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The Worst Apple Products of All Time

Posted by timothy on from the performa-was-truly-a-dog dept.

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.'"

5 of 469 comments (clear)

  1. The List by c0mpliant · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    --
    There is no -1 disagree
    1. Re:The List by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    2. Re:The List by Coopjust · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  2. Geomodem by slashqwerty · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Not all the items listed were failures.. by kangsterizer · · Score: 5, Informative

    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")