Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever

cuppm writes "Yahoo! News has an article on the The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever. 'What distinguishes a simply bad product from the truly awful? Sometimes it's a dreadful user interface. Other times it's a product that successfully addresses a particularly daunting problem - yet one shared by relatively few people. And often competitive or financial pressure forces new products to market before they're ready - full of bugs and horribly unusable. Still other times, the products arrive too early. Eventually they become a success, but often after the founding company has been ruined.'"

RIAA?

[Quasar1999]

I must say, the whole Online music store thing... that's a huge flop... DRM'd to hell, harder to use than going online and downloading a 'free' version off one of the many networks... Too little too late... Maybe if they did this when Napster first came out, they could have had a larger crowd, but the 'free' networks have better user interfaces, more selection, and (RIAA crap flooding aside) has better quality than what I can get from the 'online music stores'...

How could they forget...

[Seth Finklestein]

...such memorable Internet buzzwords as "push technology"? Oh yeah, everyone's going to want a desktop that looks like a hyperactive 2-year-old made it.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to wish all of my followers [slashdot.org] a merry new year. 2004 will be Michael Sims' last year as a Slashdot "editor."

Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Cyberweb Prognosticateur

AOL-Time Warner

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to believe the "old media" moguls bought Steve Case's snake oil about the "synergy" that "tech savvy" AOL would bring to the combined company.

Mr. Case is laughing all the way to the bank...

Push

[Moderator]

Around 1997 or so, one of the biggest catchphrases was "push," the ability for companies to put whatever information they wanted (News, stocks, weather) on your computer. Microsoft even went as far as to develop an "Active Desktop" so that the content could be placed directly on the user's desktop. Too bad push just turned out to be a constantly refreshing webpage ("fetch" would have been a better term) which took forever to load on the day's 33.6 modems.

Lame

[His name cannot be s]

That's a pretty lame article.

Some of the items on the list are flops, but the biggest 8--not hardly.

I'm sure that if we tried, we could come up with a better list of 8 flops..

Shit, OS/2 ain't even on the list. How about Taligent? Bill Gates himself said that Taligent was the one thing he worried about that ended up being absolutely nothing.

What about the Disney Sound Doohicky--It plugged into the parallel port, and gave some of the crappiest sound ever made on a computer.

The list certainly could have been better than that. :p

Toll Collect

[jrady]

Germanys System for automated colleting of autbahn tolls for trucks. Costs the german tax payer literally millions of EUR each month, has been set up by joint venture of Deutsche Telekom and Daimler Chrysler, meant to be working since '02, launched in Fall '03, failed, ETA '05!
Snafu all the way.....

Two words: Microchannel Architecture

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM wasn't always the geek Defender of the Faith. MCA attempted to lock people in to "All IBM, All The Time" (tm). It died a miserable death, its technologies merging with other, more successful attempts to enhance the PC experience.

Re:Yet... DivX missed how?

[dave1g]

Probably was skipped on purpose to avoid confusion with the codec.

That would have required another paragraph to be added just to explain the difference.

I only owned two

[solfood]

Having owned two of them in my life,(and still hacking away on one) I must disagree with at least part of the article. The PCjr was hardly the failure that the article makes it out to be. Sure, it came with a puny 128k, ONE 5 1/4 drive and crappy keyboard (which they later replaced with something a little more legit). But at least it was a PC...sorta...it had color, it could play a lot of PC games, which was very important to me as a twelve year old and most important of all, a 300 baud internal modem that started me on this road of nerdom. The article is just plain wrong in referencing the Audrey as a failure. I have two of them hooked into my network. They're picture frames, mp3 players, message boards (complete with cool blinking lights, and caller IDs. How cool is something like that in you kitchen with a touch screen? Best of all it runs QNX. 'Nuff said. Okay, I gotta agree with the other six, although the thought of browsing some porn on my tv sounds pretty neat.

Re:Lame

[Zocalo]

I don't know about "lame", it's just that the list is a little short. I suspect this article was hammered together in a rush because the author had been to busy partying to think of a decent list. Well, it is Christmas, so I'll cut Yahoo! some slack on that.

Instead, why not try and think of some stuff they missed?

• The SCO Group
• The current incarnation of the music business
• Digital Rights Management
• WAP
• "Push" based web content

And some stuff which seems/should be doomed:

• Spam
• The current incarnation of the movie business
• Tablet PCs
• Film based P&S cameras
• Geeks with no life ;)

What are everyone else's personal "WTF were/are they thinking?"

