the platform as a whole: the NewtonOS, which ran on Apple's MessagePad and eMate, as well as a number of third-party devices.)

Re:The List

[Brian Gordon]

strangely not on the list

The list is pathetically pro-Apple. They're not going to criticize a current product. Look at this quote from TFA:

There was some benefit, however. The hockey puck helped to boost the market for third-party peripherals, and its cold reception forced Apple to rethink its ergonomic approach for future mouse designs.

Translation: Apple is great because the product was so bad that it boosted the market for third-party peripherals!

Re:The List

[mjwx]

The UI is a little awkward but can be learned.

Good UI shouldn't be awkward.

Further more, isn't good UI design supposed to be one of Apple's strengths? Or perhaps it's like I've been saying all along there is nothing new and innovative about the iphone's UI and the OSX UI is unintuitive and restrictive.

It gets the job of searching, navigating, and organizing my large library done well enough.

There are much better alternatives, trust me.

Like Windows Explorer (or the Gnome/KDE/Xfce equivalents, I've got one of each lying around home). When you're music is organised you don't need a special program to track it for you, when it's organised a special program wont fix the original problem. When you have a bunch of music files on a NAS being accessed by multiple machines with different OS's a program to organise it becomes a significant hindrance.

The only thing I would actually use such software for is changing the ID3 tag in bulk, being able to point to a folder and say this is Pearl Jam, label accordingly. This only needs to be done once though.

Re:The List

[Macgrrl]

I wonder what their definition of success was. Take the 20th Anniversary Mac for example, they were a limited edition item which had a waiting list. Sounds pretty successful to me.

The Mac Portable is another example which I would have said was a market leader and what they learned from the luggable became the PB100 line which was hugely successful.

Re:The List

[Macgrrl]

The video issues on the P52xx deserve a special place in hell for the QA engineers who OK'd the product, however I always hated the P7220 more from the point of view of a tech. I would have said the PB190/5300 laptops (contemporaries of the P52xx) edged the Performas out for number of batch issues.

On the topic of PowerMacs, I had several great powermacs, and there were several generations of great designs. They don't deserve to all be slammed.

Re:The List

[grouchomarxist]

These kinds of lists get published every now and then, and the problem is that Apple's history is too long. There are many terrible products Apple has released and they've been flailed over and over again. A more interesting list would just cover the last ten years or so.

Re:The List

[bmecoli]

Honourable Mentions: Everything else

Fixed that for you.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

No Quicktime Player? It's a turd of a program on either OS, but the windows version definitely stand out as a major PITA.

Beaten only by iTunes, also strangely not on the list.

I don't care how cool iPods are, or how well the iTunes store works, the software is horrible on Windows.

Whos talking about windows, tha pseudo program OS
is worthless
So who cares if itunes is horrible on windows,buy an apple

Re:The List

[mattack2]

Umm, 65816, fully backwardly compatible..

At some point, WDC at least designed 65832, though I don't know if hardware was ever made.

Re:The List

[mattack2]

No, you're way off. The GS came out close to 3 years after the Mac. The toolbox is still very good.

Re:The List

[mattack2]

Does Perian play MPEG 2 where the audio/video is "muxed" differently than usual? After decoding(*), Tivo downloads won't play in Quicktime because the audio/video is "different" than expected. They play in mplayer for example. I would *love* for something to be able to play (and edit) them without converting format.

(*) decoding is simply unlocking with your Tivo's "media access key", converting the download to an MPEG2 file. It's not reencoding.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

The ironic part of this is that most of iTunes' UI *is* custom UI (i.e. they "rolled their own"). I mean on the Mac.

Re:The List

[mattack2]

unlike OS X, OS 9 is able to remember window sizes and positions.

Can you give specific examples of where this doesn't work?

Better, go to bugreport.apple.com, create a free online only account, and write up bugs that will get into the bug system.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I remember one of the jokes about it from back then...

"Knock, knock!"
"Who's there?"
(pause)
(pause)
(pause)
(pause)
(pause)
"Lisa."

Re:The List

[Tumbleweed]

The worst thing about the Apple III was that Apple stopped pushing Apple II development

Indeed. The Apple ][ line was pretty brilliant for its time, even when the field was varied (C64 vs Atari 800 vs Apple ][), it stood out as by far the most expandable, though it was also the most expensive. The //GS was a halfhearted attempt to match the Amiga, but it failed miserably. Every one of those 8-bit machines died a horrible death due to mismanagement. The only 8-bit machine that got a good upgrade was the C64 going to the C128D, really. The Atari platform was technically the most sophisticated (Jay Miner's precursor to his later Amiga), but Atari had no clue how to keep the 8-bit platform going, and later abandoned it for the 16-bit ST line. Commodore displayed by far the most incompetent handling of technology (close second to IBM with OS/2, though) with the Amiga. 10 years ahead of its time, and they just pissed it away. So sad! And Jobs obsession with black and white, ridiculously-overpriced computers (the Mac, then later the NeXT) doomed the Apple ][ line. So many could've beens. I'd love to get a peek at what happened in alternate universes where things went as they could've. I can imagine an Atari 1600 running a 14-20mHz WDC65c816, later morphing into a 32-bit then 64-bit variant, all running more and more sophisticated versions based on the original Amiga OS.

*shrug* Ah, well.

Re:The List

[andi75]

I tried Foobar 2k, but I'm not impressed. I especially don't like the Libraries Tree View, which requires a lot of clicking & scrolling. I find the iTunes "three-panel" view much faster to use.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, what was so bad about the 5200 even? Seems if the list had to include Performa, the article was reaching pretty hard.

Low End Mac classified it as a "Road Apple":

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/performa-5200.html

Re:The List

[g253]

I do remember using QuickTime, probably 2.x, on win95, around twelve or thirteen years ago. It was good indeed, in the sense that it got the job done. But then again, video on a personal computer was a relatively recent idea, and as you pointed out it was pretty much the only app which did that.
If I may risk an analogy, it's as if you said Lotus SmartSuite is really cool because 1-2-3 once was.

Re:The List

[g253]

FTFA, the part about the Quicktake: "Sure you could download your snaps very easily onto your computer but that hardly made it a usable product. It typified Apple's approach at the time, when the company's management thought that its users would buy almost anything if it had an Apple logo on it. That attitude seems to be largely reformed now, although if you look at the iPod Shuffle I have my doubts."

Re:The List

[adonoman]

Yup, I'm just happy Windows 7 finally supports .mov files out of the box- along with just about anything else without need my a codec pack (mkv files do require a splitter)

Re:The List

[GaryPatterson]

iTunes sorts into Artist > Album > Track as well.

Is there something special about the way you sort your files?

Re:The List

[GaryPatterson]

When Jobs returned, he did a lot for Apple's business strategy, but the Apple UI purist was over. Apple now has its own third party masters: content owners.

When I use iTunes wth the iTunes store, it's simply wonderful for doing things which are very profitable for Apple's mass market content partners. It's not so great if I want to find things that aren't the latest episode of some popular TV show. It's glitzy, but that doesn't really matter, because it's a *tool*, one that is really on the sidelines of what users want, but also a place where users can be steered to Apple favored content.

Not to spoil your delusions of the big conspiracy out there, or your fantasy about Apple being mastered by content owners (gee, where'd the music DRM go, and why?) but I have to ask - if iTMS doesn't host old movies or obscure TV shows, then should Apple be required to put them up? If so, what about the people who hold the rights to those shows? If not, what exactly is your point?

The iTMS is a shop. That's all. If they don't sell what you want to buy, go elsewhere. If no-one sells what you want, then maybe you're just not a good market for anyone, or maybe it's a market ripe for you to start a new business in.

I see a fair bit of muddy thinking in your post, wrapped up in a fashionable anti-corporate attitude.

Re:The List

[bjb]

Not exactly for the "efficiency". The Apple 1/2/3 lines' 6502 CPU consumed the same amount of electricity regardless of being idle or not. If you weren't do anything, the CPU was in some kind of "busy loop" waiting for the next activity to happen. There was no "sleep until an interrupt happens and then wake up the CPU" like more modern devices (e.g. later x86, Motorola 68k, etc). The only exception was if the disk drive was used, since those would only spin up when necessary. However, that was not the cause of the heat issue described.

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything is horrible on Windows.

how about all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, it's a cheap shot but Apple's worst product of all time is their marketing department.
Seeking to create deep divisions between computer users over a proprietary OS using proprietary hardware, giving the illusion of quality by giving an unfair mark-up to components which are actually cheaper bought separately by the consumer.
Urging artsy hipsters to look down their nose upon peons who don't understand the deep underpinnings of single-button mice and the ironic humor implied by the same device.
Finally this whole culture where everything Steve Jobs shits out to pay for a new liver from a dead Cambodian girl will truly change the world and herald the liberal singularity is plain stupid but even dumber are the media outlets, online and print, who fall for the same gag year after year after year.

Re:how about all of them?

[remmelt]

And still posting their biggest profit while the economy is crumbling around us.

Seems like their marketing department is the best product they have... it's working fine indeed.

Re:how about all of them?

[joeyblades]

Apple's business model seems to be working just fine.

Your suggestion that Steve Jobs used his wealth to obtain a liver through less than ethical means has been thoroughly debunked in the media and through UNOS.

If you want your rants to fall on more sym(pathetic) ears, might I suggest here.

Re:how about all of them?

[david_thornley]

Okay, you don't like Apple products. That's cool.

You don't understand why people like them. That shows a certain lack of empathy, but still no problem.

You then attribute it to marketing, which apparently is some mysterious force you can neither understand nor control, and stupid consumers. At that point, you've essentially said that you don't have a clue how to be commercially successful, but resent those who are. That makes you a loser, dude. Either lose the bitter attitude or get a clue.

Apple products are generally easy to use, often do certain things extremely well, and are physically attractive. Moreover, the components don't have to be ordered separately and put together by the user, which lots of people don't want to do.

Apple's marketing department has pulled some real boners, but Steve Jobs' sense of style and feel for the market are vital to Apple.

Re:how about all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't been making single button mice for a while... find something new to mock..?

Re:how about all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds more like you have a problem with people who come to different conclusions from you than any problem on Apple's part.

Re:how about all of them?

[LanMan04]

Apple sells tons of gadgets. This gadget market helps subsidize their computing/OS divisions. I love my Mac Pro and I love OS X, and if it's standing on the shoulders of a million iPods, that's cool with me.

Re:how about all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

*yawn*

Who mods this junk up?

Re:how about all of them?

[EvilBudMan]

--Apple products are generally easy to use, often do certain things extremely well, and are physically attractive. Moreover, the components don't have to be ordered separately and put together by the user, which lots of people don't want to do.--

I'm not an Apple hater exactly but WTF? You can go online and go to Dell and get everything right at the same time if that's what you want. Apples and Dells probably source their parts from the same or similar factories. The physically attractive thing we'll I give them that but don't you have to plug in USB cables to an Apple too when you unpack the stuff and plug it up to power and I don't think Apple makes battery backups and certain other devices that you have to purchase seperate.

Apple had one big innovation IMO other than the Apple II being sold to schools. That was the 1st MAC. With that you had desktop publishing. That's a big one and also they had MIDI ports early on and grabbed the music people. Those people have been loyal users ever since. Now days there is not so much difference between eith the PC world or Apple world except that Apple has a Nix OS in it's favor but OTOH they haven't cracked into gaming yet but expect it, but those Direct X developers are hard to get to switch and the CAD people on the PC.

I don't really like jobs sense of style except in calligraphy. I think he had some calligraphy classes and now thinks he's an artist but it must be art since many call it that. I don't really know what art is, but I know what I like. I like some of their stuff and some of those pink iPODs are just sickening to look at.

Re:how about all of them?

[Anonymous Coward]

You also love taking it up the ass from burly niggers. Enjoy Barbie's First Computer, faggot.

Re:how about all of them?

[Kitkoan]

Steve Jobs' sense of style and feel for the market are vital to Apple.

If by style and feel, you mean how Apple all but admitted they couldn't program an OS to save their life (with OS9 showing the highlight there) and dropping all their work to do a mass cut-n-paste of BSD UNIX code and Mach Kernel code and change just enough to make it look like their own? Remember Mac OS isn't a Apple OS like it had been, or like how Windows is Microsoft OS, or how each Linux flavor states its still Linux. Mac OS is really a UNIX OS in Apple clothing with a glitzy market campaign designed to make you ignore the man behind the curtain and make you believe they did it all their own way. And yes I know Mac OS build from the Mach Kernel that Jobs tampered with in NeXTSTEP, but they didn't make the Mach kernel, Carnegie Mellon University did in 1985 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_kernel ) and working versions in 1987 (the first public version). Jobs didn't make Nextstep 1.0 until 1989, 2 years later.

Re:how about all of them?

[Kitkoan]

You can go online and go to Dell and get everything right at the same time if that's what you want. Apples and Dells probably source their parts from the same or similar factories.

According to wikipedia, ASUS ( http://asus.com/index.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/products.aspx ) produces the parts for Apple. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asus ). Or at least some of the parts.

Re:how about all of them?

[EvilBudMan]

Yeah, and they have in the past produced some parts for Dell? I really like their own stuff better than the stuff they did for the other two (we'll way more than that).

Major details wrong

[dargaud]

Once thing I've noticed about apple products, is that there's always one ore more important detail that is wrong and that makes the product a no-no for me. At the same time some people gloat over those details as if they were the best thing since sliced butter (or whatever). Examples:

The no-button mouse. I hated that thing from the first second: I couldn't rest my big hand on it without clicking. On the other hand an admin giving a tour of the lab to some people asked me how much I loved the new great mouse from Apple (that was quite a while ago). I won't even mention single button mice.

iPhones/iPads without SD card slots. iPhones that don't appear as a mass storage device when connected to a PC (I still don't believe this one, it seems so 1995).

Laptops without changeable batteries. Destops where it's almost impossible to change the hard drive. Etc, etc...

Re:Major details wrong

[Boldoran]

Maybe I imagine things but I think my iPhone does show up as a storage device when connected to a Computer.

Re:Major details wrong

[MrShaggy]

I love Imac.

Hated the the key-board and mouse. They gave me carpel.
I use a 2 button mouse, and a pc-keyboard.

They work fine.

I don't mind paying extra for something that takes little to maintain.

I just love the fact that all of my 'system maintenance' issues are gone.

No more hours running virus checks. Which means more time for porn

Re:Major details wrong

[Boldoran]

On second thought maybe that's only if the computer has iTunes installed.

Re:Major details wrong

[deniable]

I love Imac.

and FTFA:

Built-in screens made sense at the start of the computing age but they have thankfully gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Um...

Re:Major details wrong

[alen]

on windows 7 the iphone comes up as the iphone. you can copy and past pictures and videos off it to your computer easily. Don't really care about the SD slot since 32GB in a phone is enough for me. and i'm not one of the OCD people that has to carry their entire music collection everywhere.

and a lot of people hate Apple Mice. on my Mac Mini i like to use a Microsoft mouse and the right click works perfectly

Re:Major details wrong

[bsDaemon]

By "gone the way of the dinosaurs," they mean "turned into birds and are now all around us, constantly chirping."

Re:Major details wrong

[bkr1_2k]

Laptops without changeable batteries. Destops where it's almost impossible to change the hard drive. Etc, etc...

I'm not sure what laptops you have, but all the apple laptops I've owned had trivially easy battery swap-out. Now, I've only owned a handful of iBook, powerbook, and Macbook lines (maybe the "air" has issues with this?) but it's certainly not standard for apple to do that. iPods, sure, but not for their laptops. As for difficult to replace hard drives, the only one I can think about is iMac bubble thing... and I'll give you that one. Again, that hasn't been even close to standard in my experience.

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, back in the late eighties, that Apple was supposedly wonderful for graphics. I never saw any meaningful evidence of that from an apple back then. I do remember that having an apple gave morons a self proclaimed sense of elitism; because they were for "smart" people. Meanwhile there I was with my commodore plus 4 building breadboards out of the serial and parallel ports. Ever since, Apple has seemed to capitalize on a desperation for validation of snobbery; especially with smart sounding names like macintosh. Having one of those meant you were going to Harvard.

