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The L.A. Times Names Its Favorite Flops of the Year
SternisheFan writes "Salvador Rodriguez and Deborah Netburn of The Los Angeles Times have a rundown of the top 10 tech gaffes of 2012. From their article: 'As 2012 comes to a close we take a look back at the biggest "oops" moments of the last year. Whether it was an advertising misstep (Facebook's "Chair" commercial), or a product released before it was ready (Apple Maps), or just an idea that was ill-received (homeless men as Wi-Fi hotspots), we tried to compose a list of the times when the major players lost control of the narrative. It's also a reminder that everyone makes mistakes--even exacting tech companies.'"
So where can I find the video described at #10?
Facebook IPO wasnt a gaffe, it was a hedge fund scam. facebook was advised to give their IPO at a much higher value than they knew it could sustain, and the advisers hedged against facebook. made a lot of rich people richer, and fucked over some other rich people, and also fucked over some not so rich people.
as for apple maps, that deserves to be number 1, why the hell did apple even bother to release such a poor piece of software...
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They manage to not put Windows 8 on that list? It deserves the top spot by far. And I say this as a C# dev!
Basement-dwelling nerds would obviously have preferred homeless women (preferably nubile/cute) as wifi hotspots. But the reality of homeless persons in the US, whether male or female, is not attractive and is no joke...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
They are no longer free and require registration, unless linked to from Google News.
Okay, its japanese release was in december last year, but I think it still counts. Darn thing can't even outsell the PSP!
Circumcision is child abuse.
There is no shortage of these lists. ...
International Buisness Times http://www.ibtimes.com/biggest-tech-flops-2012-top-5-failures-facebook-ipo-microsoft-surface-977488
Think Digit http://www.thinkdigit.com/General/The-5-biggest-tech-failures-of-2012_11866.html
Read Write http://readwrite.com/2012/12/14/top-10-epic-tech-gadget-failures
Why pick the one that is designed for a tablet..or one that doesn't mention Windows 8; Windows Phone 8...or Surface.
4G was supposed to be a high speed standard that allowed all users with a 4G enabled phone to get those high speeds. but, turns out that there are at least 3 specifications in use, and major manufacturers are picking sides (apple with LTE), making your new phone incompatible with your current network, forcing you to switch.
iphone5, i wouldn't put it on as a flop, but still an embarrassment, an embarrassment that apple assumed that their customers were stupid enough to buy the 4S from them again, just because they changed the number from 4S to 5 and re-released the same phone, and the pain is, they were right, their customers are that stupid.
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I've been using it for months and it works great for me and I'm not going to support my statements with any kind of reasoning. A 3 year old can learn to use it, get used to it you Luddite!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I think it's ironic that a journalism flop like the LA Times has the guts to call anything else a flop. I cancled my subscription to that rag years ago. These dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
As in the final nail in Ballmer's coffin.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
The consensus in the SEO industry is that Apple bought all low-end data sources for business data. Somebody thought they were saving money.
Point-of-interest map data wasn't that great, either, so presumably Apple bought low-end data there, too. Map data cleanup is expensive and labor-intensive. Because business info isn't a substantial revenue generator for Apple, it's not surprising that Apple cut costs there. Over at Apple, business info drives search and ads, so it's crucial to the revenue stream.
The reverse is true for phones and tablets - Apple makes most of their money from phones and tablets, while for Google the whole Android thing generates a small fraction of revenue.
The media really is evil. Actually, by design. It's an evil business. Any business which produces physical things that enable or improve life must have waste. Such business must take natural resources (which have no use) and turn it into something useful. News business just has to talk. When there a true danger, the "real" news businesses are often too late to cover it. So they must constantly invent reasons to complain. The ones which don't invent reasons to complain simply go out of business. One must, therefore, assume that the only general news outlets which survive are the ones which complain about the side effects of real life-enabling businesses. And since they cannot be sued for lying or exaggerating, they have little to lose by lying or exaggerating the extent of harm brought about by life-enabling businesses vs the benefit they produce for society. They pooh pooh anyone who does something useful by pointing out the waste that useful activity generates. Of course, they could complain about their own harm (exorbitant salaries, social unrest, excessive political influence and waste of resources which they are responsible for) but they rarely do.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
The data behind Apple Maps is actually pretty decent at this point for most areas. There may be some that it's behind, but I'm not sure where that would be - almost all the early data gaffes appear to have been fixed.