PCjr

[Skater]

The PCjr was a flop, but it's interesting how many advances it had that other computers would start using:

4-voice sound when most IBM-compatibles could only produce one sound at a time
16-color graphics when CGA (4 color) was standard
Video memory in system RAM - commonly used on many lower priced motherboards these days
Infrared wireless keyboard

Yeah, it was expensive and limited. But it also had some interesting advances.

--RJ

Re:People will hate me for this.

[binaryDigit]

But they managed to be crushed by a combination of small and not even innovative companies: Microsoft and Intel.

This must be a troll, but I'll bite anyway (it's slow this morning). Sorry, but Apple ALWAYS played second fiddle to IBM/Microsoft in the "pc" market wrt market share.

Plus, even if your history weren't totally wrong, your premise is. Even if Apple went under today, the positive impact they had on the industry is far reaching and prevasive. Some of the particulars can be argued, but the fact is that computing in general is a better place thanks to Apple and therefore they can't be considered a "tech flop". After all, a "flop" doesn't last over 20years.

FAA Traffic control system

[CharlieG]

The "New" FAA AAS traffic control system - was going to replace the current system. MASSIVE amounts of money spent, 2.5 BILLION, where 1.5 BILLION of it had to be written off. About a billion of the development was salvaged by using the Display System Replacement

Folks - that 1.5 BILLION wasted

MD-ROM format was a HUGE missed opportunity

[Artifex]

Perhaps it wasn't the biggest flop, but Sony missed the chance at a huge media market share, and perhaps propping up their audio MiniDisc format, by not pushing the MD-ROM format harder. Imagine a disc smaller than a 3.5 inch floppy, holding a lot more than a Zip disk eventually would (MD-ROM preceded Iomega's Zip line), at a cheaper price per disc, with no click-of-death? The only one I ever saw was in a press release, but they claimed their small drive was low-power, and at the time, it would have been excellent for laptop use. Not to mention that you probably could have played the music format discs with it. Now, you can barely find any information on the format by Googling.

Re:People will hate me for this.

[Zelet]

I think you are wrong. I think that people will start demanding quality when technology personally affects them. Anybody who I have ever demonstrated my Powerbook to has gone to Apple. The quality of the software and hardware is amazing for their laptops and the price is right too. Don't discount Apple - I think they are on the way up, not down.

WebTV sales stalled at a million users?

[zhrike]

Yeah...cause Microsoft didn't advertise the service any longer! They bought it to kill it.
Had they advertised, WebTV would be ubiquitous. If people buy WebTV, they're not buying a computer...they avoid the MS tax, no sales of office. I can't believe they put WebTV on that list. There are many people out there that buy computers to access the internet only. What better device for a novice user than their TV? I'm not being a proponent for WebTV, I'm just saying that WebTV was taking off up until MS bought it, then nothing. No ads, nothing. They drove it into the ground on PURPOSE!
Shoddy shoddy journalism.

Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive

[kayen_telva]

not only that, but they say "but it quickly followed the Zip drive into hell." WTF ?! The zip drive was immensly popular.

bigger flops still...

[cartman]

Apple IIgs
Apple Newton
Apple Lisa
Next Cube
Be BeBox
CASE tools
"Object Databases" as a replacement to RDBMSes
VRML
Gopher
"English-like" programming langauges that will make programming as easy as speaking (COBOL)
"War room" programming
"Multimedia"
Graphics cards that allow you to watch television on your monitor, by plugging a coax cable into the card.
8" floppies
Interactive television
Integrating the PC with the TV
RS-232 serial port (25 pins, of which 4 are used)
WORM drives for PCs
QuarterDesk
Audio Cassettes for data storage
Commodore 16
Windows 1.0
PL/I
MSX
Dec Alpha "21164-PC" personal computer processor
"MPC-compliant PCs"
GeoWorks
Project Monterey (IBM, SCO, & some others)
Micro Channel (bus arch from IBM)

Most of these ideas failed because they were outlandishly stupid. The only reason they got any press in the first place was because the companies promoting them were good at hyping ("it's revolutionary!"), and some people just get caught up in the emotional hysteria.

A few of the ideas (Apple Newton, Apple Lisa) were excellent ideas that just were introduced too early.

Re:Yet... DivX missed how?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I know the codec guys were trying to be cute when they picked that name, but the fact that people still need to clarify which Divx it is shows that they were really stupid in picking it.

Re:Um, like duh!

[GoneGaryT]

No joke! I'm the Senior Security Analyst for the organisation I work for and come January 5th, when we return to work, Microsoft will be named as the primary security risk we deal with. Period.