Re:Major details wrong

[bkr1_2k]

I love Imac.

and FTFA:

Built-in screens made sense at the start of the computing age but they have thankfully gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Um...

That is the article author's opinion. I'd dare say with the explosion of laptops it's arguable that it's not the consensus either. Built in screens are still quite commonplace and it's not just Apple doing it. In fact, more and more desktops seem to be going back to that as components get small enough to fit into the screen bezels.

Re:Major details wrong

[Wolfraider]

The new MacBook Pro's have the battery sealed inside.

Re:Major details wrong

[mdwh2]

"32GB is enough for anyone".

Re:Major details wrong

[RavenofNi]

You're probably thinking about the "pictures" mode it connects in using Picture Transfer Protocol, what the GP was looking for (aren't we all?) was a fully read/write data partition which I think you can only get w/ a Jailbreak.

Re:Major details wrong

[lisany]

The non-unibody MacBook Pros take quite a bit of finicky work to replace a hard drive. It's my understanding that the Unibody designs made it significantly easier. But, that said, as a sysadmin in a primarily Mac shop I've only had to replace a MacBook Pro hard drive once and pull the drive out of a wet polycarbonate MacBook once. Strangely it's as if the quality of Apple gear is very good.

That said the Dell laptop that had its failed hard drive replaced twice in a month had a very accessible hard drive tray. Maybe they intended the hard drive to be replaced so frequently.

Re:Major details wrong

[TeamSPAM]

I know the iBook G4 that I owned had a such a painful process to swap the drive that I paid Microcenter to replace it. I think most of the G3/G4 portables from Apple had you basically take the whole laptop apart to get at the drive. On the other hand, I have replaced the drive on the white MacBook myself.

Re:Major details wrong

[Ash-Fox]

"32GB is enough for anyone".

Turns out that quote you miss quoted was made up.

Re:Major details wrong

[jedidiah]

The camera portion of the iPhone shows up as a mass storage device.

Quite often these skewed fanboy appraisals seem to depend almost entirely
on a complete lack of understanding of the underlying technical details and
a complete lack of awareness of what's really going on underneath the covers.

The rest of the device's features are still trapped inside the walled garden.

Re:Major details wrong

[jittles]

The guy was complaining that you can't use the iPhone as a USB storage device. When it comes up as "iPhone" in Windows it's coming up as a camera. You can't copy anything TO the device. Plus, it comes up on other versions of Windows also. You just have to have a driver installed for that to happen on XP.

Not to mention the fact that the iPhone 3G is perfectly capable of recording video but Apple doesn't let you. They had to save that little feature for the 3Gs.

To top it all off, we all know why there is no SD card on any iPod, iPhone or any other Apple portable. They want to limit your capacity so that you decide you need an upgrade later. All while they claim to be the greenest manufacturer on the planet. Forced obsolescence is NOT green.

And yes, I like a lot of things about OS X and yes I own an iPhone.

Re:Major details wrong

[Attila Dimedici]

On the other hand an admin giving a tour of the lab to some people asked me how much I loved the new great mouse from Apple (that was quite a while ago).

This reminds of some jobs I had before I got into IT. I worked for two of the leaders in one particular retail field as a store manager at different times. At both of those, I was at a regional managers' meeting where someone from corporate was introducing us to some new technology they were rolling out. After they had gone over all of the features and how it worked, they picked me out to ask, "Aren't you just excited to see this new tool coming out?" (or some variation on that). My answer was "No". They were stupid enough to ask me why not. So I proceeded to explain point out all the ways this new technology was going to make my job much harder with little benefit for me (Lots of benefit for the corporate office, but little to no for those actually in the stores).

Re:Major details wrong

[Genevish]

Due to the slower processor of the 3G, video recording is not quite "just fine", which is why Apple doesn't support it with their own apps. There are, however, several apps in the App Store that will let you record video. I use iCamcorder personally (until the new iPhone comes out).

Re:Major details wrong

[alen]

the new unibody macbookpro's don't have user replaceable batteries. $179 at the apple store includes the labor. if it dies before applecare is up than you are covered. unlike Dell/HP where the 3 year warranty doesn't cover batteries. it evens out

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

You really *should* check out the new MB(P) unibody lines...They're still changeable, just not on the road. I'm sure there's a way to connect a 24V battery to the MB power-supply, though... Oh yeah, batteries are not allowed on planes... Oh well...Get some sleep then!

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Replacing a HDD in an iBook is also a horrible experience. Worse than an iMac.

Re:Major details wrong

[_Shad0w_]

I'm not. I've never felt the need to use my iPhone as a storage device (beyond what's designed to store).

Re:Major details wrong

[Eskarel]

I'd make a guess and say the author was actually talking about built in CRTs which were a dumb idea.

LCD's especially modern LCDs really don't take up all that much room, you have to put in more space to make it big enough for people to work with and plug things into than you need to actually run the display.

CRTs on the other hand were big, ran hot, and tended to blow up unexpectedly. Building those into computers was a pretty awful idea long before Apple stopped actually doing it.

Re:Major details wrong

[TClevenger]

Some eMac models also made the hard drive extremely difficult to get at.

Re:Major details wrong

[Sancho]

However, the AppleCare Protection Plan for notebook computers does not cover batteries that have failed or are exhibiting diminished capacity except when the failure or diminished capacity is the result of a manufacturing defect.

From http://www.apple.com/batteries/replacements.html

These batteries wear out. Asking a computer manufacturer to replace a diminished-capacity battery is like asking a car dealership to refill your gas tank. Apple has the same 1-year warranty on batteries that all of the major manufacturers do.

Re:Major details wrong

[yurtinus]

In the older PowerBook G3s-- RAM and hard disk were accessible through the keyboard. I even recall advertisements pointing out how easy it was to upgrade these components. If my memory serves me correctly, the processor was on a module identical to that in the iMac that could be swapped out in here as well. I've done hard disks on G3 iBooks as well, but honestly I don't recall the process.

Other components and newer models are a bit of a nightmare though-- I've replaced the power input board on two G4 Power Macs. Need to remove a lot of parts to get to those..

Re:Major details wrong

[jazuki]

I'd make a guess and say the author was actually talking about built in CRTs which were a dumb idea...

Except the first iMacs (the jellybeans) also built in CRTs. Of course, of these iMacs, the other writer in the story says of them:

Shaun Nichols: The release of the original iMac was in many ways revolutionary. The case design, system specifications and marketing were all hugely successful. Not as popular, however, was the iMac's mouse.

Indeed, the entire story is a fluff piece, with no data but perhaps a cursory look at specs and a vague memory of what things might have been like 10 to 25 years ago.

[This is not to say that some of these weren't indeed spectacularly bad products, but, stupid pricing decisions and initial bad runs do not intrinsically make for bad products as was the case with several of their choices.]

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Thoroughly debunked by Gates himself, saying, "Of course I never said that because, you know, that would have been a totally stupid thing to say."

Re:Major details wrong

[Eskarel]

True enough, the iPad has made it popular to bash Apple again.

As much as I love to do that it's worth noting that most of these were made during the period Steve Jobs wasn't in charge. He may be an evil cult leading SOB, but he does for the most part make good products.

Re:Major details wrong

[exomondo]

I love Imac.

What is with the obsession of Apple and it's fanboys saying things like that.

'You can turn iPad any way you want'
'You can turn iPads any way you want'
'You can turn the iPad any way you want'

'Look at what you can do with iPhone'
'Look at what you can do with iPhones'
'Look at what you can do with the iPhone'

'I love iMac'
'I love iMacs'
'I love the iMac'

I'm not an apple-hater but gees wtf is with that?

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember, back in the late eighties, that Apple was supposedly wonderful for graphics. I never saw any meaningful evidence of that from an apple back then.

Well, since Pagemaker and the like invented the desktop publishing industry, and stuff like ColorSync gave Macs fine-grained color controls that Windows still doesn't have. Macintoshes saved the publishing industry millions of dollars. I wonder why those morons thought the Mac was great at graphics?

I do remember that having an apple gave morons a self proclaimed sense of elitism; because they were for "smart" people. Meanwhile there I was with my commodore plus 4 building breadboards out of the serial and parallel ports.

Don't worry, you're smart. In fact, you have a monopoly on smart. Anyone who dares use their computer for anything except building breadboards is a dangerous and delusional imbecile.

Re:Major details wrong

[MrShaggy]

Drunken Dyslexia?

Re:Major details wrong

[binary paladin]

I find one of the most annoying things about geeks critiquing is that they do it ONLY from a geek's point of view. To delve into the ever popular car analogy, someone who needs a sedan to seat 5 should not buy a compact pickup truck.

Aside from a laptop I would NEVER buy a computer with a built in screen primarily because I buy good quality monitors that will often outlast every other component in my PC (except maybe the case). However, a machine like an iMac is PERFECT for my mom, my dad and my sister-in-law. They'd be buying budget monitors in the first place so, after 4 - 5 years of using a machine, they'd replace the whole thing (monitor and all) anyway. My current monitor is about 5 years old and it stills works fine. I've got another year or two before I trade it up. However, I paid way more than $150 for it too.

A lot of people blast the iPad for the same reasons. Would I own one? Probably not. The lack of expandable storage is a mortal sin for me. My mom though? It might be the perfect computer. (Although for my aforementioned dad and sister-in-law, it wouldn't work at all.)

Re:Major details wrong

[Tumbleweed]

"32GB is enough for anyone".

As long as we're talking about RAM, and we confine it to this decade, that's _probably_ correct, for the mainstream user. :)

Probably.

Re:Major details wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously you wouldn't buy a Mac because you don't like the no-button mouse? Too bad there aren't like hundreds of different mice out there that you can plug right in. Even two button meeces.

Better to say that you just don't like Apples and leave it at that.

Your list of purchase killers is actually pretty funny. Don't like the Mac innards? I've never bled all over the inside of a Mac like I have when working on a PC with the sharp edges they leave on their cheap stamped metal pieces.

Re:Major details wrong

[bkr1_2k]

Yes, the laptop drives aren't particularly easy to swap, but I was referring to desktops, as was the post I responded to. Laptop batteries, desktop hard drives. Easily swapped laptop hard drives are not particularly commonplace for any computer manufacturer, though they are certainly becoming more so.

Re:Major details wrong

[Rakarra]

iPhones/iPads without SD card slots. iPhones that don't appear as a mass storage device when connected to a PC (I still don't believe this one, it seems so 1995).

I'll go along with this. It's one of the few ways in which my iPhone actually seemed to be a downgrade from my old iPod.

Re:Major details wrong

[Rakarra]

As much as I love to do that it's worth noting that most of these were made during the period Steve Jobs wasn't in charge. He may be an evil cult leading SOB, but he does for the most part make good products.

I think just as important as "making good products," he's not afraid to kill bad products, or at least products that he thinks are bad.

And?

[beh]

Sure, Apple's had some really bad products over time - but what do you expect from a company that big which survived that long?

And - how many open source projects died, never making it...

Apple, like any other company, doesn't always just launch brilliant products - but, at least, they're not afraid to try new things and see how they pan out...

Overall I think it's good that the DO dare making something entirely new; and more often than not fail with their products. Sometimes they even failed commercially, while still making a product people still care about (e.g. Newton).

For myself, I know many people are critical of the iPad, on the other hand, I think I will still buy one - it looks like a cool ebook reader - whether it has multi-tasking or not.

Re:And?

[MBaldelli]

Sure, Apple's had some really bad products over time - but what do you expect from a company that big which survived that long?

Funny how quickly we forget this article, hmmm? The Apple of Microsoft's Eye.

Re:And?

[chammy]

For myself, I know many people are critical of the iPad, on the other hand, I think I will still buy one - it looks like a cool ebook reader - whether it has multi-tasking or not.

Except for the whole screen-that-melts-your-eyes thing. For long reading sessions, nothing beats a screen designed for it (E Ink).

Re:And?

[Uberbah]

Forget what article how? What's your point?

Re:And?

[exomondo]

Sure, Apple's had some really bad products over time - but what do you expect from a company that big which survived that long?

What's your point? That there can't be an article on their bad products because obviously they are going to have some bad products?

not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Trepidity]

I don't think eWorld failed because of its now-ludicrous-sounding pricing model. At the time (early/mid-90s), it was the norm for online services to have monthly fees that gave only a few free hours per month, and then cost significant amounts per hour after that. In the early 90s, AOL gave 2 free hours for $7.95/month and $6/hour thereafter, and was wildly successful, so eWorld's $8.95/mo for 2 free hours and $5/hr day, $8/hr nights thereafter doesn't seem like it was so far out of line as to kill it.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Shrike82]

AOL's prices were pretty unreasonable, but they made up for it by providing every person on the planet with at least a dozen coasters for their desk in the form of AOL sign up CDs. Not once did I see Apple bombarding me at every waking moment with such gifts. Shame on you Apple, shame on you...

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Yvanhoe]

In general the whole article just laughs at old products from a today perspective. In the top 10 are also the PowerPC and MacOS 9. I think it misses the point half of the time.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Sycraft-fu]

May depend on the specific time and area. I wasn't on the Internet at the start of the 90s, but by 1995 when I did get on, it was a flat rate for access. AOL may have still been doing hourly then, I don't know, but there were plenty of small ISPs that did flat rates.

Also, as they noted, it was designed to push hardware sales and was Mac only. That is a pretty major problem.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[mdwh2]

I agree about PowerPC - but as for MacOS, I'd put the entirety of classic MacOS in there. Before they ditched it for Next, even in its day it was a poor OS (e.g., couldn't even multitask - something that Apple has seemed to enjoy doing again, with the Iphones...). This was especially true by the time it got to MacOS 9.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Genevish]

Couple the higher price and the fact that they offered nothing that AOL didn't have and it was enough to kill it. The only selling point was the built in Apple help area. As a beta tester for eWorld it was kind of eerie how it went from a thriving, fun community to a ghost town the day it went live (and we all had to start paying).

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Gilmoure]

The CD's made cool mobiles.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[bill_mcgonigle]

Right, and compared to what AppleLink was charging eWorld was a decent deal. But since it was a re-branded AOL and AOL had the network-effect benefits it didn't do any better than AppleLink and then the Internet/Mosaic made it obsolete.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Sandbags]

Agreed. i had many a $100+ bill from AOL in the early days (which, btw, was itself Mac Only for quite some time, 1989 - 1991, Mac only, Dos in 1991, Windows 3.x not until 1993..., AOL 3.0 was the first 32 bit version for PCs.) I played a lot of Neverwinter Nights on AOL in the early days...

No, eWorld died because a) most Mac users couldn't run it, b) they had a limited list of providers, and came a bit late to the game behind Prodigy and Compuserve and AOL making it difficult to find others online who shared the same service, and AOL was still a closed network at that time (no open Internet until 1995?), and c) it had virtually zero marketing budget, limited almost exclusively to posters in Apple stores, which Mac owners rarely visited, and attempts for Quantum to include the software free with systems got killed before the PC version released (it never did, but was nearly complete).

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[EvilBudMan]

Actually, what happened to AOL? They died really. Some other entity just bought their brand.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[grouchomarxist]

eWorld had many problems, but the biggest issue was that it was just a repackaged version of AOL that only ran on Macs. There was really little reason to use eWorld instead of AOL.

Re:not sure the eWorld diagnosis is quite right

[Yvanhoe]

Mac OS 9 was maybe not the best of OSes, but to put it in "the worst of Apple" is kind of uninspired. In the worst of Microsoft, they have W98 ME, Vista and Bob.

All of thier mice suck

[rimcrazy]

Love their products in general. MacPro and MacBook user myself but I hate their mice and their keyboards. They both have always sucked.

The Lisa sucked big time. As did Newton but ... they paved the way for future products some by Apple some not that were quite successful.

No guts no glory. They at least stick their neck out there and try things. Sometimes it does not always work.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Anonymous Coward]

The Lisa sucked big time.

They couldn't put the Lisa in there because if they had included photos it'd have been CP

Re:All of thier mice suck

[itsdapead]

Love their products in general. MacPro and MacBook user myself but I hate their mice and their keyboards. They both have always sucked

This is true.

