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The L.A. Times Names Its Favorite Flops of the Year

Posted by timothy on from the always-too-many-to-choose-from dept.

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.'"

4 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Facebook IPO by Bizzeh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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    1. Re:Facebook IPO by Dogtanian · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      Well, this is what gets me about the "Facebook IPO was a failure" argument. An IPO takes place for the benefit of the existing investors and stakeholders, whether or not that happens to be at the expense of anyone buying in.

      Of course, normally one has to convince the would-be investors that it's also in *their* interest to do so, and obviously if you can be shown to have actually defrauded them, then that might not work out so well for you. But that doesn't change the basic principle- the people organising the IPO are doing so to benefit the existing stakeholders. From that somewhat amoral (but truthful) point of view, the Facebook IPO was a roaring success- for them.

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    2. Re:Facebook IPO by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Insightful

      From the standpoint of the end user - the 99% - Apple maps is the problem. Yes, we can tease it out into more subtle nuances but as far as the person staring at the screen it was an APPLE mistake. It was hubris, plain and simple. They certainly could have waited another year until they were ready but they didn't.

      So they got dinged, some heads rolled and the world continued. It's a pure Apple play. Roll out crap in the beginning, get it running sooner or later. Cf, OS X, iTunes (OK, the STILL haven't got it right), Final Cut X, the iPhone and pretty much any Rev. 1 bit of Apple hardware. Where ever they get the idea that 'it just works' is quite beyond me. Hell, and I even like Apple stuff, I just know not to buy it when it first comes out and not to install software before the x.3 version.

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  2. Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!