Wait a minute

[Lord Kano]

The PCjr, Internet Appliances and WebTV are on the list but where is NeXT, Steve Job's bastard child went that went nowhere?

I know one, precisely one, person who owns a NeXT Station. I know many who own WebTVs and Internet Appliances.

Oh, wait a minute... I get it now. There are links to buy iPods on the page. Can't bite the hand that feeds you, I guess.

LK

Re:Cue Cat

[Lumpy]

actually I found the Cue Cat to be a gigantic Boon to me and my business.

I modified over 50 of them and sold them to customers with linux Point of Sale systems for resturants and small stores.

I was able to get barcode technology to businesses that could not afford it any other way. (A commercial keyboard-wedge barcode scanner costs $200-$500.00 I sold the cue cats for $25.00)

Cue cat's were excellent and luckily I got 2 cases of them forom the local radio shack when they were tossing the leftovers to offer free replacements to my customers...

(Yes, I have a freelance linux consultation side business/ General Computing consultation business on the side of my real job)

VideoPhones (once called PicturePhones)

[glomph]

These have been around in some form or other since the 1960s. Every few years somebody introduces a new one. The problem was initially economic, or technological. Now it's simpler. People do not want to be seen, and do not want to see where creative conversationalists might place their camera. Remember 'Freevue'? Sort of like CUSeeMe for people who surfed without the unnecessary restriction of trousers.

Number One should have been

[Hao Wu]

Segway.

Wow, an electric wheelchair where you get to stand up... that's what Americans need is less exercise. Good thing you can fit 6 of them in your SUV.

Re:Hate against Kosmo?

[MsGeek]

There is a Kosmo-like service that is still thriving in Los Angeles:

http://www.pinkdot.com/ [pinkdot.com]

Kosmo's problem was that it tried to do its service nationwide. Stuff like this needs to be done locally.

The Kosmo story is well-chronicled in this movie, e-Dreams. [imdb.com]

kozmo

[mattdm]

Hey, Kozmo.com! Spells it wrong, and not selected as one of the grand failures, but still mentioned. The real sad thing, as I understand it, is that the service was actually profitable in Boston and New York -- markets where a service like that makes sense. But they tried to extend way too far, and into cities like Dallas and Chicago, where I could have told them it wasn't likely to work. And then they got into so much debt they had to shut the whole thing down, just when Bostonians were getting really addicted.

Apple's hit & misses (nobody's mentioned)

[adzoox]

Some posts have mentioned Apple's hits & misses:

The Newton is really neither. It wasn't really a money loser for Apple (but wasn't a money maker either) - we also have to consider that the CREATORS of the Palm and later Handspring moved on from the original Newton team. The latest Treo is essentially what I think the Newton would have become.

Three of Apple's biggest misses are actually some of the coolest products they've ever introduced:

1) Apple Set Top Box - it was going to be a Tivo/Media Server - almost 10 YEARS before they are starting to become mainstream. I have one of these boxes and was able to get some content working on them. Apparently Apple tried to market these to resort hotels (the info I've been able to run on the box was for DisneyWorld Hotels)

more info can be found at www.applefritter.com

2) Apple Macintosh TV - this was a really cool looking Mac/TV combo that was sold in the education market that is underpowered but again WAY before the time of this type of integration (by about 3 years)

3) G3 All In One - this was only distributed in the education market and was actually a better iMac (had PCI slots, floppy, zip, CD, A/V in and out and three NORMAL RAM slots) I use this unit as my TV - it has great speakers and I have recently been able to upgrade it to 1Ghz G4. This was out 8 months before the iMac

more info can be found at www.apple-history.com

Re:Mistake on Clik! Drive

[ScottSpeaks!]

The zip drive was immensly popular.

Still is. It's currently available as a pre-installed option on machines from many of the major PC manufacturers. (I'd say "most" or "all" but I haven't checked.) Iomega even took to using the "Zip" name on other products they sell, to take advantage of the trademark recognition. Zip drives had some problems (I'd still trust them over floppies any day of the week), and better alternatives are overtaking them, but they were hardly a "flop".

I nominate WAP

[Anonymous Coward]

And MMS.

Re:FAA Traffic control system

[jonfelder]

Right...terrorists are going to kill us all. Exactly what threat did Iraq pose to the US? How exactly are we safer now? The people who actually did attack us are still free. It is fairly clear at this point that Iraq did not have WMD just like they said they didn't. In fact our government lied about the WMDs in the first place with that bogus CIA report fiasco. So why are we there? Simple, because a war was the best way to take everyone's mind off the fact that we couldn't find Bin Laden, the corporate scandals (ala worldcom and enron), and the crappy economy. Now that we have control of Iraq, as a bonus our government gets to give tons of lucrative contracts to corporations with the government's ear (cough cough Cheney-Haliburton) to help rebuild it.