Missing item from the "worst" list is every Apple UK keyboard ever, which is just a US keyboard with the (#) key replaced by a (£) key, leaving all sorts of punctuation keys in the US positions. Fail.

I think the mouse problem is that you really need to go out and choose a mouse that fits your hand - Apple are constrained to (a) only having one or two models (b) making it one-size-fits-all and ambidextrous and (c) being obliged to make something "different" and "designer-y". Fortunately, for ages now, any PC USB mouse has worked fine, including multiple buttons and scroll wheels.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

I agree totally that their mice suck, but I adore their keyboards. To offset the mouse bit too – their track pads are by far the best in the business.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Well,rimcrazy, I know exactly why you love Apple products in general.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[0xdeadbeef]

They at least stick their neck out there and try things. Sometimes it does not always work.

You fanboys will rationalize anything. Like a special child, Apple gets gold stars for effort, and you give them a free pass for the App Store, too, despite the fact that it makes the IBM of 1984 look like a hippie free love commune in comparison.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Sandbags]

Lisa was revolutionary, it was the PRICE that sucked big time. A basic PC for a student, a school, or a small office that didn't need complex spreadsheets or graphically impressive documents was about half the price. Apple misjudged how people would quantify the value of WYSIWYG, and overpriced and over engineered the system (not to mention bundling in too much R&D cost into the initial run).

The Lisa and the Macintosh XL were virtually the same. The Macintosh (original) was a different OS platform completely (different ROM) , and was far less powerful (though it was slightly faster in terms of CPU, having aged 2 years). The big separation between Lisa and Macintosh was the Lisa was a workstation class machine, and the Mac was a home computer. It even had a HDD, Protected Memory (not otherwise available until OS X!), virtual memory, and cooperative multitasking. The OS was a bit more complex than the Mac OS, but better in many ways.

We did not trade ours in for a Mac Plus, as many other people did (which included a cash rebate in addition to the trade), as there was no easy way to convert the lisa files we'd created into Mac files, and we had a TON of work on it. Instead, we actually bough a Mac to go beside it, and started a slow process of remaking all our docs on the Mac. We sold the Lisa to a museum in 2006, it still worked.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[k2enemy]

... I hate their mice and their keyboards. They both have always sucked.

Not all of their keyboards have sucked. I still think the Apple Extended II is one of the best keyboards ever made. I have several backup keyboards squirreled away in case the one I'm using breaks.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[damnbunni]

Unfortunatly, even the best trackpad isn't as nice to use as a mediocre Trackpoint.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Macgrrl]

You obviously never used on of the original Apple Extended Keyboards, which had a great action on them and were fabulously durable. I kept using one right up until the loss of the ADB port.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[dcam]

Where are the home and end keys on their laptops?

Re:All of thier mice suck

[blind biker]

I have a biased view on this, as I work with blind and visually impaired people, but anyhow: Apple keyboards suck bigtime, because it's extremely difficult to differentiate the keys by just touch. They are purposely made to be all alike. The Enter key is almost exactly like any other, except a bit longer - this is NOT enough for a touch-typist to distinguish it easily from other keys.

For reference, Thinkpads have excellent keyboards, on which one can type quite comfortably without looking at them.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[itsdapead]

You obviously never used on of the original Apple Extended Keyboards, which had a great action on them and were fabulously durable. I kept using one right up until the loss of the ADB port.

I don't have a problem with the action - I have a problem with the key layout on the Apple "UK" keyboards, which gets really annoying if you are using both Macs and PCs.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

Totally personal taste, I'd rather navigate around by holding the hand of a leper to direct them to the shops than use a trackpoint.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

fn-left and fn-right. Pg up and Pg down are fn-up and fn-down.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

Actually, all the keys being alike is one of the best features of them –you can rearrange them to any keyboard layout you like with the minimum of fuss, great if you're a dvorak typist like me.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[dcam]

I know that, it is still stupid. They would be among the most common keys hit during programming, and then I have to use a key combo to do it. What makes it worse is it isn't a key combo that include ctrl, which you would be hovering over the whole time for cut, copy & paste as well as end of word and start of word.

My best guess is Steve Jobs hates people who program on Mac laptops. Maybe they look too disheveled.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that, it is still stupid. They would be among the most common keys hit during programming, and then I have to use a key combo to do it.
...
My best guess is Steve Jobs hates people who program on Mac laptops. Maybe they look too disheveled.

News flash: almost NO computer keyboards are designed for programming, either on Mac or PC.

Programming keyboard shortcuts were chosen to fit the keyboard layouts, not the other way around.

I'm sure Jobs doesn't hate programmers, he just figures they're smart enough to a) get a desktop workstation for serious development, b) buy a USB keyboard that fits their style, and c) remap key bindings in whatever environment they like to work in.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

Except that in Mac OS home/end don't do the same as on other platforms, instead, the arrow keys behave better, so it makes perfect sense to drop the importance of home/end.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[dcam]

News flash: other laptops don't screw this up. My former laptop (now my wife's), T series thinkpad, has dedicated home and end keys.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[dcam]

Anybody competent programmer on any platform uses the home and end keys all the time. All you are suggesting is that OS X is a more hostile platform (in a minor way) to developers.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Anonymous Coward]

> News flash: other laptops don't screw this up. My former laptop (now my wife's), T series thinkpad, has dedicated home and end keys.

Explain how leaving off keys that most people don't use (and aren't necessary for the primary OS) is "screwing it up."

Did you every use MPW by any chance? THAT was a programming environment that any PC keyboard would have been miserable to use in (i.e. "screwed it up").

Re:All of thier mice suck

[beelsebob]

Just... plain... wrong.

I'd like to think I'm a competent programmer (I can certainly produce working code, so that seems to suggest it), and while on Mac OS, I do not use home/end at all.

On linux I do, on Mac OS not.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Rakarra]

Macintosh mice may have sucked, and most of their keyboards have similarly-sucked.. but I have to admit their iMac and Powermac laptops have really good keyboards now.. for laptops. Nothing will replace my desktop keyboard, but the very best laptop keyboards I've ever used were on Macs.

Re:All of thier mice suck

[Rakarra]

News flash: almost NO computer keyboards are designed for programming, either on Mac or PC.

This is true. I -love- my Kinesis keyboard picture here for ergonomic reasons, and it's great for typing out regular text, Slashdot comments, etc.

However, when I have to start putting down Python code, it's placement of punctuation keys ( like [, ], |, ', etc ) make coding a bit of a chore.

And for gaming, it's totally useless. I use a different keyboard for that.

Hardcore repair methods

[kaaposc]

Dropping the computer from a few inches reminds me of the Soviet repair methods that worked for most of technics - couple of punches on the side of TV made those coloured stripes go away :)

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[EdgeyEdgey]

I remember having to do this sort of drop-fix with my Amiga 500+

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[azalin]

I once was riding in a russian electric bus (interesting concept btw.). The door didn't close completly, so the driver got out and gave it a few good kicks. On of our local friends turned around and said with a smile (insert strong accent here): "Russian technology".
That really made our day

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[clickclickdrone]

Yep, I think the 'drop fix' applied to most machines back then because of the socketed chips. Certainly Atari ST's and 8bits all benefited from the occasional drop when all else failed. It was also reasonably common to just pull out and reseat various chips as regular job to ensure reliable running.

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[geminidomino]

I have a buddy that has a bunch of old tower cases with "Xs" drawn on various locations, since where he had to smack it depended on which drive bays he had his beloved Quantum Bigfoot drives in.

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[dunkelfalke]

Yep. And pretty much all electronic appliances came with a complete wiring diagram.

Re:Hardcore repair methods

[geekthesteve]

Our finance department bought an Apple III for doing VivCalc spreadsheets. It was a reliable computer for us until the hard drive started to make a grinding noise. Occasionally it would refuse to load or save a file when grinding away and the fix for us was to raise the separate hard drive cabinet a few inches off of the desk it was no and drop it. The grinding might stop after doing this and if it didn't then we just dropped it again. Eventually this process stopped working but by this time the IBM PC XT had come out and we replace Apple VisiCalc with IBM/Lotus. DOS was a disappointment after using the Apple III OS but the hardware worked flawlessly. Once we had implemented menus on the character interface the users were much happier with the IBM machines.

Mobile Me?

[albyrne5]

I made the switch to Apple about 2 years ago - iPhone, iMac and Mac Book Pro, and I've been very very pleased with almost every single aspect.

EXCEPT FOR MOBILE ME!

It's f***ing DOG-DIRT! Whether it's sync issues or the server dying, or e-mails vanishing into thin air; there's always SOMETHING going wrong with the goddamn thing.

And I keep holding on thinking, "well they're bound to get it right sooner or later", but it's later and later and later, and still no sign of it ever being fixed. Drives me batty.

Re:Mobile Me?

[soupd]

I must be lucky. I use MobileMe to sync everything across an iMac, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, MacMini, iPhone and iTouch and have never had any problems.

Re:Mobile Me?

[Cronock]

Works great for me too, though it's overpriced like crazy. I sync multiple macs and my phone. I've had a couple hiccups with syncing, but so is the nature of syncing. For the price it needs more of something... though I don't know what they can offer. It's in dire need of a name change though.

Re:Mobile Me?

[fazookus]

Happily you can use Google to sync up your various devices now... not sure if it scales beyond my iPhone and a couple of varied Windows and Mac computers but it does nicely for my purposes. I'm sure everybody knows this, just thought I'd throw it in. PS It uses Active Sync!!!!

Re:Mobile Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dropbox + google services. Embrace the (working) cloud.

Re:Mobile Me?

[Anonymous Coward]

I havent had a MobileMe issue in at least a year....

Re:Mobile Me?

[Sandbags]

We've been on Mobileme since the .Mac years, about the time OS X 10.3 came out. Never had any issues with it, other than some post-launch bugs with mobileme in 2008.

Certainly no issues with e-mail (Mom and Dad use it as their primary accounts, My wife uses it as her secondary). Syncing is sometimes wierd, but usually only when there's very little space on the .mac drive.

I'm expecting a huge cut in the price (down to $39 a year if not 29), an again doubling if not more of the storage (I think up to 100GB per account soon), much tighter integration with the iPad, and more. There's a lot coming from Apple's cloud computing initiatives, and current mobileme users are going to reap some big benefits at cut over for their loyalty I'm sure. Improved online backups, new iWeb with a more web 2.0 focus, better integration with flicker/facebook/etc, streaming services, back-2-my-mac improvements, and more.

Re:Mobile Me?

[BikeHelmet]

I've never been impressed with their routers.

Airport... the features of a $30 router, for $99.99! Oh yeah - it's white with rounded edges.

Re:Mobile Me?

[dwighteb]

I've been using .mac since its release, and I haven't had any issues whatsoever regarding lost email. I have had syncing issues in which my address book gets doubled up on one of my systems, but a deletion and resync has always fixed it. So yeah - I call your anecdote with my anecdote.

Laptops

[Nerdfest]

It's strange that the early multi-coloured iMac laptops are not on the list. I still have nightmares of the semi-transparent coloured plastic fad those things 'inspired'. I think I might vote for those as the ugliest computer ever designed. It's especially strange given that the later laptops are some of the nicest looking machines around.

Re:Laptops

[arizonagroovejet]

It's strange that the early multi-coloured iMac laptops are not on the list.

Given that you use laptop both in the title and body of your post, I assume you're refering to the first generation iBook.

Re:Laptops

[Nerdfest]

Correct, thanks. The similarly styed desktops had a heaping portion of ugly as well, but the clamshell laptops were an order of magnitude worse ... not that I have an opinion.

Re:Laptops

[pavon]

Actually, I still like the way the original iBook and iMacs looked, especially the tangerine and later green color. However the flower and polka-dot iMacs were ugly as sin.

Re:Laptops

[Fished]

Yet, at the time they were an enormous success and people were really excited about getting computers in colors.

Re:Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't on the list because they were possibly the toughest laptop ever made for the consumer market, and I've seen them live through events that would reduce many Panasonic "Toughbooks" to so much silicon rubble.

I like the Panasonics, but those toilet-seat iBooks were awesomely reliable.

Re:Laptops

[Gilmoure]

Check out the Apple e-Mate. Is even uglier than original iBook.

Ze goggles, they do nuthin'!

Re:Laptops

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no such thing as an iMac laptop. iMacs are desktop computers with an all-in-one form factor.

No G4 Cube?

[alen]

At least Apple learns from it's mistakes. they finally found a home for the cube/box computer as the Mac Mini and a lot of people like it. and if you look at almost everything Steve Jobs has built over the years starting from the 1980's, it's like he's making the same computer over and over again. everything in one unit except for the keyboard and mouse

Re:No G4 Cube?

[realityimpaired]

And the market seems to like it. Outside of enthusiasts in the PC market, most people will buy a box and never think about upgrading it until it's time to buy a new one. And in the long run, that doesn't actually cost any more than buying a grey box and upgrading individual components, either.

But in a market which is increasingly shifting towards laptops and all-in-one computers, perhaps the idea of building a computer that has everything you need in a single portable box is actually a good one? I know that the only grey box I even still own is a headless fileserver on my home network. Everything else is either a laptop, or in the case of my HTPC, a Mini ITX case that bolts to the back of the TV.

And I have no shame at all telling you that the next computer I buy will be a 27" iMac, either. It's not because I'm specifically a Mac fangirl, it's that to buy a 27" LCD that runs at 2560x1440 resolution I'd be looking at spending $1600 anyway, so I might as well spend an extra $100 to get the computer while I'm at it: I'm not going to find a computer with the same specs for less. Until the market price for screens in that range comes down, it's just not going to make economic sense to build your own. The same cannot be said for the 21.5" iMac which only runs at 1920x1080. :)

Re:No G4 Cube?

[jedidiah]

PC vendors were making machines in book and cube form before Apple was. There was nothing particularly innovative or daring about either of those ideas.

Apple dramatically improved it's marketing. That's been the most significant recent change.

Re:No G4 Cube?

[chammy]

Considering you can get a 27" at 2048 x 1152 for $450 right now, I'd save myself the $1000 or so and just get something like this.

Re:No G4 Cube?

[jo_ham]

I *love* the fact that I can drop my 20" iMac (white intel, late 2006) into its box, which has a handle so you can carry it like a suitcase. The whole operation takes about 2 minutes, including pulling the plug.

I have travelled with it transatlantic on several occasions (as checked baggage) and love it.

My next machine with definitely be a 27" iMac, for the same reasons as you, plus the portability.

Re:No G4 Cube?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the size, stupid. Or are you one of those guys who think's the original iPod had nothing over the Nomad, despite being a fraction of the size and weight?

Re:No G4 Cube?

[realityimpaired]

There's a *big* difference in pixel count from 2560x1440 to 2048x1152. Some people actually do need the extra pixels. If I just wanted a 27" screen and didn't care about the resolution, I'd buy a 720p 27" TV for $250 and be done with it. :)

Re:No G4 Cube?

[chammy]

The question is, is it a big enough difference to justify blowing a grand? My point was that giant displays are getting to be dirt cheap, so your argument that you're going to be spending $1600 anyway isn't justified.

Re:No G4 Cube?

[jetxee]

As far as I know no other monitor is even close now. Being able to see 57% more pixels matters. Especially if you are into editing photos. BTW, 2560×1440 is just enough to see 12 MP photos at crispy 50% zoom (assuming 3:2 format). 2048×1152 is not enough even for a nasty 2MP shot (assuming 4:3 format). For games and vi it does not really matter.

But $1600 is too much, IMO. As I don't make money on photos, I am not byuing that screen yet.

Re:Most

[ahankinson]

Lemme guess - you're fanatically obsessed with both?

Geomodem

[slashqwerty]

Unlike other modems the GeoModem did not moulate and demodulate. Instead it used the modem hidden inside your CPU! By purchasing an adapter that cost as much as a real modem you could use the processor inside your computer to handle all the modulating and demodulating. On an OS that used shared multitasking this was not very reliable. Its one and only advantage is that you could upgrade the software. It went from 14.4kbps to 33.6kbps over night.

Re:Geomodem

[Anonymous Coward]

Prescient, considering all the Winmodems that do just that!

