The Top 21 Tech Flops

PetManimal writes "Whatever happened to Digital Audio Tape? Or Circuit City's DIVX program? Or IBM's PCjr. and the PS/1? Computerworld's list of 21 biggest tech flops is an amusing trip down the memory lane of tech failures. Some are obvious (Apple Newton), while others are obscure (Warner Communications' QUBE). Strangely, Y2K didn't make the list."

What happened to DAT?

[Breakfast Pants]

Frank Zappa tells [everything2.com] all.

To clarify

[madsenj37]

A flop to the writer is a product that had more hype than users. For example, he notes that DAT is used in pro arenas only and that OS/2 has a user base but one that has never reached the hype it had...

Re:DAT was a flop?

[lightversusdark]

Absolutely, it still sees a lot of use.
It's still the standard way to take music to a mastering house for cutting, and even in the digital domain when people aren't burning data such as .wavs or .aiffs (many "computerless" DAWs only bounce to Red Book) it obviates all of the jitter and other issues associated with audio CDs as a master for duplication.
Consider mastering DVD audio with a 48kHz audio sample rate - you can't burn an audio CD at anything except 44.1. And the StellaDAT and some Pioneer decks support 88.2/96k on conventional tapes (use DDS to be sure).
I haven't even started on DDS drives for archival. DATs aren't going away.

P.S. The audio world is waiting for the "killer app" that allows you to stream in an audio DAT faster than real-time. DDS drives read up to 8x, and quite a few drives have audio-capable firmware. Remember when you could first rip a CD faster than it took to play? It seems archaic to pay hundreds an hour for mastering and waste the first hour striping in the album in real time. Perhaps the fact that this hasn't been addressed for a niche market with money to burn indicates that DAT is effectively "unsupported" nowadays..

Re:Lisa was a step, not a bomb

[QuantumG]

Uhh no. The Lisa was more advanced than the Macintosh.. Apple had to take a step back to make something that they could actually sell to the mainstream. Unfortunately they took YEARS to get back the baseline of the Lisa cause, hey, if you're onto a winner, don't screw with it right?

DAT Tapes in a music store...

[White Shade]

I work at a music store and I see people buy DAT tapes on a weekly basis... they're certainly not flying off the shelves, but they're not exactly sitting there collecting dust either.

Maybe DAT wasn't a huge worldwide phenomenon, but they certainly aren't a "flop"!

Absolute Rubbish

[Enderandrew]

The Newton paved the way for PDAs, and the Newton in certain ways compares more than favorably with existing PDAs today.

DAT has been a staple of industry professionals for ages. As an indie filmmaker, I've found cheap digital audio equipment which is supposed to be superior to be rather poor in comparison. I'd kill to have good DAT equipment.

eBook readers are perhaps a flop in that few will invest a device that does solely that, but eBooks as a whole gain in popularity every year.

The PCjr entered an area when IBM-based PCs had hardly become the norm, and many critics believed a personal computer in the home would never become a reality. It was a step in the right direction, and people forget that there were MANY alternatives back then. The fact that 99% of home computers are based on IBM standards today is not a flop.

Internet Currency? Last time I checked there are several "points" programs on the web where you can earn and use points that aren't currency themselves. This business model still operates today. Furthermore, the concept of a firm handling transactions across multiple borders for online currency paved the way for one of the most successful websites ever, Ebay/Paypal.

Just as the article states, Iridium is still in business.

Bob was a flop, and one I commonly mock. However I promise you, that the concept will be revisited and better marketed the second time around. Honestly, I imagine that Second Life will become, or inspire the next generation of Bob, allowing us all to make virtual spaces, which in turn will link to applications and activities within this virtual world.

The NetPC? I still know people who own Web TV, and the market might have continued if Microsoft hadn't bought them out. People forget that Net PC devices were a threat to people whose business depended on the PC model. People also still make homemade Net PCs out of things like XBoxes and such.

