Vintage Collection of Tech Failures

StormDriver writes "For every good design there are a dozen failed concepts. Nothing illustrates that better than a great online vintage gadget collection, published yesterday by the Microsoft Research team. The collection is a brainchild of Bill Buxton, one of the principal Microsoft researchers, a guy who's been through 30 years of continuous tech design. Awarded with three honorary doctorates and several professional awards, Bill also likes to gather things – the vintage, geeky kind of things, to be precise. Over the years, he has gathered an impressive collection of prototypes, probably the best I have seen online."

Comments

A Dozen?

[PPH]

For every good design there are a dozen failed concepts

We're at Windows 7. Only 5 more to go!

phah!

[Thud457]

It's not a definitive list of tech failures without the ::cue::cat ! That changed everything! We never browsed the web the same again!

Hey, whatever happened to their :CRQ "audible URL" technology that was going to allow us to directly link tv advertisements for fine products to the web?

FrogPad

[christurkel]

The frogpad was not a failure. I work for a not for profit serving the disabled and we used FrogPads all the time. It was insanely useful for those with limited hand movement. It sucked when they stopped making them.

Re:Not all failures

[Colonel Korn]

The /. headline is wrong - the iPod is on the list.

To you and all the other commenters complaining that great things like iPods and Etch-a-Sketches are on the list: you clicked the wrong link. Actually RTFS and you'll see that the links go to two separate lists, one of failures and one of successes. It would have taken you less time to read the relevant 3 word description of each link than it took you to click the wrong link, come back here and post a complaint, you know.

Re:17 pencils

[Anrego]

Forgot to add:

Automated coffee maker... need that. I'm one of those guys with the IQ of a house plant up until about 10am. If I tried to make coffee in the morning, assuming I somehow mustered the ambition, I'd probably boil my keys and put the coffee grounds in my pocket or something.

Re:17 pencils

[DrgnDancer]

The lights in my office at my last job were on a motion sensor. Let me tell you, the office of a computer professional is about the worst place for motion activated lights: ::tap tap click tap tap {light out} {sigh} {wave at sensor} ... tap tap tap tap {lights out} {sigh}...::

Failed?

[Lumpy]

The handeykey Twiddler is still in production and still used by many. It's a godsend to people with disabilities.

Frnaklin ebookman worked great for when it was viable. It's failure was that publishers were afraid of ebooks. it had good readability unti lthe Rex came about with a far better screen. Both were ahead of their time and only "failed" because of publishers.

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

Re:Failed?

[DerekLyons]

I think the submitter needs to understand what "failed" means.

He's mostly using "failed" in the conventional marketdroid sense - they didn't fly off the shelves making the corporation manufacturing them and those investing in them buckets of cash.
 

A lot of that stuff were far from failures. they were designed for a specific task. the 3d mousing devices are STILL used to this day in high end 3d CAD.

That's true of many of the items in the collection.
 
He labels the overblown Swiss Army Knife as a bad design - while failing to consider the purpose of the design. (As a collectible/art piece, which he tacitly admits it was a success at.) The next knife down he's equally dismissive of. But he fails to consider that a) there are other methods of carrying (a belt pouch for example), or b) that there *are* people who constantly have something it will fit into handy (a photographer and his camera bag, a fisherman and his tackle box, etc..). The lowest knife, which he praises, has so little functionality it's only real use is to be impressive to the guy in the next cubicle over because you're the Guy Who Always Has A Knife.
 
The same with the Nikon Coolpix 100. He seems utterly unaware that there are a huge number of cameras out there... My little Canon A1200 has no extra chargers or cables either.
 
He praises the Olympic Memory Stick Thumb Drive - but take away the 'cool' packaging, and it's just another thumb drive. Maybe he keeps the 'cool' packaging as an art piece on his desk, but I suspect he's one of the few.
 
Overall Mr Buxton is really, really bad at evaluating the success or failure and the usefulness or not of many of the items he has in his collection.

Re:17 pencils

[treeves]

"...a fan blowing crap all over my office."

That should only happen when the shit hits the fan.

Re:So where is the Zune in that list ?

[Stormwatch]

Most advanced linux users do really think that Windows 7 is unstable and slow. It's slow because they run it on 15 year old hardware.

They expect old hardware to run a modern system because their modern system can run on old hardware.