Re:Geomodem

[Chris Mattern]

Apple wasn't the only folks who did that. Google up "Winmodem" some time. Though I can see how it'd suck extra hard on an OS that didn't have pre-emptive multitasking.

Re:Geomodem

[washu_k]

The Geoport first came out in Apple's 68040 models. Basically lower end 486 speeds.

The first Winmodems didn't appear until well into the Pentium era for PCs. So in addition to having better multitasking in Windows, Winmodems had a lot more CPU power to work with and thus less impact on the host system.

Re:Geomodem

[bill_mcgonigle]

. Its one and only advantage is that you could upgrade the software.

Well, yes, that's the entire point of a DSP. I had a pretty decent phone system (voice) running off of one at one point. Some people hacked them to be awesome/cheap high-speed D/A's for non-telephony apps.

The only advantage of a CPU-based computer is that it can execute general-purpose programs. Right?

Re:Geomodem

[Sandbags]

I had my 14.4 running at 19.2 with a firmware crack, and my 28.8 running at 56K (then 64K) with a similar crack. I've seen 14.4s running at 56K as well. Especially the US Robotics external models (which were FAR FAR FAR superior to internal modems on every level!)

Re:Geomodem

[Anonymous Coward]

Like WinModems only better?

Re:Geomodem

[BikeHelmet]

I remember when I upgraded to one of those US Robotics modems. Suddenly my dialup was flying. 5KB/sec downstream!

Re:Geomodem

[_merlin]

Yeah, but the only 68k Macs that could support the GeoPort Telecom Adaptor (not modem!) were the Quadra AV models that had an on-board AT&T DSP chip that run independently of the main CPU. This chip had plenty of power for doing the number crunching, and wasn't affected by the lack of preemptive multitasking. The only code that needed to run on the main CPU ran at interrupt time, so it wasn't affected either.

A friend of mine who's a diehard fan...

[IANAAC]

I have an admitted fanboy friend that has had all those items throughout the years, except for the 20th anniversary mac.

At the time he had them, "they were the greatest thing ever".

Ask him about them now and he'll tell you they were all crap, with the exception of the PowerPC. He still swears by that (which I really don't understand).

Point being, with technology being what it is and constantly advancing, doesn't everything eventually become crap?

Re:A friend of mine who's a diehard fan...

[Shrike82]

Point being, with technology being what it is and constantly advancing, doesn't everything eventually become crap?

Not in my opinion. I still consider the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis to you Americans) as one of the best consoles of all time. By todays standards it outdated and had a terrible controller, sure, but I certainly wouldn't call it crap. Now compare that to the Sega Mega CD which was pretty much crap all round. Both old, both consoles, not equally crap.

Re:A friend of mine who's a diehard fan...

[Hatta]

The Apple II is still a ton of fun to use. Great for games and programming.

Re:A friend of mine who's a diehard fan...

[HTH NE1]

I have an admitted fanboy friend that has had all those items throughout the years, except for the 20th anniversary mac.

I have two of them. ("Wow! You must be rich!" -- Milton Baines)

One was my sister's. The other belonged to a friend of hers and had suffered a lightning strike, used for salvage to upgrade hers. One of them has a TV tuner. They gather dust.

I also had a chance to own an Apple color pen plotter.

Re:A friend of mine who's a diehard fan...

[ducomputergeek]

If you look back, the Power chips are RISC basic processors as opposed to CISC on the Intels. Throughout the 1990's, the PPC's were superior to vastly superior for the graphics and and audio worlds. The last time I knew anything, submarines used PPC chips for sonar analysis (not Apples, made by somebody else to custom specs) for that reason.

Although things began to change in the early 2000's. For one, companies like Newtek began optimizing their renderers for x86 and it lead to the Intel chips to become the favorite. Also, at the same time, IBM and Motorola/Freescale kept making promises they couldn't deliver on the PPC side things. The G5 (PowerPC 970 series) simply produced too much heat and sucked down too much power to be used in Laptops. They also had problems delivering increased clock speeds. This was about the time that Intel announced their goal of performance per watt and IBM was demanding that Apple pony up $$$ for continued R&D of PPC line.

So Apple made the decision to move to Intel, which worked out extremely well. I didn't know how well it was going to work and bought one of the last Quadcore PowerMac G5's off the line. I was heavily in the video world at the time and got my use out of the $8k machine. But once all the software was ported over to Intel, I've been extremely happy with my Intel iMac and Macbook.

That being said, I am typing this from my 6 year old 12.1" Powerbook.

Round of applause needed ...

[OzPeter]

For the article itself not being a clickfest of 1 paragraph pages! I nominate it for best top 10 list article of 2010!!

Re:Round of applause needed ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I nominate it for best top 10 list article of 2010!!

It's at least in the top 10.

Re:Round of applause needed ...

[NorQue]

Exactly what I thought when I opened it. Very refreshing.

no comparison

[TRRosen]

At least they didn't invent BOB.

Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Sycraft-fu]

A product can only be bad if it doesn't sell. No matter how worthless the functionality is, if a product generates a lot of sales and thus a lot of profits, it is a success from a business point of view. The pet rock is a great example. No utility, whatsoever. It is just a rock with goggle eyes glued on it. However people loved the thing, tons were sold, lots of money was made. It was a success.

So, the iPad's status will be determined later. If it sells tons, then it'll be a success, even if the people who buy it just end up using it as an expensive cup holder. If it has few sales, it'll most likely be a failure since it doesn't seem to have anything that will generate any advances over all.

You have to remember that can also be a factor in success. Just because something doesn't make money doesn't mean it is a failure. An example would be the original Xbox. Overall, MS lost money on the venture. However it was a success. Why? Because it established them as a legit player in the console market, which is extremely difficult to break in to (many, many companies have tried and failed). Thus it was still a successful product in the long run.

So we can't say about the iPad till much later. Personally, I suspect it'll be a failure. I suspect it won't make much, if any, money (remember there's a lot of R&D to pay off) and it'll provide nothing to Apple overall in the long run. However, we won't be able to say for a couple years at least.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[obarthelemy]

Depends. There are bad products that sell, maybe because of hype, or their badness surfacing later, or the sales turning into a warranty nightmare. Plus the definition of 'bad' evolves... There's good products that don't sell, too. The Palm iPod precursor comes to mind.

I'm interested in how the iPad experiment will turn out too: It seems a bunch of much more capable, but a bit less sexy, hyped and easy to use tablets will launch this year. I personally find them more enticing than the iPad (Asus T101MT, Notion Ink Adam, even the smallish Dell Streak), but the general public may think otherwise.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[goldaryn]

A product can only be bad if it doesn't sell.

[4 more paragraphs]

Let me stop you there. Of course bad products can sell, the do all the time. You are talking rubbish.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[flyneye]

So it is safe to say ,you could be an advocate of the ''Yugo", which sold a lot in the states and turned out to be as disposable as a kleenex.
Welding the heads on an engine that wears itself to scrap inside a couple years is a way to "Think Different", I guess.
          '

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Gilmoure]

My pet rock (circa 1976) didn't have any eyes. Was just a smooth water worn rock, like a bunch that were out front in the landscaping. But the box it came in was funny. To an 8 year old. For a few minutes.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[NeoSkandranon]

If it sold well, it really doesn't matter what YOU think of it.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Anonymous Coward]

By that reckoning they should release the iRock. A slighly prettier looking stone with googly eyes glued on at twice the price of other pet rocks. It would sell like hotcakes to the fanboys anyway.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[MightyYar]

Let me stop you there. Of course bad products can sell, the do all the time.

"Bad" is such an ambiguous term, and actually meaningless if not put in context. A product might set fire to orphan hair, but if it sells well then it is good in someone's eyes.

Do I want an iPad? No. Does that make it "bad"? Well, yes, certainly from my perspective if you must choose between only "good" or "bad"... though personally I have it in a third category: "meh". I'm not much of a gamer, and I don't have much opportunity to watch video or browse the internet on the go... so what is left? If I did those things, then maybe the device wouldn't be so "meh".

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Gizzmonic]

Yugo didn't sell very well in the States. In fact it was a laughingstock for just about the entire time it was on the market. Got any non-strawman arguments?

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[EvilBudMan]

--An example would be the original Xbox.--

At the time, I thought that to be the best product that Microsoft ever produced. The kicker for me at that time was that the xbox had a hard drive and the PS2 did not. What made it a money loser was that they quit making it too soon. Just because the xbox 2 or 3 or whatever came out, doesn't mean they shouldn't have still made the old stuff like Sony did.

Now the hot one is the PS3, but it will be a few years more until everyone has real good 1080p games. I just think some PC games that are much older are much better and an even higher resolution and frame rate. So while the PC may made less and less, I don't think it will ever go away completely. There is still one horse manufacturer and maybe one buggy manufacturer and now there is no competition.

Anything, can be sold to anybody with the right tactics.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[flyneye]

For the short window of time it even sold, it put too many of them on the road.

          So your P.O.V. is that if bullshit in a bun sells to many it is a success.

        I wish you luck in your future career at retail fast food. Your lack of vision and willingness to settle for less than the best in a competitive marketplace probably won't even get you a job selling used cars. Tender an application to Jobs company, I'm sure even their H.R. dept. could use a chuckle.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Hognoxious]

By that reckoning they should release the iRock. A slighly prettier looking stone with googly eyes

Just one googly eye, surely? Two would be clutter.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Paxtez]

It's a matter of perspective. If you are the company that sells BAD_WIDGET but you make a lot of money doing so, it is a 'good' product. Just because reviewers and everyone else doesn't like it, doesn't change the fact that it is making you money.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[Gizzmonic]

I'm sorry, did you sign some kind of agreement that stated you could only use strawmen in your posts?

If so, please reply to this with more of your fanfic biography of me. It's very intriguing.

Re:Hasn't been out long enough yet

[flyneye]

The post up your butt makes you the only strawman left standing?

        You forgot to ask if I wanted fries with that, so I'll take my free soda now.

Re:Most

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't go so far as to say obsessed, although it is quite good, it's Steve Jobs crap I have a problem with.

I think that's the point

[Sycraft-fu]

The article is just trying to point out that along with great successes, they have great failures too. The press as of late has been rather over the top fanboyish with Apple, hailing everything they do as amazing and generally projecting them as a company that makes bold decisions that are never wrong. This article seemed like a counterpoint to that. Showing that along with their successes, that everyone has heard about, there are plenty of failures, which many people have not. That will be true for any company, but in particular for companies that try something new.

I think it is a good reminder over all, given the massive over-hype that surrounded the iPad launch. Much of the tech press had worked themselves in to a frenzy and had decided it was going to be the greatest thing ever, without knowing anything about it. This has then been followed by a good bit of letdown. They seemed to have the idea that everything Apple produces is an amazing winner of a product. I think it is a useful reminder to say that no, Apple has produced some real bombs in the past. They are a company composed of people like any other and people make mistakes. They WILL fuck up sometimes.

I could add a few more recent products to that list, the cube being one, and Apple TV looking like another.

Re:I think that's the point

[neon-fx]

Apple has produced some real bombs in the past. They are a company composed of people like any other and people make mistakes. They WILL fuck up sometimes.

I could add a few more recent products to that list, the cube being one, and Apple TV looking like another.

The Apple TV is a complete waste of space... unless you turn it into a usable media center http://mrcolinsappletvguide.tumblr.com/ I can only imagine that the patching process hasnt yet been blocked by apple (even in the most recent firmware) as it is only people hacking this system that are buying it.

Re:I think that's the point

[mdwh2]

I fully agree. The fallacy in the press, and my users here, seems to be "The Ipod was successful, therefore anything else from them will be".

The fact that the Mac has always been a niche product, and the Iphone is a niche product, is ignored. Indeed, the press hype it up as if the Iphone was as successful as the Ipod!

The annoying thing is, these people aren't even consistent. By their logic, since Windows is massively successful, we should all be talking about Microsoft's Zune as if it's going to be the next big thing...

Re:I think that's the point

[EastCoastSurfer]

What pisses me off about the Apple TV is that it could be a great little device HTPC, but Apple is so hellbent to keeping it tied to the Apple store. Where is Hulu or Netflix on the ATV? The mac mini makes a much better ATV than the ATV itself (prior to hacking it of course).

Re:I think that's the point

[Gilmoure]

I need to dig out my old Mac Color Classic and see if there's a way to tap directly in to the monitor. It has a 9" Sony screen with great picture/resolution. Would be cool to throw a Mac Mini in to the case and have a cool little movie player.

I also have one of those circle/stick/rectangle iMacs on a swing arm, with a dead logic board. That's another candidate for Mac Mini upgrade.

AOL came from eWorld

[zerosomething]

eWorld and AOL never competed agains each other as the article would suggest. In fact AOL grew out of the remains of eWorld. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld Oh and the pricing wasn't really so bad compared to not being online or long distance dial up and membership fees for other BBS.

Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

Disclaimer:
- i did RTFA (it happens!)
- i know Apple history
- i'm not Apple fan and don't own any Apple product (anymore) actually

Anyways..

PowerPC:

PowerPC was not a failure. PowerPC's were sold by IBM in their POWER architectures and had quite a bit of success there as well. They were quick, worked well, and they allowed the transition for Apple. If apple went x86 back then, there might have been no apple today. The only "failure" would have been the G5, or in fact, the lack of G6.
Undelivered promises of updates, for 2 years, and Apple had to switch to Intel.

MacOS 9:
TFA is confusing MacOS 8 with Copland (MacOS 8 original codename).
Copland was from-scratch operating system, with true preemptive multitasking and most of the things we're used to today.
It took ages and never got completed (in fact, the failure here, was Copland).
Apple released instead MacOS 8 and subsequent updates with partial features of Copland, but no rewrite. MacOS 9 was the last of the serie, nothing more, nothing less (MacOS 9.2.2). On top of that, it is the only MacOS that could run natively inside OSX. MacOS classic pionnered todays GUI.

20th anniversary Mac:
exclusive, high priced item, for collectors.. that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product. don't really need to say more. (actually ill quote: "the issue here is not the product but that it was released during a financial crisis" then "i know the financial crisis was not related to the 20th mac".. yeah well keep on contradicting yourself just to add 1 product to the list")

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[baka_toroi]

I can't believe the author stated that PowerPC - An architecture that was in use for so many years - is one of Apple's worst "product."

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[mdwh2]

exclusive, high priced item, for collectors.. that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product

But wait ... I thought that was all Apple products?

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember that the xbox 360 uses Power PC chips...

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

if i had comments points i'd mode this funny not troll :p

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

and if there was an edit button i'd write "mod" not "mode".

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Nelson]

Well these lists are the journalistic equivalent of "mailing it in" so it's hard to nit pick when you're picking at bullshit...

If the PowerPC was a terrible product, then what was the 68000 series?

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Anonymous Coward]

Geez, get a room with the guy already. It *is* a troll because it's "teh Applz am teh expensive" post #5,560,891,304. And that's just this week on Slashdot.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Anonymous Coward]

The statement that I find particularly bizarre about the PowerPC is "as was the ordeal involved in porting over software from x86 platforms such as Windows."

Er, it doesn't run Windows anyway so you are always going to have to port the software. Does the guy who said this have any clue about the difference between operating system or that most application code isn't written in assembler?

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Jesus_666]

PowerPC really went bad with the G5 - while adequate for normal desktop systems, it was too power-hungry for use in laptops, restricting PowerPC laptops to the G4; also, IBM couldn't acheive the high clock speeds the high-end market demanded. I'd qualify the G5 as decent if they ever got the power usage down and/or the clock speed up.

I'm not sure whether the G6 would have fixed those problems but Apple couldn't afford to wait: Their laptops were performance-starved and the G6 would probably have made them both extraordinarily expensive and extraordinarily late - and they had no guarantee it was going to be laptop-ready anyway. Another round of G4 laptops would have made Apple look positively ridiculous.

PowerPC was a sensible choice in the days of the 601 but Intel was an equally sensible choice when the G5 failed to deliver and the G6 was failed to deliver.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[RR]

PowerPC:

PowerPC was not a failure. PowerPC's were sold by IBM in their POWER architectures and had quite a bit of success there as well.

IBM was selling POWER before PowerPC, and it took until 1998 with the POWER3 before POWER chips were based on PowerPC.