Push technology? The article fails to mention that while Desktop channels were obtrusive and filled with advertiser content, this concept is very successful today. RSS feeds, AJAX technology and the like are very much staples of today's web. The article also fails to mention that Push technology preceeded and eventually became streaming media as well, and was largely developed for and by the porn industry. You'd be surprised how much technology comes from the porn industry.

I could go on and on and on, but I have to head out the door.

Re:Commodore had its share

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of errors in your comment, but I'll correct your final statement. The Apple II line used a MOS 6502 or variant of that chip, nothing like the 68000 series used on the Amiga. Every version of the Apple II was inferior the Amiga line.

What about MiniDisc?

[ZeldorBlat]

It was as big a flop as DAT, only better. I suppose the incredibly cheap price of blank CD media can be held responsible for both these failures...

Re:DAT was a flop?

[mcpkaaos]

Is there a system for transfering digital data to vinyl?

Sure is! [vestax.com]. However, I wouldn't bank on a long lifespan from vinyl you cut yourself. There is a lot more to producing quality vinyl than meets the eye. I looked into doing my own 12" releases in the early 90s when I was big on live remixing (I used to fancy myself a dj at one point). The quality is extremely difficult to maintain without extremely expensive equipment (and proper masters). Still, cutting your own records from something that'll fit on your desk is pretty nice, and you can't beat the sound of fresh vinyl through a good stylus!

DRM

[jas_public]

Some of the loudest hype has been for DRM, which is a major ongoing flop. It required US legislation (DMCA) just to artificially prolong the flop.

SelectaVision anyone?

[edwardpickman]

This had to be one of the biggest flops in history. Essentially a LP record that played movies they started to degrade after the first few playings and were never that good to begin with. RCA lost something like 60 million on that turkey and today it's all but forgotten.

An oldie but a goodie: THOR-CD

[unfortunateson]

During the late 1980's, Radio Shack declared that they were creating the first writeable CD. Called THOR-CD, they were a couple years before CD-R of any kind, and there was a whirlwind of press. Years went by, no product ever arrived.

Read more here: http://aroundcny.com/technofile/texts/thorcd88.htm l [aroundcny.com]

Re:Lisa was a step, not a bomb

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the fact that in the early days of Mac, the Lisa was host to the only Mac compiler (Mac not being powerful enough to compile its own OS or probably any nontrivial Mac application).

Re:Y2K??

[azrider]

Sorry,

If ((year mod 4 == 0) && (year mod 400 != 0)) then year = leapyear.

Re:DRM Killed DAT

[afidel]

USB2->48MB/s
44.1 16bit PCM->.172MB/s
The problem with USB is jitter, but that's not so much a problem for recording as it is for playback because jitter on the digital signal on its way to the HDD for storage doesn't matter, it's going from storage to DAC's where it's an issue. The solution is to get a firewire [platinum-records.com] or cardbus [platinum-records.com] based solution, they just cost about twice as much, but still way less than a Pro DAT recorder =)

Want a flop: the DBX 700.

[Kadin2048]

Well, although it would never appear in a list like this because it's just too obscure, if you're an audio geek, one of the biggest early-digital flops was the DBX Model 700 [wikipedia.org]. (Full disclosure: I wrote the linked WP article.)

It was similar to the Sony PCM F1 in function -- basically a box without any moving parts, that took an audio signal at one end, and put out a composite video signal at the other that you recorded using a VCR. But rather than using PCM recording, it used a system that's a lot more like SACD. It was a very high sample rate (~600 kHz) but with one-bit samples; each sample basically was a "shift up" or "shift down" relative to the last sample. There's a lot more to it than that, but in essence it was digital recording but without many of the downsides to early PCM: the need for "brickwall" filters to eliminate high frequencies, the hard clipping, etc. It was a digital recorder for people who had cut their teeth on analog tape, and it sounded really, really good.

Unfortunately it was much more complex and expensive than PCM, and the rise of CDs as a format was the nail in its coffin (it made a great mixdown format if you were going to vinyl, though, and they even had a special add-on for it that let it interface directly to a vinyl-cutting lathe, to compensate for the fact that you can't 'undercrank' a digital tape directly). But in terms of cool 80s audio technology, IMO it stands alone.

