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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.'"
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
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.
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...
Non-Linux Penguins ?
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.
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, $8/hr nights thereafter doesn't seem like it was so far out of line as to kill it.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
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.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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
Lemme guess - you're fanatically obsessed with both?
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.
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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?
For the article itself not being a clickfest of 1 paragraph pages! I nominate it for best top 10 list article of 2010!!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
At least they didn't invent BOB.
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.
While the iPad seems pointless, it doesn't appear bad. The iPad predecessor the forgotten Newt would be more a much more likely candidate.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
It all starts at 0
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")
Never mind I can't read. AOL came from Apple Link and eWorld and AOL did compete.
It all starts at 0
It's funny to read this on an iMac.
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
Not Applie Link, QuantumLink. Apple Link was just QuantumLink's name for their Apple oriented service, since QuantumLinux was C64 only.
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.
The Lisa
Vaporware doesn't make the list, I guess... Can't be bad if it isn't even released.
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.
* 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.
... 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!
An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.
-Niels Bohr
"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
* 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.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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.
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.
...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.
This whole story invites trolling. By trolling I mean anyone who says anything that doesn't praise Apple/Mac. ,yet another.
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
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.
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?
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.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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?
Why isn't the mac clone line on here that was the largest disaster in Apple.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
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.
"Consuming Internet bandwidth since 1991."
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.
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.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Ok, I guess if you ignore the pricing, and deprivation of the target markets.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
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?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
Because it would either be very long or very short...
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
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.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
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.
I drank what? -- Socrates
...worst - most redundant product ever.
When it came , no HDTV...limited amount of titles, not worth getting. Period.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
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.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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.
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.
"Software is the difference between hardware and reality"
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.
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".
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
No, McTard, that'd be you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
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.
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?
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.
What? No mention of the (in)famous iPod sock keynote announcement?
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
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.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
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.
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.
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...)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
I love how we're using the past tense to describe a future product.
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.
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?
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.
* 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.
-- Old Man Kensey
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.
I drank what? -- Socrates
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
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 $100... I'll pass. Not seeing the point in it.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
no amd came out with good chips then and intel pulled a M$ and pushed them out of big part of the cpu market.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
As an E71 owner let me assure you that at least one of those is wrong.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
just so long as you don't want to do $OTHER_TASK at the same time. How fucking lame is that?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> ... 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
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.
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...
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.
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.
Surprised. A bunch of $10K computers dumped into a landfill, kinda like that ET Atari fiasco.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
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.