I'm surprised you didn't note that all 3 of the current generation game consoles now have PowerPC processors.

However, the failure that I remember was the PowerPC Reference Platform (PReP). It was supposed to usher in a golden age for RISC, with cloners helping IBM and Motorola to develop faster processors by buying lots of them, like they do with Intel, and with lots of operating systems including MacOS and Windows.

Instead, development was bogged down in territorial squabbles, no cloners built anything except the Mac clones, and Microsoft soon discontinued their Windows NT port. Apple's experiment with clones hurt the company a great deal. Now, outside of IBM and the game consoles, the only systems using PowerPC are embedded, and PowerPC is nowhere near the performance lead.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Alomex]

By the time Apple adopted the PowerPC it had become clear that Intel would remain ahead of the curve in the processor wars. Yes, the powerPC design was cleaner, but Intel's massive R&D resources and silent adoption of RISC principles ensured their dominance in the microprocessor market.

If you are a struggling football team do you hitch your wagon to a falling star (Jay Cutler) or to a rising one (Drew Brees, highest rated QB in the last four years)?

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Gilmoure]

Apple had always done development work for Mac OS on Intel. They also had dev versions for Alpha Spec chips back then. 'Course, compared to PI/II chips, PPC 601/604's were really cool chips. Who knew they'd end up stalling out on the development side?

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[bill_mcgonigle]

Er, it doesn't run Windows anyway so you are always going to have to port the software.

Actually I have a Windows NT 4 for PowerPC disc in my closet. Microsoft reneged on its commitment to Motorola to maintain the port, so that's about as far as it got. I never did see the purported Microsoft Office for PPC though.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[bill_mcgonigle]

By the time Apple adopted the PowerPC it had become clear that Intel would remain ahead of the curve in the processor wars.

Really? Intel's current chip at the time was the 486DX2. The PPC had significant advantages over that technology and the marketing-driven Netburst architecture was all disaster, especially in portables. Plus the CISC nature of the 486 was a bad mate for the 68040 emulator that Apple needed.

Intel blew the PPC out of the water with the Pentium-M architecture, and that's right about when Apple decided to switch.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[bill_mcgonigle]

exclusive, high priced item, for collectors..

And nobody in Apple seems to have actually used one so it got poor support.

I had the dubious distinction of filing a bug on one in the MacOS 8.1 beta program that halted the production schedule of the gold-master release. With the intended GM release if you pressed the power button on the remote control on a TAM it would power off immediately, not trigger shutdown. They fixed it very quickly but it seems nobody at Apple was testing their new OS on a TAM (turning it off with the remote was a natural thing to do on your way out the door for the day).

It was only a laptop in a cool form factor, but in an era where everybody had CRT's on their desk, it was a very cool device.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

i bet if x86 was replaced tomorrow they'd have put it in as terrible choice, lol

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Alomex]

Really? Intel's current chip at the time was the 486DX2

Yes really. A while back we plotted price/performance ratio of the x86 line versus the PowerPC line and Intel was always ahead.

Plus the CISC nature of the 486 was a bad mate for the 68040 emulator that Apple needed.

This is the only reason why the could possibly consider staying with the dead-end powerPC architecture, but even this isn't enough. Back then I claimed that Apple would have to switch to Intel regardless and was only delaying the inevitable.

Apple likes to swim upstream in too many markets. You should do that in the few places where it makes sense and differentiates you from the crowd. If you do it in too many instances you end up with a 3% market share as Apple did in the past.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

I did not exclude the fact that IBM sold POWER before the "consumer oriented" PowerPC derivative, or the consoles either actually.. mostly because I made my points already I guess. It's still informative that you add them of course.

The PReP indeed failed, also. Not the PowerPC itself, tho.

I'll take this opportunity to remind ourselves of the might Motorola Mac clone, the StarMax 6000 and the 266 and 300mhz G3's. It was really ahead the competition, but never really got released (i suppose there's only a few in the whole world).

That was probably the last time Apple-related product made me "excited" technically. (yes, even if they killed the StarMax and others so that Apple could survive)

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[kangsterizer]

yep and if the next x86 failed to deliver, would it make x86 a bad architecture? No, x86 is a success.
PowerPC used to be also.

By the way, my memory isn't all that fresh, that's why I wrote G6, but i think it was to be called the G5e or plus or something like that, a G5 that sported higher frequency and lower consumption.. but after several delays it never happened.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're taking slashdot too seriously

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Sancho]

PowerPC was not a failure.

Correct, but it could still be a bad product. Windows is a raging success. Most people here consider it a bad product. Anyway, the article clearly states that it's on the list because moving to PowerPC over Intel was a bad business move, which I bet most people would agree with.

20th anniversary Mac:
exclusive, high priced item, for collectors..that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product.

There wasn't any criteria set forth for calling these products "bad." I think that the idea of a collectible computer is a terrible idea. The market for them is tiny. If that's really what this computer was meant for, then it should be considered a bad product on that alone.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Anonymous Coward]

On top of that, it is the only MacOS that could run natively inside OSX. MacOS classic pionnered todays GUI.

20th anniversary Mac:
exclusive, high priced item, for collectors.. that the author has mistaken for a consumer level product. don't really need to say more. (actually ill quote: "the issue here is not the product but that it was released during a financial crisis" then "i know the financial crisis was not related to the 20th mac".. yeah well keep on contradicting yourself just to add 1 product to the list")

1) Fuck "today's GUI" then, it's a POS design and I hate that Windows copied it (posting from a Vista machine that works fine and has never crashed).

2) Um, no one makes "collector" computers, that's the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time. There is no "collector level" for computer pricing. Especially not for new products.

And you aren't understanding the author's english. When he says "the financial crisis was not related to the 20th mac" he means it was not CAUSED by that computer being designed and sold. It was still released during the crisis, and it was an even stupider business decision to release it during that sort of period for your company than it was to make a $7-9k "collector's computer" in the first place.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Jesus_666]

They made one - well, one that had lower consumption. The 970FX did have a low enough power consumption and TDP for laptop use... Unfortunately, it wasn't faster than the fastest G4s at the time and all compatible northbridges needed more power than those available for the G4.

The "G6" would simply have been the next major PPC family, possibly derived from POWER6; the G4 was the 7xxx series and the G5 was the POWER5-derived 970 series. The closest thing to a G6 would probably be the Cell or the upcoming PowerPC A2. However, the Cell is sufficiently different from vanilla PPC that Apple would've had to rewrite the entire OS from scratch and it's unlikely they would've gone with it.


Again, I'm not saying that the entire PPC line was a failure. I'm just of the opinion that it became bad with, not after, the G5. The G5 simply didn't match the efficiency gains seen elsewhere and scaled neither up nor down well, making it too inflexible to drive an entire market.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Sandbags]

Correct on most counts, nice retort.

However, Mac OS was not the pioneer of the GUI. Lisa OS if anything was the start 2 years earlier, however, even this tipped a big hat and admittedly had significant influence from the Xerox Alto and PARC. PARC introduced windows, radio buttons, and icons in the first WYSIWYG GUI. Lisa added a contextual menu bar system on top of this work, as well as drag and drop. System (1.0), the original Mac OS lacked many of Lisa's features, which would not be included until System 7, and some not until OS X 10.0... system (1.0) even lacked an HFS file system instead using a flat file system. System X (1-4) was a fairly limited GUI compared to the Lisa, unfortunately, the Lisa was more complicated, and it's hardware was more than double the price, and thus failed.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Uberbah]

By the time Apple adopted the PowerPC it had become clear that Intel would remain ahead of the curve in the processor wars

Uh, no. The 604e, released two years after the first PowerPC chip, was a faster chip than anything you could get from Intel. The G4's and G5's were competitive chips but fell behind as Motorola and IBM lost interest in making processors for Apple. After the fiasco of IBM promising 3 ghz chips within a year of the G5's launch (which they never delivered on), Apple threw in the towel and went to Intel.

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Alomex]

If you look at actual release dates as opposed to press release dates Intel was always ahead of the curve. As I wrote in another posting, a while back we got the data for all releases from both Moto/IBM and Intel, and Intel was always ahead, though by varying degrees (sometimes by a lot sometimes by very little).

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Kaboom13]

The 20th anniversary Mac was a collectors item, meant to be an exclusive item for execs and the well to do. Unfortunately it blew chunks and they couldn't give them away. To own one was supposed to be a status symbol, but what it conveyed was "I'm a tool and don't know shit about computers". Especially as their price plummeted in desperation. A collectors item should be rare and hard to find, they were being sold for a pittance in the back of mac magazines with the refurb g3's and performa systems. Ask a mac collector what piece in their collection they are proudest of, it will probably be some rare revision of a mac classic, not the 20th anniversary edition. It failed as a computer, it failed as a collectors item, it failed as a product. it belongs on the list. If they had made 500 of them they probably would have done ok (although never made back their R+D cost).

Re:Not all the items listed were failures..

[Uberbah]

Who said anything about press releases? I was talking about shipping products, Willis. Obviously Intel ended up outstripped both IBM and Motorola, but that was not obvious when the PowerPC was first launched, as you claimed.

Re:AOL came from eWorld (Wrong)

[zerosomething]

Never mind I can't read. AOL came from Apple Link and eWorld and AOL did compete.

screens

[Swampash]

Built-in screens made sense at the start of the computing age but they have thankfully gone the way of the dinosaurs

It's funny to read this on an iMac.

Re:screens

[filterban]

It's also funny reading it on a MacBook Pro.

Departmentalised

[goldaryn]

from the performa-was-truly-a-dog dept.

In my country, the performa is a condom. It's also marginally (marginally!) preferable to a nasty disease

Re:AOL came from eWorld (Wrong)

[CronoCloud]

Not Applie Link, QuantumLink. Apple Link was just QuantumLink's name for their Apple oriented service, since QuantumLinux was C64 only.

Strange Criticism of Built In Monitors

[DLG]

I am not sure how they came up with their criticsm of the Color classic being an indictment of the idea of the built in monitor.

"It could be argued that this system forced Apple to rethink building screens into systems. Sue it looks very good but it increases the overall cost of the system and limits users to a particular view. Built-in screens made sense at the start of the computing age but they have thankfully gone the way of the dinosaurs"

So I am wondering if anyone knows if the Australian Apple market is so different that the IMac and Macbook lines are marginal. In the US, the built in monitor is the standard on most models Apple sell. It is true that other computer companies don't do this on the desktop, but other than the mini there is no consumer desktop that Apple makes without being a single unit.

And the statement about the PowerPC is entirely 20/20 hindsight. The Intel Chips at the time were dogs. And apple is still producting development model and OS that differs entirely from the Windows one. As far as developer interest, I would say that once Mac OS X, and giving away the development tools began that jump start, and its still quite a bit different from any other environment.

Hard to imagine that the IPod Hi-Fi rates in any top 10 list. It seems so unimportant, but I guess Thomson saw one. That makes it special it seems considering he doesn't seem familiar with much about Apple's line from personal experience.

Missing Option

[rossdee]

The Lisa

Re:Missing Option

[EvilBudMan]

It's like the Newton, there are some followers still.

No they have a good point about PPC

[Sycraft-fu]

Apple had to switch off the 68k, Motorola was basically putting it out to pasture. Apple was never a very big customer of theirs, so it wasn't enough to keep it alive. Crappy situation, but it had to happen. Now at that point they had two major choices:

1) Go with x86. That was the industry standard for personal computers, of course. Intel dumped tons of money in to development to make them the biggest, baddest, most powerful computer chips you could get, and it worked. They were, and are, fast as hell. Also, there were other companies making x86 desktop chips like AMD and Cyrix. This was a ready-made solution, and worked well. There were plenty of companies that produces all the necessary support hardware too.

2) Do their own thing. There wasn't really another processor out there suitable for desktops. They were too high end or low end for the most part, so something new would need to be developed.

Well, they opted for #2 and the AIM, Apple-IBM-Motorola, alliance was formed. That took the IBM POWER1 chip and redesigned and cut it down in to the PowerPC. Ok, fine, but you now had something that nothing supported and really wasn't a very good performer compared to Intel's chips. None the less, that's what they went with, seemingly convinced that it would somehow grow faster than Intels' chips, despite Intel's legendarily massive R&D.

Of course we all know how that went. IBM mostly focused on their high end POWER chips, which are neat but WAY too big and expensive for desktops. Motorola found that the embedded market was far larger and really targeted their designs more at that than at Apple's systems. Meanwhile Intel kept producing better and better chips... And then AMD started producing amazing chips, forcing Intel to work that much harder.

The result? Apple in the end had to change over to Intel chips, which produced another painful transition period, one that is still going on to an extent. It would have been a much better decision to simply go with what worked.

Over all, the PPC was a failure. They spent more money and had lower performance because of it. It also meant their hardware couldn't run Windows. Now that might make sense if software was their market, but it isn't. Hardware is where Apple makes their money. So, you support x86, more people buy your hardware. It is no coincidence that MacBook sales picked up when they went x86. You had people who either wanted to use Windows or had to use Windows (because of apps) but wanted a Mac Book for the design. With PPC, that wasn't an option. Now it is.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[marcomarrero]

I disagree, the X86 was a really bad choice back then. Pentium didn't exist (released 1 year later), the 486 DX2 was released the same year. The PowerPC easily beat the 486, and because it's endian neutral, I bet 68K emulation would be too slow on P5.

The Pentium also destroyed the 486: the FPU was a lot faster, and it could execute two integer instructions at a time. Unfortunately most code wasn't P5 optimized and avoided the FPU (lots of 486SXs out there). Quake was probably the first app that ran well on a P-60, and unplayable in a DX4-100.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[david_thornley]

Except that your memories and mine differ. At that time, Intel processors weren't speed demons, and the PPC ran much faster. This was because Intel was seriously limited by backward compatibility, and the PPC was a new RISC chip. At that time, if you wanted raw CPU speed in a consumer desktop (which was less useful than lots of people seemed to think), the Mac was the correct choice.

Later on, Intel came up with ways to efficiently process a truly arcane instruction set, and CPU performance vs. memory bandwidth vs. increasing use of cache changed the balance of RISC vs. CISC desirability, and IBM and Motorola wouldn't continue to produce good PPC laptop chips, and Apple changed again.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[Gilmoure]

Actually, the initial PPC 601 and 604 were very good competitors to Intel's PI/II chips. It's just that, rather than work right away on the next gen PPC, Apple pushed for incremental updates in the 604 architecture. For awhile, it worked but then IBM started having problems with power consumption and such and so it all slowed down. If Apple had partnered up with Intel back in the mid 90's, yeah, that woulda' been cool.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[washu_k]

The Power PC 601 may have been "released" earlier, but the first PowerMacs didn't actually come out until a year after the Pentium. By that time any speed advantage was gone. Other than a very brief period where the 604 was out before the P-Pro, X86 was always the faster chip. Yeah, there were a few apps where Ali-Vec cleaned up, but general purpose performance was almost always in X86's favor. Intel had the money to put into R&D and it shows.

The emulation thing may be true, but if Apple had done a proper transition like they did with the PPC to Intel one then it wouldn't have been a big issue. Old 68K apps would have been a bit slower but the OS and re-complied apps would have benified from the faster and cheaper X86 chips. Apple needed good emulation because they didn't port their OS properly still had massive chunks of it still running in 68K and then emulated.

The Power PC was a failure because it gave Apple slower computers despite their marketing claims. PPC was only needed because Apple couldn't write a proper OS at the time and needed the best emulation possible.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[washu_k]

Sycraft-fu's memories are correct. There's a surprising lack of actual benchmarks for the older PPC chips (gee, I wonder why), but the few published PPC SPEC results show the P-Pro handily trounces the 604e. The P1 vs the 601 was a closer race, but still in Intel's favor. The P-Pro and beyond are all "RISC like" internally and gave Intel the clear lead.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[washu_k]

See above. The 604 and other PPC ships were only good competitors in Apple's marketing. The few actual SPEC benchmarks for the PPC show the P-Pro and above are clearly faster.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[Graymalkin]

This is complete bullshit. While the Pentiums were introduced in 1993 they weren't actually available in volume until early 1994 which was about the same time the PowerMacs were released and available. PowerPC native applications (especially media/graphics ones) had a real-world advantage over their Windows/DOS counterparts since they could make use of the FPU on the PowerPC chips where on PCs couldn't rely on an FP coprocessor being available. It was a while after the Pentium came out that people shipping applications that depended on its FPU. PowerPC machines were actually available to customers and often performed at least a little better than Pentium based machines of the time. The PowerMac 8100 was a beast of a machine that shipped before a 100MHz Pentium part was ever available to people.

