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The Island of Lost Apple Products
concealment writes "most of Apple's products are so popular that it seems everything the company does is destined to succeed. But it doesn't take much digging to find a trail of failures and false starts. Even in recent years, there are examples of products that seemed great but never resonated with consumers, and some that seemed so destined for failure it's hard to imagine why any company would have brought them to market. Here are some examples of Apple veering a bit off course."
The Pippin should surely be on this list. Also some of those are still being sold by Apple today. If you are going to list Apple products that are crap and still in use how can you not list the Half Assed Game Centre?
Why are the Apple III and the Apple Lisa not on the list? Granted, the Lisa was somewhat the predecessor of the Mac, but it itself was still a failure.
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This isn't a bad thing. Good companies (not just apple) take risks and try out new things. It only takes one in ten to be a good product, and one in twenty to be a great product to keep the company going. The trick is to make sure they're not *too* ludicrous before you launch them, and if they don't work out, make sure you realise this quickly and fail fast If you don't keep moving and innovate, some other bugger out there will and you'll get left behind. I'm looking at you Microsoft. [standard imnotafanbois disclaimer; believe what you will; ymmv]
if you want to come up with game changing designs/products.
Apple have always been good at seeing how the market is moving and many times coming out with a product before the technology is good enough or the public were ready for it.
Jobs was also prepared to take the kind of risks most big companies aren't.
I can't believe an entire platform of mobile computing was omitted from this, and yet ... texas holdem? Really?
I demand a recount!
I don't see any product which shouldn't belong to this island ...
You're right, actually. Most of those products are reasonably good ideas, the main failing was blatant price-gouging. Most of them failed because the competition was already there. Apple relies on coming out with novel products at ridiculous but nonetheless irresistible prices as far ahead as possible from the competition. They have done it several times with spectacular success, but this is a weakness Apple has always had. They generally cannot make a product that is better and cheaper than the competition.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
metrosexual-wannabes"
Hmm, considering that metrosexual men are people who use make-up to look better and non-metrosexual men are people who don't use make-up... what are metrosexual-wannabes? Men who kind-of and so-so apply face lotion, hoping to look good while not looking obviously metrosexual?
On behalf of both of them, your apology is accepted.
The only major failures I see there are Ping and the Rokr.
The rest seem like toes in the water that were probably worth a punt at the time.
The QuickTake camera was one of the first "affordable" digital cameras on the market. What was important to Apple was that people used Macs for digital photography and the QuickTake helped them play a role in creating that market. By the time it was dropped, big names in photography were producing consumer digicams - it was probably sensible for Apple not to go head to head with names like Nikon, Olympus and Fuji, or even Sony (who already had a name in video).
Bet you 50 Internets that the Poker app was withdrawn because they started getting negative publicity from the anti-gambling lobby. Meanwhile, i'm sure the news that iPod socks failed to set the world on fire will bring Apple's share price crashing (NB: they [i]were[/i] meant to protect iPods - TFA makes it sound like Apple was trying to break into the hosiery market!)
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Hey! I liked the cube.
It had a feature that I've yet to see on another computer, that's how advanced it was.
Surely I'm not the only one who wants to fry an egg for breakfast while checking my morning e-mail and feeds.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.