Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.