The 68k emulation had nothing to do with "porting their OS properly" but everything to do with allocation of resources. The fast 68k emulation allowed Apple to use large amounts of code that was already written and working rather than throw it all out. Reimplementing a significant portion of the OS would have been extremely expensive and time consuming. This is even more ridiculous when you consider that the emulated code could run as fast or faster than it did on 68k chips. It also allowed customers to have a viable upgrade path. You could buy a new PowerMac and your old 68k applications would continue to work.

PowerPC didn't start to have problems until the G4/G5 era when performance gains were relatively small with each iteration and Intel was locked in a performance battle with AMD. The first G3s were extremely fast and handily beat the Pentium IIs of the time in a number of areas. Once AMD bought the IP for the Alpha and started work on the Athlons Intel wasn't really pushing performance boundaries. Motorola easily kept pace with Intel and the two kept leap-frogging one another in performance. The Athlon changed that dynamic and Intel went ape shit with clock speeds and performance and largely left Motorola in the dust.

To suggest the PowerPC was a failure because Intel eventually made chips that were way faster is to ignore or simply be ignorant of a lot of history. The Pentium line suffered a good deal from Intel's hubris while Motorola and IBM were very interested in making high performance chips.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh... do a bit of googling. That clown is an admin at a site called ihateapple.com

http://www.ihateapple.com/forums/showprofile.aspx?forumid=3&user=Sycraft

I'd put any "memories" or "opinions" of his, with regard to Apple, somewhere between absurdly biased and complete bullshit.

Re:No they have a good point about PPC

[Rakarra]

Except that your memories and mine differ. At that time, Intel processors weren't speed demons, and the PPC ran much faster.

No no no, not at all. Apple liked to talk a good talk with the new PPC chips, but when they came out they were about on par with Intel's finest. Then Intel seriously started to pull away and Apple switched.

Irrelevant quote

[mdwh2]

* Where does this often-quoted phrase make claims that the Ipod would fail or succeed in the market? It doesn't. As an opinion of the product, it's valid no matter how successful it is (or are you saying that criticisms of Windows are stupid, because Windows is the most used OS?)

* "Slashdot" is not a single entity. There is no reason to judge squiggleslash, by a quote made by a different person, many years ago.

* Just because Apple have one successful product doesn't mean the Istale will be, and that is no argument to dismiss his opinion.

Putting it on a "worst apple products of all time" list is just ludicrously premature and speculative.

I entirely agree - just as every blimmin story we get about it is ludicrously premature and speculative. Let's get back to covering story about actually released products, not speculation about vaporware.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

Right, so my initial point stands - one opinion from a guy on /. who doesn't like the iPad (and real mature on the name there, I see what you did there. Should I just go back to writing M$ for instant mod points?) doesn't qualify it for a place on this list.

The list itself is pretty stupid - listing PowerPC as one of the entries. I don't whoever wrote it really understood what they were writing, since PPC was by no means a failure or a "worst product" by any stretch of the imagination.

I personally have no idea if the iPad will succeed or fail. It will probably do better than anything based on LameDroid though. oooooh I went there.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[mdwh2]

Right, so my initial point stands - one opinion from a guy on /. who doesn't like the iPad ... doesn't qualify it for a place on this list.

That wasn't your initial point. If you're now saying it's your point - well, I don't think anyone's claiming it should be on the list because of "one opinion from a guy on /.". He's claiming it should be on the list because of the reasons given. His opinion is just as valid as yours, which is also just "one opinion from a guy on /.".

(and real mature on the name there, I see what you did there. Should I just go back to writing M$ for instant mod points?)

I honestly lose track of what the alleged product is being called this week, as it's had so much reports and rumour over it. Itablet 5 years ago, Islate last week, Ipad this week, what next week?

I personally have no idea if the iPad will succeed or fail. It will probably do better than anything based on LameDroid though. oooooh I went there.

What do you base that on? Motorola are far bigger than Apple in mobile market share.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[squiggleslash]

Wait, you were making an initial point? 'cos what I read was a flame that my view was apparently untrustworthy on the grounds that CmdrTaco one dissed the almighty iPod.

I think the point you're trying to make, correct me if you're wrong, is that, uh, yeah. Sorry?

It's funny though, 'cos if you were actually smart, like that guy who does Daring Fireball or something, you'd post something like "Why yes, there is a staggering market for a $700 ten inch iPhone that can't make phone calls, despite the apparent intuitive stupidity of such a premise, it happens that there's this anecdotal/emperical/logical/whatever argument in favor of it."

Unfortunately neither you nor the moderators are that smart, so the mods are resorting to modding down anyone who points out the obvious, and you're left saying "Well, yur on slashdot an sumwon on the slashdot wuz rong once therefour y r rong nuh"

Re:Irrelevant quote

[david_thornley]

Thing is, I don't know that there isn't a staggering market for the iPad. It doesn't really impress me, but I've noticed that Steve Jobs is better at reading the market than I am. We were seriously thinking about getting one for Mom, but she's not interested in getting back online. I suspect that there are more intelligent and financially well-off people with Mom's technical proficiency than the average Slashdotter's.

I'm going to wait at least a few months before calling the iPad a success or failure.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[blackraven14250]

Considering Apple actually announced and demoed the iPad, you don't have to worry about the name changing anymore.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

Apple's official, actual, plastered-all-over-their-website name is the iPad.

You can't possibly "lose track" of what they are calling it, you just wanted to call it by a derogatory name to get some cheap +1 from people who also hate it, is all.

And my opinion is slightly different: his was "there is no market for it, it should be on the worst product list (as a direct challenge to the question why it shouldn't be on there - he is clearly stating that it should be). My opinion is that it is far too early to tell, but that including it on a list even before it has been released for sale is far too premature.

It may fail utterly, but no one can actually predict that accurately. Taco's comment about the iPod wouldn't have even been remembered if it had failed, as he clearly expected it to based on the specs along and never having used one. It clearly did not, suggesting that the success or failure of products is not solely based on their raw on-paper merits. I am not claiming to suggest the iPad will be a success (perhaps one day it will be on the worst product list) just that it cannot, in good faith, be put on there yet.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

You are making my point. I am not saying one way or the other whether there is or isn't a market - I am not qualified to make that call, and cannot possibly guess. Just as Taco wasn't when he dismissed the iPod out of hand with a casual comment right before it became wildly popular.

I cannot say "there is a market" (it might fail, it might not), but I can call you out on saying that there definitely *isn't* a market - you just cannot predict that with any accuracy.

You certainly can't justify the inclusion of the iPad on a "worst product" list when it hasn't even been available for sale yet.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Sancho]

John Gruber of Daring Fireball also thought that the Macbook Air was "going to be a big hit." He proceeded to lay out why that product was going to be the next big thing.

http://daringfireball.net/2008/02/macbook_air_appeal

Only it wasn't. While Apple fans bought up the initial supply, sales in general seem to be lagging (though Apple doesn't release sales numbers, they certainly talk about their most popular lines at the keynotes, and you can get general sales information by talking to retail stores.) No one at Apple talks about the Air anymore. They keep it updated--kinda. The updates aren't great. They finally dropped the price of it--and I doubt it's because it was cannibalizing sales of their Macbook Pros. They dropped the price because Macbook Pro sales were cannibalizing the Air.

Everyone gets it wrong sometimes, but people who worship at the altar of Gruber can be more rabid than Apple fanboys. He's wrong, too, sometimes.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[BemoanAndMoan]

Ironically, one of the best post-iPad launch suggestions I ever heard is that Apple should have taken the Air and simply added a dual-screen lid, the outside being your "iPad" ... that way you keep the laptop goodness and full-on OS without losing portability. If you added a stylus to the mix (still the biggest iPad deal breaker for me ... finger-smeared drawings are a little archaic) this would be a *huge* win in my book.

Hell, you could experiment with a rotator-hinge or backflip-hinge and have one side eInk and the other backlit, giving wins in all categories ... except complexity and possibly weight.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Sancho]

Oh man, you just made me realize that the first person out with a fingerpainting app for the iPad is going to rake it in :)

I like some of your other suggestions. I think they would go way over the heads and needs of most of the people that Apple markets to, though :(

Re:Irrelevant quote

[EvilBudMan]

--* "Slashdot" is not a single entity. There is no reason to judge squiggleslash, by a quote made by a different person, many years ago.--

Wrong, it's really just one guy posting to himself.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Mr. Punch]

I was with you until the last word.

The iPad hype is ridiculous, and the fact that so much media attention is directed at a product that hasn't been released is frustrating. But it certainly isn't "vaporware." It's a real product with working models that real reporters have handled. It has a release date announced, and even if it slips (I'm guessing it will, given Apple's past) there isn't any doubt that these will be out there in the wild for real people to buy.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Anonymous Coward]

????

Re:Irrelevant quote

[squiggleslash]

I'm not worshiping anyone, I'm just pointing out that smarter people (and I disagree with Gruber on a hell of a lot, but I believe him to be a smart guy) wouldn't have made the half-assed sub-ad-hominem "rebuttle" that my correspondent posted. Gruber doesn't generally post "Yeah, well you're posting on Slashdot, and someone else on Slashdot once got it wrong" as an argument.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[squiggleslash]

You certainly can't justify the inclusion of the iPad on a "worst product" list when it hasn't even been available for sale yet.

Well, I didn't, but I would. It's a stupid product and has no market.

If it becomes popular, it's going to be by accident. It'll be because of some bizarre thing nobody, not even Jobs, expects. You know, like Diebold and NCR will buy tons of them and put them in cash registers and ATMs. That kind of thing.

You might just as well tell me that I was wrong to call George W. Bush a blithering idiot who'd wreck the country if he gets elected when I said words to that effect in 2000. Sometimes something's obvious. The complete pointlessness of the iPad is one of those things.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[camperslo]

The list itself is pretty stupid - listing PowerPC as one of the entries.

It seems like the author can pick a subject to get page hits, but has very experience with what he's writing about.

The iPod Hi-Fi was actually a very good product, it was just expensive.
Part of the problem was that many of the things that were advanced about it were not known or understood by many consumers. It was able to provide very high output at low distortion. They went to great lengths to dampen out vibrations/undesired-resonances in the package. The amplifier was an extremely efficient switching design, giving the unit good life and high output when running on it's internal rechargeable batteries. It also had an optical digital input compatible with the Airport Express, making it very well suited for listening to audio streamed wirelessly from iTunes in a desktop or laptop Mac or PC.

The Mac portable was called a portable and not a laptop. It was heavy compared to a laptop and not yet a product for backpacks and bicycles, but it wasn't yet priced for those consumers either. Using it for for it was plenty easy to throw it it the car and go wherever. It's amazing how well it functioned with System 6 and a few hand-picked pieces of software on 2 meg or even 1 meg of RAM. Using the Truetype system extension it had excellent output dialing into the office fax to print at 200 dpi when a Laserwriter wasn't handy. A popular beta version of MultiFinder floating around could be swapped-in to get the ability to hide background applications in a way that wasn't otherwise seen until System 7. With Word, Filemaker Pro, MacDraft, FaxSTF and a few other packages is sure did more than the office PCs in places I went.
It didn't have the form factor of what came later, but it sure was a blessing to have the functionality. Although using CMOS static-ram was no-doubt very expensive, it also meant that memory didn't need clocking ("refresh") to hold contents, so it could go into sleep for extended periods without running down the battery. And the article is totally wrong about the power supply being "in series". It was a normal enough power brick that output D.C. with a two-conductor plug just like nearly anything else...

OS 9 didn't deserve to be on the list either. Considering the resources of the machines of the era, it was a good workhorse and pretty fast. Multitasking didn't require reboots, but conflicts between 3rd party extensions could. Well-picked extensions were often very useful though. It multitasked well enough to listen to music, surf, and download while burning a CD, which was enough to get by on. It's just that it was vulnerable to an unfriendly program hogging too much of the CPU.

The article left off the G4 Cube, which was a good workhorse but sold poorly because it was priced for the wrong audience.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[mdwh2]

I lose track, because I can't be arsed to tell actual likely news, from hyped up vaporware, when it comes to media coverage of anything that Apple might do in future. I'll do what I do with every other product, and wait until it's actually shipping, and not vaporware.

I don't see what's derogatory about Islate, that was the supposed name at one point - of course it turned out to be false.

It may fail utterly, but no one can actually predict that accurately.

I agree with not including it on the list - if for no other reason that it's still vaporware. Similarly, let's stop with the endless hype over it. The burden of proof is also upon anyone who think it's going to be some kind of "game changing" device, or comparable to the Ipod, and so on.

It clearly did not, suggesting that the success or failure of products is not solely based on their raw on-paper merits

Indeed, I'm sure this is obvious to most Slashdotters, given the examples of Windows and Internet Explorer. That was my point - the quote was about how good he though the product was, yet now people assume that his opinion was stupid, based on the commercial success of it.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

Come on - if you go to apple.com you can see it in gigantic letters on the front page. There really is absolutely no doubt about what the name is.

You didn't say "iSlate" you said "iStale" - if that is a genuine typo, then I apologise. I did not read it as such though.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[mdwh2]

"Vaporware" tends to be used for more than just purely fictional products though - the obvious example being Duke Nukem Forever, which is a product that people are really working on. Even products that were released have won Wired's Vaporware Award (e.g., Windows 2000 in 1999, and Mac OS X in 2000).

Re:Irrelevant quote

[mdwh2]

Considering that AmigaOS 1.0 was doing pre-emptive multitasking in 1985, on a 256KB 68000 machine, I don't think that Mac OS 9, released 14 years later, with minimum requirements of a PowerPC and 40MB of RAM, can use "Considering the resources of the machines of the era" as an excuse.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Mr. Punch]

Sure. Plenty of times something is announced but never released or released far, far later than originally intended. The former is vaporware, the latter can be debatable. But a product that is done being designed, that has sample models produced, and that has a concrete release date in the near future doesn't meet the definition by any stretch.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Hognoxious]

You certainly can't justify the inclusion of the iPad on a "worst product" list when it hasn't even been available for sale yet.

Yes you can. Sales volume tells you about popularity, not how good it is.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that AmigaOS 1.0 was doing pre-emptive multitasking in 1985, on a 256KB 68000 machine, I don't think that Mac OS 9, released 14 years later, with minimum requirements of a PowerPC and 40MB of RAM, can use "Considering the resources of the machines of the era" as an excuse.

True, the lack of pre-emptive multitasking on Macs was not due to lack of machine resources. The availability of pre-emptive multitasking on A/UX running on a Mac II proved that. It was due to the low-level design of the Mac OS...same reason it didn't have memory protection - and neither did the Amiga! :)

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

So since no one really buys Linux, it can't be very good.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[Hognoxious]

How does that in any way follow from what I wrote? Good and popular are separate words. Stop interchanging them, you imbecilic little twerp.

Re:Irrelevant quote

[jo_ham]

And name calling in lieu of actual argument is just so mature.

I will amend my statement:

So since no one really buys Linux, it can't be very popular.

They forgot to mention...

[kevingolding2001]

... Every single mouse ever produced by Apple. Ever!

C'mon Steve, get over your button-o-phobia already!

TWO is the right number for buttons a mouse. Two buttons, one on each side of the mouse, with definite clicky tactile feedback.

Not one big clicky button in the middle (with no right click).

Not some vague number of buttons with zero tactile feedback and random results if a stray finger is slightly touching the mouse somewhere else.

TWO! BUTTONS! THAT CLICK!

Re:They forgot to mention...

[Quantumstate]

I disagree, 5 main buttons is what you want for a mouse. Middle click is essential and back/forward buttons are very useful.

Re:They forgot to mention...