Google still has data errors also, of the same magnitude. Searching for "Airport" in Denver does not list at all the main airport, Denver International Airport.
The other issue Google has is it is way too eager to give you SOME result when it can't figure out what you want. So it makes up something, like claiming a baptist church in wyoming is the place to find a "demon statue" .
It also means that when you zoom all the way in to Denver International Airport on the map and search for "airport" again, you get some absurd results (but still not the airport you have filling the screen on your map).
Also personally I have found that Apple Maps has better routing for driving than Google. For metro use, there are a number of transit apps that have better presentation of data than Google does in their mobile app, and also some have real-time position data that Google Maps does not show.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They should have Knight Capital on the list. They probably thought it belonged in the finance category as opposed to tech; but it was a tech problem. They also could have put HFT in general on the list, of which Knight is just one example.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Why not just get RemoteFX for the iPad?
The you could also use Autodesk Design Review Mobile also...
Basically you bought a dumb terminal. Slow clap.
I personally like the surface but it's crazy to pretend it's more functional than an iPad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But this list is for 2012..
windows 8
nothing else is even close.
The Facebook IPO was a _huge_ success.
When a stock goes up and stays up following an IPO that means the company screwed up pricing their shares, raising less cash than they could have for a given dilution and/or unnecessarily devaluing investors' shares.
Facebook did it right.
... to understand that a flop is not necessarily a failure.
Apple Maps are a flop ..... too soon to call it a failure. ... so for now it is a flop ... too soon to call a failure.
Surface is too new to be called a failure
Same for WP8 and Win 8
Now, Facebook's IPO is not a failure ... or a flop. It was a down right SCAM that didn't work.
Can you just change your name to SuperAppleShill so that people who haven't seen your apple apology posts and diversion tactics over and over again can avoid wasting their time? Thanks.
That's kind of the point, Tom Tom's map data covers only parts of the globe, Apple should have released just the parts of maps they were confident in, and rolled the rest out as it came up to scratch.
It's sort of the difference between Jobs and Cook, Jobs kept the crap out of the Apple channel, Cook points the finger after the fact.
Yet if they'd launched Apple maps with only the good data maps, and without that 3D topology data (which is clearly not able to cope with buildings), then they'd have had a great launch. Myself I point the finger at Tim Cook, rather than the man who delivered Maps, because the guy delivering Maps would have been pushing it through the company, and thus not able to correctly judge things.
Ballmer likewise, great at blame after the fact, but not good at making the right choices before the fact.
I prefer petaflops. Lots of them.
Oh god, I hate them.
You are acting like a stock sale is to generate cash for a business so they can invest it in improving their business generating a profit which is then shared with the share holders.
COMMIE! Everyone KNOWS a IPO is there to allow people to buy an insane amount due to being first in line and then selling it on to suckers... eh people who also want to sell it on to the next line of suckers. Speculation is the name of the game kid. Investment is for socialists.
The IPO was a success AND a failure. Some bought low and sold high for them it was a success, those who bought high and had to sell low are the ones complaining, mostly because they are upset THEY didn't manage to buy low and sell high. The only people who lost were speculators and the occasional investor who doesn't understand Wall Street.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Its a Trial and Error process. While there is a right way and a wrong way to do this trial and error - one must frequently simply try and see what happens.
Your post history is all so one-eyed on this issue (anything to do with Apple/Google) that it makes you hard to take seriously, I read it with a real feeling that you're on a particular 'side'. I'm sure there are plenty on the Google side too but they haven't been as noticeable to me so far. You should question why you're so polarised on this. I don't think you're on Apple's payroll so why fight their battles..? Weird.