Top 10 Disappointing Technologies 682
Slatterz writes "Every once in a while, a product comes along that everyone from the executives to the analysts to even the crusty old reporters thinks will change the IT world. Sadly, they are often misguided. This article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world, from the ludicrously priced Apple Lisa, to voice recognition, to Intel's ill-fated Itanium chip, and virtual reality, this article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world." But wait! Don't give up too quickly on the Itanium, says the Register.
Itanium? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Informative)
You should've read further, there's this hilarious bit:
You'd figure at least someone who likes Ubuntu and runs it themselves would have known that Dell has been offering systems with Ubuntu preinstalled for two years now.
Firewire (Score:5, Informative)
"Outside of a few models of high-end video cameras, FireWire isn't seen much these days."
How about audio applications? If you want an audio interface for your laptop, you're almost always better off buying a Firewire model than a USB one; but also for many desktop applications Firewire can fit the bill over PCI/PCI-E. Plenty of the audio gear companies (M-Audio, RME, MOTU, Tascam) of course are still putting out new models using Firewire now and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Macintosh was not a replacement for Lisa (Score:5, Informative)
Neat way to sum it up, but not accurate. Macintosh was nearly finished while Apple was still pushing the Lisa, and Jef Raskin's original concept for the Mac pre-dated the Lisa.
Of course, once Jobs got his mitts on it, he completely changed it from Raskin's vision, eventually provoking Raskin to quit Apple.
Re:the problem with ubuntu (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed, it can drive you nuts when there's a regression , but for the most part, Ubuntu has been great. It's important to understand that there is a long term support version, and then all the other releases. If you want stability & reliability, stay with long term support. If you don't mind getting cut on the bleeding edge, then stay with the current version.
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:5, Informative)
CueCat had a lot riding on it and lots of fairly high profile partners. Perhaps if it wasn't in the retarded shape of a big plastic cat it might have taken off.
But what's this about the "ludicrously priced Apple Lisa"? Sure it was $10,000 in 1983, but it wasn't targeted to home users. The only other graphical computing package available at the time, the VisIon hardware/software kit from the makers of VisiCalc, the killer app spreadsheet, was less impressive and just as expensive.
"the base VisiOn software and a mouse cost $790, each application cost between $250 and $400, and it required a $5000 hard drive upgrade on top of a $2000 PC"
It was not hard to price a $10,000 PC in the mid-80s simply by adding a little RAM and a hard drive. The Lisa pioneered a new class of hardware at a reasonable cost compared to its newness and the competition.
Apple's Lisa also invented the Office desktop suite, which was bundled into its price. If you wanted an integrated suite of Office software, you'd have to wait out the 80s for another seven years before Microsoft could reassemble its own Office suite for the Macintosh, and then later Windows.
Office Wars 3 - How Microsoft Got Its Office Monopoly [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on your viewpoint. Has Ubuntu saved the unwashed masses from the evil empire yet? Not really. On the other hand, I think it's safe to say that Ubuntu has become the overwhelmingly dominant distro of choice for just about any Linux use case that can be classified as "mainstream". After Red Hat kind of went astray, Mandrake went bye-bye, and Debian (brought into the limelight by Knoppix) decided that ideological purity was more important than being popular, there really WASN'T any distro that was an obvious choice to recommend by default to just about anyone interested in Linux. Gentoo? Good god. I've personally had hours of good clean & wholesome fun with it, but there's no way in *hell* I'd suggest it to my dad... or use it for anything meaningful at work in a context that could get me fired if things went disastrously wrong. Slackware? Yeah, you never forget your first... um... well, you know. But it's just a little more retro than I'd prefer now.
I'm still undecided as to whether i prefer Ubuntu or CentOS for servers, but for desktop use it's no contest whatsoever -- Ubuntu. That's not to say it's the best in every conceivable way... but it's good enough in enough ways. More importantly, it's the one distro with enough market inertia right now to have books dedicated to its specific details. Someone who's been building their own copy of KDE for 10 years probably doesn't need to know the exact directory paths on ${his-specific-distro}... but someone like... well... my dad *does* need to have it given to him in explicit detail. And frankly, even if I don't necessarily need click-by-click details anymore, having the examples in the book actually *work* DOES make things a lot nicer and more enjoyable. In fact, IMHO the "book advantage" *alone* is enough to recommend Ubuntu to just about everyone. When the day comes that they understand the Linux multiverse well enough to stray from the well-marked, illuminated and crowded path known as Ubuntu, they'll know it and be able to find their own way. Until then, Ubuntu.
Re:Firewire (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bluetooth? (Score:4, Informative)
Bluetooth is on the list because it's been around for years and you still can't get decent support for stereo headsets or other simple connections to work.
Get a proper phone.
This stuff has worked for *years*. Bluetoothing files between phones and PCs is a staple of a lot of people around here (I used to participate, but it gets a bit dull when you've had the 50th 'welcome to the gay hotline' ringone sent to your phone).
Re:VR (Score:5, Informative)
I do actually think that current MMORPGs should not be considered VR.
VR was never about creating a persistent virtual world populated by masses of real people, it's all about the sensory experience. The technology aims to replace all perception of the real world with the virtual, and make the user's interaction with the computer as close to interacting with the real world as possible. If the user is alone in the Virtual Reality or not doesn't matter, nor if there is any persistence between each session.
"Cyberspace" is the combination of Virtual Reality with a persistent, populated Virtual World, but just because MMORPGs are approaching that concept from one direction, it does not mean that they are VR.