[Jesus_666]

I'm fairly happy with three buttons and a scroll wheel. I'll have to look at the Magic Mouse, though; two-dimensional scrolling is very nice and I don't think "tilt the scroll wheel" is a particularly good way of implementing it. The Magic might be the first mouse that gets scrolling really right.

Re:They forgot to mention...

[Gilmoure]

Meh. 4 with a scroll ring and track ball large enough to replace a cue ball.

Re:They forgot to mention...

[meringuoid]

TWO is the right number for buttons a mouse.

Two buttons? How do you paste, or open a link into a new tab?

Bohr said it best

[ral]

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

-Niels Bohr

Here's my summary for the article

[erroneus]

"Everything Apple does is over-priced. A the mark of a great Apple failure is being both over-priced and under-powered."

That's pretty much what they had to say about every product listed.

I used to love Apple II series computers. They were the tinker and learning machines of the day. People pushed them to all sorts of uncharted limits. Macs were too expensive to hack on so most people who owned Mac paid so much for them that they were afraid to hack on them. (Yeah, I know there were still some hacks and tricks going on in the early Mac scene, but it was nothing in comparison to the Apple II series hacking scene.)

I think the article missed a few things though... Newton received no mention? Really?

2009 mac pro should be on the list as it has

[Joe The Dragon]

2009 mac pro should be on the list as it has

* High price for it's hardware come on $2500 for 3gb of ram and poor video card NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB. The last on started at $2200 and the old g5 was at $2000.
* High priced video card upgrade add $200 for a ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB makeing it's real cost $350 (200+150 base cost of gt120)
* NO SLI or crossfire in osx as well.
* Does not work in osx with non efi / apple video cards.
* reused the old g5 case with little change.

How come...

[gmfeier]

...nobody ever posts a list of the worst Dell products of all time? Just askin'.

Re:How come...

[_Shad0w_]

Because it would either be very long or very short...

Re:How come...

[Anonymous Coward]

cuz nobody ever goes round actin like Dell is all cool an' shit, dawg. apple people piss all the normal people off, we love to find a reason to say stuff that will make em squirm.

Re:How come...

[The Breeze]

It is posted:

www.dell.com -> current promotions.

Just kidding. I actually use Dell. It's just their products are...not memorable. Dell's a copier, not an innovator.

iMac G5

[firefarter]

The iMac G5 was the first of the all-in one iMac designs that Apple sold. I got one and still regret it.
It's a good computer - no question about that. But it's frigging LOUD! I took it to the shop, phoned support but it apparently was by design. That's just what happens when you take hot G5 processors and stick them in an inch-thick enclosure. Figures that it took them only half a year to update the line.

I am betting iPad will succeed.

[guidryp]

Aside from your point that it is too soon to call a flop, when it isn't even on the market, I suspect it will do quite well.

I want one for myself and it will be my first Apple anything. I don't think in terms of laptop vs iPad. The iPad is a complementary device for e-reading/couch surfing, seems absolutely the PERFECT reader for comics (.CBZ/.CBR). I haven't figured out everything I will do with it, but already enough that I plan to buy as soon as I can get one (well after a hands on to verify I really like it).

I note the one who called iPad flop was an anonymous coward. A non slashdotter, or someone without the courage to have their prediction on record?

Re:I am betting iPad will succeed.

[cheesybagel]

It hardly seems perfect. IPad is over twice as heavy as a Kindle. This is mainly due to the kind of screen they wanted to use.

Re:I am betting iPad will succeed.

[guidryp]

I don't claim it is perfect, but a more fair comparison would be the Kindle Dx which has the same size screen and it also weighs over a pound and is priced at $489.

Re:I am betting iPad will succeed.

[Sancho]

I'm betting that it is closer to "flop" than "raging success." But I'm no market analyst, so who knows? And that said, I'm very tempted to buy one. I'll almost certainly buy one if they become jailbroken. Unencumbered, it could be a really neat toy.

The main thing is that Apple hasn't made a compelling case for buying one. With the iPhone, the case was obvious. The smartphone market was already there. They made owning a smartphone cool, expanded the market, and took almost all of the new new marketshare.

What's compelling about the iPad? About as much as was compelling about the Macbook Air. They've created a product which needs to create a market in order to survive. The Air failed to create that market. Will the iPad? I don't know, but like I said, I doubt it.

The Snuggie

[jimbolauski]

A product can only be bad if it doesn't sell. No matter how worthless the functionality is, if a product generates a lot of sales and thus a lot of profits, it is a success from a business point of view.

So you think the snuggie was not a bad idea, it's high sales are a direct result of how awful it is. The Phantom Menace was a great product according to you because of how well it did in the box office it's single day (Wensday) nearly beat Titanic's weekend gross. Bad products can be popular, just because the masses purchase a product does not indicate that product is good or lacks suckyness.

Built-in screens gone the way of the dinosaurs??

[AC-x]

Color Classic: It could be argued that this system forced Apple to rethink building screens into systems. Sure it looks very good but it increases the overall cost of the system and limits users to a particular view. Built-in screens made sense at the start of the computing age but they have thankfully gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Did the author forget about the iMac?

Mac Clone

[jimbolauski]

Why isn't the mac clone line on here that was the largest disaster in Apple.

Re:Mac Clone

[Gilmoure]

My Power Computing Power Tower Pro (180 Mhz PPC 604) was a great machine and was still in use as a linux file server when I left my previous job in 2005. It was also the last new 'Mac' I bought. Since then I've picked up used systems and refurbed them myself and lately, am just picking up Apple refurbs. So, the clones themselves weren't bad but yeah, the cloning program kinda' sucked for Apple. Still, as far as Apple disasters, I think John Sculley is where it really started falling apart. Once you let marketing instead of engineering run things, focus shifts from long term growth to short term profits and then the down hill slide has begun.

Re:Mac Clone

[Sandbags]

I agree. My PowerComputing system was in fact the bet Mac I ever owned. No, not compared to existing performance, but it was made entirely of server class components, highly expansible, i even had an x86 processor on a card in it running Windows in a VM! What you got for the money, what it included, and how far ahead of the competition (Apple as well as PC)it was is completely amazing.

I had that machine from 1995 until 2002, when i sold it to a law firm that had another one with a dead motherboard. I paid just over $1600 for it initially, and 7 years later sold it for $850. It was still running in 2006 last I heard from that client.

No MacintoshTV???

[d23tek]

The problem with lists like this is that truly lame products don't stick around long enough for most people to remember them. Consider the Macintosh TV. Only 10,000 were made before Apple came to its senses. Who would buy a 14" TV for $2,000? Sure it was a computer, too, but you could either compute, or watch TV, not both simultaneously.

Seems like anything from Apple with "TV" in the name is a dud.

My only other quibble with the list is the inclusion of the PowerPC platform. I bought a PowerMac 6100/60 when they came out in 1994 and used it until 2001. Heck, I still had it running (and on the web with Netscape 3.1) in 2005! Overall, PowerPC was a solid platform. The fact that the Performa line used its chips is a completely separate issue.

Macbook Air

[VoiceInTheDesert]

No mention for this paperweight? I'll admit that I don't have the figures in front of me as to how many units sold, but the short of it was that it was underpowered, had no DVD-ROM, firewire, etc. It was awful and cost nealry $2000, despite having only slightly more capability beyond a good netbook.

10 sucks, controls are on top of the video

[riker1384]

I can't stand the latest Quicktime Player. They've moved the controls so they're on top of the video you're watching, and you can't move them off of it. Any time you use the video controls, part of the video is obscured. It's maddening, I'm always shifting the controls to where they're least objectionable, and enlarging the video so they don't block as much of it.

AppleDefects

[cerberusss]

The list is very nice when looking over a decade-plus period, but for the most recent fuck-ups, I often check out the AppleDefects wiki. My number one interest at the moment is the power adapter for the MacBook laptops (MagSafe). This baby has been fraying, melting and even burning holes in bed sheets.

Re:AppleDefects

[Kaboom13]

Apple has a long history of failure when it comes to power adapters. The first run of iBooks had these terrible round adapters wheer the plug fit in the middle.and the cable to the wall came off at a right angle. The insulation on the cable was translucent. As you used it, the cable would break inside the insulation right after the strain relief. The result would be it would spark and burn inside the insulation as you used it. It was quite a sight. Out of an order of about 50 of them for the teachers at my school, 20 of them were completely broken, and another 20 only working intermittently, after a year. Apple denied the problem even existed, and charged something like $75 for replacement adapters (even though the cable alone was bad, they would only sell whole adapters. After some time they admitted the problem existed, and offered to replace them, but would not refund the money spent on purchasing 20+ replacement adapters before they finally admitted their mistake.

Re:AppleDefects

[cerberusss]

Apple has a long history of failure when it comes to power adapters.

I love it that they extend their design philosophy to the smallest details, thus include the power adapter.

That said, it's one part where the risks for shocks and fire are the highest. The link to the Apple forum where one woman reported a blackened bed sheet really blew my mind. That whole house could've burned down and there are indications that it's just not incidental...

Your story is equally appalling. If you have a big box of fried power adapters, how can they refuse to admit a problem with a straight face? The price you mentioned, $75, has been raised to $79 for a MacBook power adapter. Often I tell people to get a fake Chinese MagSafe adapter -- the chance of it having a lower quality is really low, and the price is less than half of what Apple will charge you if you show them their defective power adapters...

I'm with you; apple mice are crapola!

[oogoliegoogolie]

I love many Apple products, but I wish Apple would finally give up their conviction that a mouse has to have no buttons, throw in the towel, and make some nice mice that are usable and actually ergonomic.

The Mighty Mouse drove me nuts; far too often when I wanted a left click I got a right click, and vice-versa. Now there is the Tragic..err...Magic Mouse looks purdy but is about as ergonomic as a deck of cards. So unless you have the hands of a 13 year old or enjoy making eagle claws with your right hand all day just to perform an action like button-side button-scroll wheel, the Magic mouse is horrible. It's a step forward in tech but goes back 15 years in usefulness:a perfect example of form over functionality.

Every mouse and keyboard under Jobs

[argent]

I'd add every mouse and keyboard under Jobs. The last decent keyboard Apple made was the Extended-II, and their passive-aggressive fight with the second mouse button has sold a lot of Microsoft mice to Mac users (no, there's no clue-anticlue explosion when you plug it in).

Oh, and the first and second generation iPod shuffles were great products. The current model... yeesh, I hope they wise up and put he controls back on the case for the next version.

Re:Every mouse and keyboard under Jobs

[damnbunni]

The white plastic Apple keyboard was okay. Not great, but not bad. The aluminum one I have now is actually fantastic. I find myself making far fewer typos, possibly because there's a decent amount of space between the keys so it's hard to hit an adjacent one accidentially.

I'd rather use this flat aluminum Apple keyboard than an IBM Model M any day of the week. ... or every day of the week, even.

There were good products from Apple?

[Hurricane78]

Ok, I guess if you ignore the pricing, and deprivation of the target markets.

That same argument leads to Britney Spears

[Anonymous Coward]

That same argument leads to Britney Spears getting and deserving a lifetime achievement award for music.

Re:That same argument leads to Britney Spears

[bws111]

Depends on your point of view, doesn't it? Certainly, based on performance to date, no music critics would present such an award. However, there is no reason record companies, music retailers, and concert promoters would not give such an award.

Re: The Hockey Puck mouse

[rnturn]

It shouldn't have been as bad as it was. I don't think the hockey puck shape was the problem. I think the main problem with it was that the buttons were placed on the side of the mouse. I've used a hockey-puck-style mouse on VMS workstations (ages ago though I still have one of those mice) and found it very comfortable to use. The difference was the three buttons were on the front of the mouse rather than the sides. That made it possible to rest your entire hand on the mouse with your index, middle, and ring fingers positioned over the buttons. The Apple design seems to force you to hold the thing with mainly your thumb and pinky and then use your thumb for most of the clicking; an awful design choice, IMHO, since, at least for me, my thumb is probably the least agile finger. I'd bet Apple sacked the ergonomics engineer that came up with that design.

All

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider them all the worse products.

Timely... Or not so much...

[Anonymous Coward]

So the only product they chose as a failure from the last 10 years is the iPod Hi-Fi?
That seems to support the claim that Apple is "a leader in consumer electronic product design" *today*. The article is a cautionary one (for anyone), but the implication in the opening sentence that it says something about the current company is really misleading. Companies change over time (or they fail). Especially in the consumer electronics space where products are effectively obsolete in that amount of time (if not significantly sooner).

As some other posters have said, Apple's trying new things. That's risky and does leave them open to failures. But it has its advantages, too, and Apple seems to be pretty successful right now.

APPLE-TV hands down...

[MindPrison]

...worst - most redundant product ever.

When it came , no HDTV...limited amount of titles, not worth getting. Period.

The Lisa?

[rickb928]

How did the Lisa not get first place?

This was such a great product it drove Apple's share price up amost 150% in a few months. And then drove it down almost 30% from before.

Such a great product the leftovers were sold by liquidators. Apple screwed that up by not crushing the last 5,000 or so. That liquidator is actually still in business, wanna buy a nonworking apple-anything? They got em!

The Lisa was such a pile it forced Apple to bail and expedite the Macintosh, which seems to have been the desperate answer to save the company from certain failure. So, if you look at it that way, it saved the company by giving the Mac team the chance to deliver.

But the Lisa clearly is Numero Uno for Apple failures. So far as I know, Apple didn't even use them internally. Pure pus.

few compnaies have a 2nd hit ...

[peter303]

Apple has had four major hits by my reckoning: (1) Apple II (with VisiCalc), (2) MacIntosh (with LaserPrinter), (3) iPod (with iTunes) and (4) the iPhone (with Apps). I doesnt matter a lot if they've had some lemons along the way.

Apple IIgs doesn't make the list?

[Amigan]

This was gonna be the Amiga buster - as the Amiga was released with much more capability than the original Mac. As an Amiga killer, it didn't happen. Commodore killed the Amiga by itself.

Re:Apple IIgs doesn't make the list?

[irussel]

When the Apple IIgs came out, the Apple II line was already set for EOL. Apple was putting all its marbles in the future of the Macintosh. Woz is a big reason the IIgs was as good as it was. He fought for the inclusion of the ensonic sound chip, and the IIgs had better sound than any other PC at the time (yes, you needed an add-on board for stereo, but still). The Amiga graphics were only a little better than the IIgs. The IIgs would've lasted longer if it had Apple's full support. However, it was intended to be the final Apple II, time for everybody to move on. A shame, because a decked out IIgs with cpu accelerator, stereo card, upgraded memory, scsi card and external hard drive was a very capable and useful computer.

Re:Apple IIgs doesn't make the list?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Amiga graphics were only a little better than the IIgs.

Define "a little better". The GS might have approached the color depth and resolution of the Amiga, but the blitter in the Amiga could push pixels in a manner that GS folks could only dream of.

And yes, the 68k had it all over the 65816, both architecturally and via clock speed.

This is not to say the GS wasn't a good machine. It's just that when I was in the military and stationed in Europe as a tech, THE systems to have were Amigas and to a lesser extent Atari STs. Then you would always have a couple of guys in the barracks who had GS machines with something to prove, at which point the Atari and Commodore guys furrowed their brows and got back to flaming each other while ignoring the Apple.

It wasn't even worth flaming.

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Getting kinda tired at seeing these. It seems like every 2 weeks someone posts a thread on some site about "The top ten worst Apple products". You really have nothing better to do than reread the same list of the Newton, Lisa, Apple III, and now the iPad. The worst Apple product of all time is now officially iTunes. It's slow, bloated. and does entirely too much for a music player. I realize Apple is trying to market it as a multimedia player, but that's functionality I don't want for something originally designed to play music. It undermines the duties of Quicktime or whatever I choose to replace the standard video player with.

Bump-'n-Play

[The Rizz]

Users were advised to pick the computer up a few inches off the ground and then drop it, hopefully jostling the chips back into position.

Strangely enough, I ran into this, too - but not on Macs. I was working at a tech support company in 2000 that provided support for Gateway computers. They had acquired a whole batch of defective hard drives at a cut-rate price, and sent thousands of them out to consumers. Apparently the drives had a manufacturing defect where one of the parts in the motor was just slightly out of spec, and would cause the motor to get stuck (and thus, the system to freeze up). The actual, honest-to-god solution in the case of hard drive failure was, "pick up your computer, hold it three inches off the table, then drop it. Now try turn it back on."