Notice you hardly hear about Bin Laden anymore, and even better according to polls most people think Sadam was responsible for 9/11 or at least paid a big role in it. So as far as many people are concerned we did catch the bad guy and won a big battle in the war on terrorism.

Nevermind the whole thing is a lie and tail is totally wagging the dog (rent the movie and watch it if you haven't). We're wasting tons of money, the world hates us more, and we are no safer than we were before (arguably we're worse off because the terrorists have even more reason to hate us), and the terrorists are still free.

Another thing, people blew the whole 9/11 thing out of proportion. Granted it was a terrible tragedy but consider that only 3000 people died. Far far far more people die every year from other things like cancer, heart disease, poverty, auto accidents, etc. Why aren't these problems being attacked with the same zeal as Iraq? Heck 100 billion would go a long way toward cancer research, and at least then if I get cancer (much more likely than me dying in a terrorist attack) I might have a better chance of living.

Re:UH NO

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates strategies and tactics, however illegal or immoral they might have been, led to the rise of this operating system over the much more powerful Macintosh of its day.

Myth. By the time Windows took off, with version 3.1, it was technically as sophisticated as the MacOS of the day, and the hardware it ran on was faster and cheaper. It lagged in UI design and stability - but don't you realise that one of the reasons Windows was less stable than MacOS was because it was doing more? It had real multitasking, for one thing, and virtual memory. Remember how MacOS X was initially very unstable? That's because it was doing things that OS 9 had never dreamed of. And that Windows had been doing for years.

Panther is now a stable operating system again. It's about as good as Windows XP, with a much nicer interface but worse support for commodity hardware (printers are a notable weak point). Mac hardware is priced about right again.

But don't go repeating the myth that Apple have always provided a superior solution. That was true before Windows 3.1, and it is true again since about Jaguar, but for the long years in between it was nonsense. Don't gloat too long, either... who knows whether 10.5 will still be better than Longhorn?

Re:What, no Apple ///?

[phillymjs]

The eMate was a success in its market, but it was killed by Jobs upon his return because it was the progeny of his arch-nemesis, John Sculley. Likewise the Newton 2x00 series machines, which at the time of their discontinuation were getting good reviews and finally throwing off the reputation of the original MessagePad. IMHO, Palm devices did not catch up to the Newton 2x00's capabilities until mid-2000.

Now, the Apple III-- yeah, that one was a turd.

~Philly

Come on

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they possibly imagine that anyone would pay $20 to ship a $10 bag of dog food? Remember eToys? WebVan?

Yeah but ... who would have thought that anyone would pay much, let alone soda prices for bottled water?

Re:The Pen Computer

[Anonymous Coward]

diethylamide

Doctors do not prescribe it currently.

The ideal pen computer would have corrected both mistakes.

Next time you think you have made it to third base, remember to take notice of whether you have reached your own bum.

Re:PC Jr.

[IM6100]

As much of a product disaster, but not as visible, was IBM's first laptop, the PC Convertible. It was sort of a mirror-image of the PC/XT hardware wise, except it had dual 720K 3-1/1" floppy drives in place of dual 360K 5-1/4" floppy drives. It weighed a ton, and like the Junior, you strapped on additional 'pieces' to the case to expand it. You could even add a 'snap on the back' thermal printer that added about 8 inches to the length. And the monster weighed a ton, even before adding expansion parts.

I have in my collection the only PC Convertible I've ever known to actually have all 640K of RAM. Ram modules for it were expensive and hard to find. Most languished with 384K or at most 512K.

Legend has it there's a huge landfill somewhere full of PC Convertible parts and systems, because it was such a commercial disaster.

Re:Lame

[Lord Kano]

That's why all the crappy low-budget ads on TV do well. It isn't landing the first sale for that crappy kitchen gadget. It's selling item after item to the moron customer base they build up.

Infomercials aren't so bad. Back when I was a teenager, I used to know the guy who invented DiDi 7. I even beat him at connect 4 once.

But to the point, you can change the channel when an infomercial is on. Pop ups are damned intrusive.

IMHO, pop ups are worse, much worse than spam. I delete spam before I even read it. It takes no time, I spend so much more time closing pop ups than I ever did dealing with spam.

LK