Re:Itanium? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:3, Informative)
I installed Ubuntu for the first time last year,
Did you install LTS 6.06 (Dapper Drake)? Or maybe this is a copy/paste from 2007? Gutsy and even Hardy solved these issues:
1. NVIDIA graphics card drivers weren't installed because they were proprietary. Come on. Even then, dragging windows around and typing into text boxes had a minor delay that didn't feel natural.
There's a little pop-up that says: click here to install proprietary nvidia/ati drivers. And it does it, unlike a windows machine where you have to go to nvidia/ati's website and jump through some hoops (hopefully you know what your graphics card is).
2. All websites looked different and ugly as sin, because the package didn't come with the fonts that every other system used. Come on!
I don't know what you're talking about. At all. Unless you're looking at geocities or angelfire.
3. Multi-monitor use was difficult to set up without having to alter configuration files ( though I do wish taskbars on multiple screens would come to Windows 7). Some things I found simply couldn't be done without writing scripts: setting up a hotkey to send a window to the other monitor, etc.
Totally clicky-pointy. I know for a fact that Jan 4th, 2008, Gutsy was clicky-pointy in this regard, with my laptop, vga, and HDMI screens. You're doing it the hard way (possibly out-geeking yourself). Upgrading to Hardy kept my settings.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:2, Informative)
An apple only "just works" for a very limited set of circumstances.
Beyond that, it can actually be MORE trouble than Windows.
It's all a question of whether or not you're going to "stray off the reservation".
Will you throw it a curve ball. It's not really that hard actually.
Windows and Linux are both expected to work in a highly chaotic
environment where the unexpected is the norm.
MacOS has the benefit of being more secure by design. Beyond that,
"just working" is not something that can be taken on faith.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:2, Informative)
There is a hotkey to do this on Windows? Please tell me what it is
It is in the NVidia display manager, that greenish icon that sits in the tray. Also it is accessible through the usual "Display" control panel applet. The hot keys are configurable, and there is plenty of actions to bind them to. I don't know if it all works on Win7, but it surely does on XP.
Re:I stopped reading... (Score:3, Informative)
I'll give my classic example (still not fixed), in iTunes:
Insert a CD
It should "just work" and start ripping the CD, but it doesn't.
Look for an error message.. there is none.
Search the menus, look for a button, nope, there's no way to actually *tell* iTunes that you want it to rip the CD.
etc.
I've had similar experiences with wireless.
"Do you have wireless here?"
"Sure do."
"Umm.. I don't see it."
"Well, it's there, it's called NETGEAR."
"Yeah, it's not coming up. I'd tell you why, but when I click on the little wifi icon it does nothing."
And that's why I say:
It "just works" until it "just doesn't" and then you're "just fucked".
Re:Failed Technologies: All RISC Chips (Score:3, Informative)
Combining Linux with Wine, ReactOS and qemu is the basis of a Wintel killer.
The platform? LUK [wikipedia.org] on Loongson [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps no match for Nehalem based desktops but a challenger for the Netbook market. A platform that runs Windows applications via seamless x86-->MIPS translation. Intel and MS may struggle to match the price point, which is good for consumers because Intel with be forced to considerably beef up the performance of Atom, to compete on value. (Not to mention multi-core ARM Cortex chips.)
Re:Importing cd button..... (Score:1, Informative)
I have 153 albums in iTunes right now, some are things I've made myself, but I have at least 100 cds that I've imported. I've never EVER had a problem with gracenote (I think it uses that?) not finding CD track names etc, its always worked fine. If you have an iTunes account, then it can even grab artwork for you, thats very handy.
You know what you said before, I dont need to quote it, about a "unfixed" problem with iTunes, that you couldnt figure out how to "rip" a cd. Ok, well iTunes calls it "Import" at least on the button, put a disc in, it shows up, it has exactly one button that wasnt there before, saying "Import CD".
Rather than arguing "you havnt had my problem!!!!!!!111!!!" and then mentioning a whole bunch of other supposed problems that you just cant think of right now, how about we talk about dealing with them?
Do you have a favourite OS? And a media program like iTunes? How do they deal with importing 200 CDS, if thats what you use it for, thats better than iTunes? You know, that little button that says "Import CD" in the bottom right, not tucked away in a billion ribbon menus or anything.....
If you couldnt see the "Import CD" button, then what did you do to get 200 CDS imported? Will them in?
Its rather unfair to bring up problems you cant remember etc, and use them against me when I help you with other problems, like not seeing the "Import CD" button.
Im not sure what I would do, if I ever had a problem like the ones you are mentioning with networks. What would YOU do in your favourite OS? I guess I would check the Network page under System Preferences, see if Wifi or whatever was turned "on", and maybe run through a setup wizard.
If you have any better ideas on how to import cds than the "Import CD" button, I'd love to know. Seriously! We're all computer users, if you can think of a better way, then it benefits us all.
Have a swell day :)
Re:Failed Technologies: All RISC Chips (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.cs4fn.org/vlsi/billionsshipped.php [cs4fn.org]
Over 10bn ARM cores have been shipped. If that's failure, I want some.
Re:What about the CueCat?! (Score:3, Informative)
And, FRED isn't dead. Sadly, it isn't open source either which, IMHO, would allow it to replace OO.
http://www.framework.com/ [framework.com]
Re:Failed Technologies: All RISC Chips (Score:3, Informative)
I am sure you know that all modern consumer CPUs consist of a RISC processor core with an x86 instruction set translator that provides a CISC x86 interface to the software. There are no more pure CISC consumer CPUs. In that way, RISC was the ultimate success story in terms of technology.
Re:Firewire (Score:3, Informative)
Specification for firewire wasn't complete until December 1995. According to IBM documents, USB 1.0 was finished in November 1995. So, to answer your question: USB.