We used to refer to these computers as having "the new bump-'n-play hard drives".

The TRUE list

[Anonymous Coward]

5-iPad
4-Mackintosh
3-iMac
2-iPod(all models)
1-iPhone

Not sure about the quickTake inclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really not happy with the inclusion of the QuickTake camera. While they were not leading edge spec, and I doubt there were all that many private purchases, they were to be found with nearly every school or other educational institution that had Macintoshes. Thusly they gave myself and several million other college types in the mid-90s their first experience with digital photography.

Re:Most

[Jesus_666]

You might want to stop stalking him on the toilet then.


If you want a tip: As far as toilet-stalking is concerned, Jeff Bezos is where it's at at the moment. ittoiletstalking.net gave his shit top marks in consistency and fragrance and the toilets he frequents are reported to be fairly accessible.

"timothy" needs a new hobby

[bsandersen]

If this posting looks familiar, it is. With a minimum of effort I found these three (including the latest). "The worst Apple products of all time", Feb 15, 2010 [posted by timothy]. "Apple's first flops", May 17, 2005 [posted by timothy]. "Top 10 Apple Flops", Jan 31, 2005 [posted by timothy]. Um, "timothy", can we stop rehashing stuff that happened 25 years ago?

iPod socks

[ForceQuit]

What? No mention of the (in)famous iPod sock keynote announcement?

So 2 points here...

[Colourspace]

From the summary.. The Amigas had a similar problem.. I worked in computer retail late 80's to mid 90's . the easiest money we made In that place was fixing the old 'green screen bootup' (precursor to BSOD). Take £30 off sucker, take Amiga out the back, smoke and drink coffee for half hour. Drop amiga 2 inches from floor. Happy kids, very happy parents. I should have really got into garbage collection round thAt time.

Re:So 2 points here...

[damnbunni]

The cause of this was apparently a huge pothole on the street outside the factory where they were making the A500s. The truck would hit the pothole hard enough to jar chips loose from the motherboard. Later Amiga 500s had a clip to hold those chips in place.

(Apparently the pothole was on public roadway, so the company couldn't just fix it.)

Forgive my ennui...

[Anonymous Coward]

but heated, passionate "discussion" over product marketing (90% of which could be quite accurately described as "useless junk", much like the opinions it generates) has finally become a tedious bore to me. I choose to perceive this as a watershed in my character development- a moment in which the choice of subject concentration has become very clear. And it ain't Mac vs. Windows. Just sayin.

Wozniak

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Wozniak was the only good thing about Apple and its one truly great product line, the Apple ][. Jobs is a hack.

Really guys, think back. The Apple ][ was the it when it existed. It wasn't some "elegant" piece of frippery - it was the best goddamned computer on the planet. Look what Apple has done since: the limp-wristed Mac (and straight-out-faggy iMac), then a hipster-friendly line of mere gadgets.

Apple devolved when Woz left. It changed from a computer company to a boutique. Put him back in charge, kick Jobs out to Black Turtleneck Island, and maybe salvage what's left of a dying, formerly great brand.

Never gonna happen. RIP Apple: you made great computers, then you became Starbucks.

Big difference: price.

[guidryp]

A big difference is the price range. At $1500 the Air was never going to sell big.

At $500 the iPad could easily sell big.

I can see a multi-tude of roles. I am almost certainly getting one as an e-reader/net surfer. It is perfect for reading comics on the couch, reading a novel in bed, whatever.

I can see getting one for my computer phobic Mom...

For a tech head like me, it is the relaxing on the couch consumption device when I am done working at my main computer. For computer phobics it might be an only device for email/internet/reading.

I am no market analyst either (those guys seldom earn their keep anyway), but I am betting on success. Though it might be slow as early adopters put one in the hands of friends and more sales are garnered, because I think the secret weapon will be the experience touching and gliding effortlessly on a big capacitive screen.

Re:Big difference: price.

[Sancho]

A big difference is the price range. At $1500 the Air was never going to sell big.

And it was more than that at launch ($1800 for the base model iirc.) And it was considered a companion to your normal PC (not much different than calling it a toy.)

At $500 the iPad could easily sell big.

Lower price for a less capable device. But at least it still does most of the things you want a computer for -- consumption of content online.

I can see a multi-tude of roles. I am almost certainly getting one as an e-reader/net surfer. It is perfect for reading comics on the couch, reading a novel in bed, whatever.

I'm with you on the comics, less so on the books. I have no need to carry more than 2 books with me at any given time. When I was a student, sure, I carried a lot of textbooks. Being able to write in the margins was important, though. But when I'm reading for pleasure, I pretty much read one book at a time. There's no need to carry my library with me.

Comics are a little different. They're bite-sized, like music. You can enjoy segments of even large story arcs somewhat independent of the whole. And being bite-sized, I might want to carry a dozen or more with me on a trip.

I can see getting one for my computer phobic Mom...

That's probably the best argument for success that I've heard. That said, I'm still not sure it's going to be that big. There have been many attempts to get luddites interested in the Internet in the past. If anyone can do it, Apple can--I just don't know that it can be done.

Re:Big difference: price.

[guidryp]

I'm with you on the comics, less so on the books. I have no need to carry more than 2 books with me at any given time.

Well on books. I have tons of ebooks/pdf already that I don't read because I don't want to sit a computer to do it. The iPad unlocks these materials.

It isn't about carrying it with me, since other than maybe vacations, I don't see the iPad leaving my house, it is portable internet/reader within the home, at least that is how I see it ATM.

There have been many attempts to get luddites interested in the Internet in the past.

I gave my Mom a PC, and I spent a fair bit of time helping/instructing (but I don't live in the same part of the country), but I couldn't get her to stick with it. The mouse always seemed strange to her, and different mouse buttons where confusing and there was no luck at all managing files.

Something like this that you directly touch to control, and where you can't interact with the file system anyway, seems to have much more potential for her. I will buy mine and put it in her hands and see how it works out.

This is the most overdone tech topic of all-time

[axl917]

I loathe and ridicule Apple as much as the next guy, but seriously, how many times to we have to be subjected to this? The same giggles and snickers over the puck mouse and the Apple III? C'mon...

Two types of mouse users

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't anybody ever note that there are two basic ways to use a mouse:

1.) Rest your entire hand on the mouse. The movement comes from the upper arm. Forget precision. Apple mice have all sucked since the first ADB mouse in 1987.

2.) The wrist is firmly set down on the tabletop. The mouse is moved lightly between the fingers. Light, precise movement. Big-ass clunky Microsoft mouse and virtually everything Logitech has built suck ass, including every "ergonomic" (nightmare) mouse ever built. Every Apple mouse is a pleasure to use, with the possible exception of the hockey puck (I never had a problem with it, but understand why people would).

This is fundamental. And nobody ever mentions it. Why?

BTW, I'm the second type, and the Magic Mouse is hands-down the nicest, most comfortable mouse I've ever used - in twenty years.

Re:Two types of mouse users

[Rakarra]

2.) The wrist is firmly set down on the tabletop. The mouse is moved lightly between the fingers. Light, precise movement. Big-ass clunky Microsoft mouse and virtually everything Logitech has built suck ass, including every "ergonomic" (nightmare) mouse ever built. Every Apple mouse is a pleasure to use, with the possible exception of the hockey puck (I never had a problem with it, but understand why people would).

I currently use a Logitech Mouseman Optical (both at work and at home) with the wrist resting on the pad and the mouse fits perfectly. It is, in fact, the only way I was able to beat my wrist RSI.

I think the most important part is for the mouse to be sized according to the size of the hand -- smaller hands, smaller mice; bigger hands, bigger mouse. One-size-fits-all is terrible.

Never made the jump from Apple ][ to Mac

[bzipitidoo]

When I realized my Apple ][+ was hopelessly obsolete, I jumped to PCs. I wanted whichever system was the most popular, ubiquitous, and standard. I wanted whatever work I did to be usable on as many computers as possible. In high school, that was the Apple ][, but the PC was a close 2nd. What I didn't realize then was that Apple had focused on education. It's as if Apple took a leaf from religious fundamentalists, targeting people too young and inexperienced to see why Apple products aren't all that great, who are more easily impressed by bling and who, having not experienced proprietary lockdown, don't quite know what that is, what it means, and why it's bad. Ubiquitous and standard did not describe the Mac. That the PC was cheaper was a nice bonus. As for the rest of the field, things like the Commodore Amiga were not even in the running.

I could also see that Apple had grown arrogant. Seemed to think their computers were worth ever higher prices even as they lost market share. Kept trying to convince the world that their computers were superior. Except they weren't superior, not on the criteria that mattered most to me. Recently, I read over a few tech magazine articles on Apple from around 1990, and it was striking how star struck and fawning most of them were. An interview with Apple's CEO was practically magical. They just ate up whatever Sculley had to say, no matter how stupid. A lot of the things that wowed them then look like pathetic sad jokes today, but even then they should have known better on most of that stuff. Apple and the press totally missed on networking and the Internet. And Apple blew it on openness, locking up everything.

I have never bought an Apple product since that Apple ][+. From my point of view, the Mac was the number 1 failure. Yet it is hailed as a great success.

The Color Classic?

[dpbsmith]

Well, all I can say is I owned one from about 1994 to 1997 and I loved it. It served me well. Maybe not the greatest product Apple ever produced but FAR from the worst. It more than lived up to my expectations which, by the way, the Performa 6400 Video Editing Edition I replaced it with did not. (The Avid-designed video hardware and software acquired more and more glitches and bugs with each minor OS release. When I finally sold it, restored the original software bundle and was amazed to see how well the video editing stuff worked again! I'd thought the hardware was dying).

The only real complaint I had about the Color Classic was that the screen was not quite as sharp as the black-and-white screen on the MacPlus it replaced.

The hockey-puck mouse? Sure. The Apple ///? Sure. eWorld? Sure. And how could they forget Lisa in general, and its Twiggy drives in particular? And we're ranking on Apple you can throw in Pages, that feels like it tried to be a desktop publishing program and failed, so they marketed it as a word processor. And you can throw in, or throw out, the crappy monitors Apple provided under their own name in the late nineties. And you can add all the babies that Apple unnecessarily threw out with the OS X bathwater; I know of nothing about preemptive multitasking that would force anyone to ditch resources and type/creator. They had clever-clever arguments about how you could get the same benefits without using resources, but either the arguments were wrong or they never followed through, because Mac OS X deteriorated into the same world of extension hell and documents never being associated with the right applications that Windows users have enjoyed all along.

But the rest of the stuff in the article is offbase. It's not very perceptive. It's just a couple of guys who don't like Macs taking random potshots. People who don't like Macs in the first place don't seem to "get" what the people who do like them, like about them.

No mighty mouse?

[kuzb]

The mighty mouse is completely missing from this list. Seriously, it was probably one of the most terrible hardware attempts since the hockey puck mouse.

Re:AOL came from eWorld (Wrong)

[sarahbau]

AppleLink didn't come from QuantumLink. AppleLink was developed in-house by Apple, for use only by Apple employees and dealers. You are thinking of AppleLink Personal Edition, which was developed by Apple and Quantum, and didn't actually connect to the AppleLink service. Quantum retained the rights to AppleLink Personal Edition, and released a Mac/Windows version called "America Online," since Apple owned the AppleLink name.

Apple Air Port

[Logic Worshipper]

What the fuck is with no web GUI like every other router on the planet? Forcing you to install unsupported apple crap to administrator the damn thing on Windows, which is nearly impossible to administer from Linux. Such a damn pain.

Re:Apple Air Port

[sean.peters]

That really does blow. It works fine from a Mac, but the Windows client is buggy as hell (or at least it was, haven't tried it in a while)... absolutely every time I tried to do anything with it, the router would lock up! And of course, no Linux client. Truly crappy way to administer the damn thing.

Type 3

[itsdapead]

3) Set forearm on tabletop. Relax muscles in hand so its resting in a slightly cupped position (not flat, that means tensing your muscles). Pick a mouse that fits comfortably in your hand in this position. Discover that you can then adopt the best of methods (1) and (2), using your forearm for large movements and fingers for small movements. Apple mice then either suck or rule depending on the size and shape of your hand.

(And my problem with the hockey puck was that it could get turned around in your hand...)

Performa was bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Performa with a 68040 CPU and a DOS card with a 486. It was fantastic. Flipping between environments took one keystroke, sharing data between the two was easy. I could run all the Mac apps and DOS/Windows 3.1 software I needed. It didn't cost that much and I got two computers for the price of one. On the "Mac side" I could have Netscape running for web and mail, listen to MPEG or CD audio, and on the "PC side" I could do programming. All at the same time.

What I didn't like was the software - Mac OS 7 (IIRC) was buggy. I spent so much time patching it and dealing with glitches. In fact it was so much of a hassle that I eventually moved to a Windows 95 machine years later. I read a few years ago that the Mac OS at that time was at its buggiest, and I certainly believe that.

Apple has made a lot of blunders, but the DOS-compatible Performa was brilliant.

Some items need a little work

[Old Man Kensey]

They're simply wrong on a number of points.

* The QuickTake 100 was in no way limited to just 8 photos (that was the limit at maximum resolution). I had a QuickTake 150 and it had a reasonable capacity. The 200 took SmartMedia cards, so capacity was basically unlimited as it is now.

* They compare the PowerPC to Intel, as though the PowerPC represented an expensive migration from Intel processors, but forget that Macs were coming from the m68k universe, not x86 -- they were already Intel-incompatible. PowerPC Macs could run 68K Mac software, so this was the natural choice at the time.

* Their criticism of OS 9's multitasking is a tad unfair unless OS 9 was particularly worse at multitasking than OS 8. I used MacOS from System 6.1 all the way to 8 and from 7.x on it worked fine for me.

Re:Some items need a little work

[exomondo]

* The QuickTake 100 was in no way limited to just 8 photos (that was the limit at maximum resolution).

So it WAS, in some way, limited to 8 photos. That way is if you used max resolution, and who wouldn't want to be doing that. But yes i agree when it moved to expandable memory that point isn't valid.

Re:Some items need a little work

[mattack2]

Umm, people who want to store more photos wouldn't be doing that?

Just like I don't have all of my music on my iPod uncompressed, I have it (picking a random example) 128K AAC, so I can fit more on my iPod.

Re:Some items need a little work

[exomondo]

But the highest resolution is the only one that gets anything close to decent quality, you wouldn't use anything less than 640x480, even back then.

Spelling?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article was interesting, but I kept getting distracted by the poor spelling.

Maybe the authors should have used spell check prior to publishing...

QuickTake

[GrahamCox]

The QuickTake was very short-lived and probably fair enough that it was, but I recall that it was the first simple to use point-and-shoot digital camera that just worked and did in fact herald a whole new market segment of consumer device. The competition at the time was no better in terms of resolution and price and was much more awkward to use and interface to a PC or Mac (USB hadn't yet been adopted). I had a borrowed QuickTake 150 when it was brand new and took it to a family wedding. People were astonished at the device. It's easy to dismiss it now that digital cameras are a mature product but at the time it was a glimpse of the future.

no amd came out with good chips then and intel pul

[Joe The Dragon]

no amd came out with good chips then and intel pulled a M$ and pushed them out of big part of the cpu market.

Strangest repair techniques ever?

[mike.mondy]

> ... strangest repair techniques ever: 'Users were advised to pick the computer up a few inches off the ground and then drop it

Well, that drop technique was what many of us used to use to nail the stiction problem...

Whatdda mean, "not every problem requires a hammer"?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiction#Hard_disk_drives

Missing on the List:

[walter_f]

Instead of PowerPC and Mac OS 9, there should be rather

Time Capsule
http://timecapsuledead.org/

and

iMac 27inch
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2212682&start=4080&tstart=0
(Replies : 4,486, Pages : 300, thread locked by Apple Moderators on Feb 9)

on the list...

No LIsa?

[bryan1945]

Surprised. A bunch of $10K computers dumped into a landfill, kinda like that ET Atari fiasco.