As a plus, it has the coolest switchable peak-reading LED meters on the front of it. I keep one in my rack just for that.

Re:DAT was a flop?

[lightversusdark]

DVD-A supports up to 96kHz.
Audio on your video DVD is at 48kHz.
Just how many commercial DVDs did you buy that have no video on them?

That's how relevant 96k is to the consumer. And you know what:
The studio the audio was mastered at did it at 48kHz. Duplicate the data or interpolate the values, there's no benefit.
Let's talk about bit-depth...

How about the original MSN

[tap]

Not the one that's around now, but the first one from back in 1994. The Internet was just starting to take off, and Microsoft wanted to kill it. The Microsoft Network was a non-TCP/IP non-Internet network that was supposed to be a Microsoft controlled version of the internet. I saw a presentation on it by some Microsoft manager back in 1994/1995 at some Washington Software Association event. They did a demonstration of an "MSN-brower" connecting to an "MSN-site" to view some "MSN-pages" and buy some toner cartridges. Supposedly it was real, but who knows.... Someone asked if Browser X (that would be Netscape) could use the Microsoft Network, and the answer was "No, only Microsoft will be able to create software for the Microsoft Network." I predicted it would be an utter failure, and it was. Microsoft couldn't innovate their way out a paper bag, much less out innovate everyone on the Internet. Microsoft's thinking was that there was nothing else one could want with the Internet but one store where you could buy toner cartidges.

Re:Y2K??

[mooingyak]

First, neither of your posted calcs are correct:

year mod 400 == 0 OR (year mod 4 == 0 AND year mod 100 != 0)

Secondly, the first post you replied to mentioned that his code would definitely NOT be in use by 2100, in which case year mod 4 == 0 works just fine.

Re:DRM Killed DAT

[SuperQ]

What jitter? the D/A A/D is all done on the usb device. USB is a packet bus just like firewire. The only reason firewire is more expensive is because the mac users still pay a premium price for the stuff.

Digital jitter only happens when your signal is traveling over a embedded clock signal like S/PDIF.

DAT Wasn't a flop

[Fizzl]

Digital Audio Tape wasn't a flop. Althou it never made it into consumer space, it was and still is used extensively in music production. It is very efficient storage, archival and transport media.
Today ofcourse everything is moved around on DVD's, through FTP or other "consumer grade" medias, because they are as bit-perfect-copies as anything. Back in the 90's it was the standard to move the tracks from reels to DAT's for transportation from recording studio to the mixing/mastering studio. And then from there to CD plant for press mastering.
DAT's also have the advantage of magnetic media. It doesn't deteriorate as fast as optical media. (I'm going off topic here but give me some slack.) For example, I never reuse my MiniDV video tapes. I just rip to harddrive what I expect to use in near future and stash the original to my safe box in a bank vault -- A humidity controlled, cool, dark place. This way, I expect to be able to access the originals for decades to come.

Re:DRM Killed DAT

[flimflam]

What I know about is audio for film production, where portable DAT recorders (mostly Fostex and HHB) have to a large extent been replaced by hard disk recorders. This is definitely a step up -- more channels, higher bit depth, better workflow. Of course the machines used in this industry are pretty pricy. The machine I know best is the Aaton Cantar [aaton.com], but at $13,000 or so, it's a little pricey for use outside the industry. I'd definitely check out the Sound Devices [sounddevices.com] recorders, though. They're much less expensive, and while they don't have the features or as many tracks as the Aaton recorder, they are well known for the quality of their Mic preamps, which is really where any consumer gear will suffer. Also, they can record on Compact Flash, which is great for reliability since you end up with no moving parts. They also make a USB-based mic pre/A-D converter, if you decided to go the Laptop route (which I wouldn't really recommend for field use).
 

Re:Bob really sucked

[HAKdragon]

Bob was, however by far the most innovative UI MS ever produced. It just innovated in a direction that nobody wanted to go!

Unfortunately, Packard Bell [wikipedia.org] wanted to go there.