First of all, products I would have nominated:

Satellite telephones. Can't believe they missed this one. It is probably the most spectacularly large failure in technology history. Iridium launched sixty-six (that is 66) satellites and burned $5 billion (that is BILLION), but failed to attract any customers. Quick, when was the last time you saw someone with a satellite telephone? Did you EVERY see one? This is number one on my list.

Apple Lisa -- Almost sunk Apple

IBM OS/2 -- If they had got this right, we would have all been saved from Windows. The core technology was quite good, but the UI was almost as bad as ...

Topview -- IBM's first attempt at a graphical user interface.

Video Laserdisc - I have several thousand dollars tied up in large shiny objects. I bet big on this one, but lost. Still watch them sometimes.


As to their list, a few comments:

America Online (1989-2006)

Hard to see how this can top the list. They sure were successful, and for quite a long time. I actually created a stack of floppies -- and later CDs -- that I received for free in the mail and elsewhere. I think I got over 100 in the best year.

I don't argue with the writers about all the reasons people came to hate them.

RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)

Again, this one seems to have been chosen simply because of their obnoxious, aggressive marketing tactics (which I also loathe). However, it is hardly a bad technology or product, and for many years produced far better quality than the competitors, both in audio and video. I don't agree with this pick either.

Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)

This was a scam, pure and simple. Certainly belongs on the list.

Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)

I just spent the last two days rescuing a friends computer, which he left on my doorstep, like Moses in the bullrushes. It is an ME machine, and various bugs with Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus (which would be near the top of MY list) caused 40,000 zero length files to be created in the INF folder.

The problem with ME isn't that it was any buggier or worse than Win95/98/98SE but simply that it didn't have any real reason to exist because it didn't advance the state of the art.

Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)

Members of this forum found out about this sooner than almost anyone. I am not certain that the motives were sinister, but it just shows what happens when companies are looking after their own interests first, rather than their customer's interests.

Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994) Don't know about it.

Microsoft Bob (1995)

Wasn't this a product managed by Melinda French, who later became Mrs. Bill Gates?

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)

It is unfair to single out IE. The real problem is Windows. It is inexcusable to still not have security out of the box with Windows XP. Amazing that the liability lawyers haven't found a way to extract the billions in cash sitting in Microsoft's asset column.

Pressplay and Musicnet (2002). Don't know.

dBASE IV (1988)

I still use dBase III+ almost every day. This was the VERY successful predecessor. I just recently tossed five very large boxes of dBase IV, which I installed once and then just as quickly uninstalled. What a mess. My fate and Ashton-Tate's intersected many times over the 1980s and I know a lot of inside stories of their demise. Too bad -- like Lotus they were a big player that should have gone farther.

Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000). Don't know.

PointCast (1996)

I spent most of 1996 advising my clients (I was a startup consultant at that point) to AVOID "push." What a stupid idea. It was a great education, however, on the power of a PR machine and how our feckless press will eat up any well-written press release without any clue as to what they are writing about.


IBM PCjr. (1984). Pretty dumb.

Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995) Don't know this one.

Iomega Zip Drive (1998)

I think this is unfair, and the description of why it ultimately failed is completely wrong. This product was one of the most spectacular successes of the late 1990s. Yes, they did have a manufacturing problem that caused some drives to fail, but neither that nor poor replacement policies are what killed the Zip drive. The obvious culprit there was the rise of CD-R and CD-RW. Who the heck wants to pay $20 for a 100 MB cartridge when you can get 700 MB CD-R (or CD-RW) blanks for twenty cents? Like so many in the press, the writers of this story focused on conspiracy theories, evil, and corruption, when the real story lies right under their noses.

Comet Cursor (1997). Spyware stinks, and all those that create it should be sent to Abu Grab or Guantanamo, along with spammers.

Apple Macintosh Portable (1989), IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000), OQO Model 1 (2004) I don't know any of these.

CueCat (2000)

I still have several of these. The writers of this story didn't even come close the correct facts. There were in fact MILLIONS of these devices manufactured, and they were distributed through Radio Shack for free. The Wall Street Journal -- one of the few news organizations actually capable of researching and writing its own stories -- ran a similar article here: The Best of the Worst just a few weeks ago. The correctly point out that this company raised an astronomical (even by Internet standards) $185 million in venture funding and distributed four million Cuecats in one year alone.

Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004), Apple Pippin @World (1996), Free PCs (1999), DigiScents iSmell (2001), Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)

I don't know any of these products.

OK, my render just finished. Back to work ...

The Apple Lisa was a revolutionary machine. What killed it was that it was targeted at a customer (corporate IT) that would rather lose a kidney than buy something other than IBM. I was hired by Apple to sell these machines to the Fortune 500, and I constantly saw instances where a single Lisa would pay for itself ($10,000) literally in 2 weeks, based on doing the same task with it or with an IBM PC. Even so, IT wouldn't authorize the purchase because it wasn't Blue. The first Mac was a greatly-simplified version of the Lisa concept which told the corporate world to go sit on a sharp stick and went instead after the home user. Bingo.

I didn't buy into neither! makes me think I am scam proof. LOL!

os/2 was on of the best OS's ever. My copy of 2.1 ran DOS & Windows 3/3.1 apps better AND faster then DOS or Windows. I thought the UI was amazing. I'm finding current Windows/Mac UI's simular.

I just had to jump ship because everything went Win95.

I would of put CD-RW's down on the list. PRetty much useless (I found zip drives better).

That and PnP on the OS & hardware side. It just didn't work (and flipping switches/moving jumpers was much easier then finding out why the hardware had conflicts). Unless you had 1 device in your system, then it worked just fine. Unless you had a modem in there too. And used a serial mouse. And a printer.

Wonder why they chose to honor the Zip drive rather than the Jaz drive?

I went through a lot of Zip disks at the time with no problems at all, but the Jaz...

Satellite phones are widely used in remote areas today. Not just on CNN, either.

The OS2 I remember (industrial) was a nightmare to navigate. It was also abolutely non-intuitive.
JJK

OS2 - I kind of liked it. You'd be surprised how many corporate applications, like voice response systems, still run on it. If you had lost of memory, it ran great.

Windows ME: I never had the problems with it that most people reported. After install, a few core config tweaks, it ran fine. Unfortunately it was "dumbed down" from 98 SE, like removal of Internet Information Server. What they did was to try to remove most 16-bit applications from the system as a transition from 95/98 to XP.

I had a Syquest drive that was much worse than the Zip/Jazz. I think it had an 80% failure rate on the disks. After packing it up to send it in for full refund, they received my drive then shut off the phones, closed the office and left.

Pop-up windows should be one of the top items on the list. That inventor should be tar and feathered. Or some ancient pagan ritual victim.

OT(opposite topic): And Netscape/Firefox tabbed browsing should be one of the top inventions of all time.

I still have my CueCat. I never used it. Lots of tools on the internet to make it a standard barcode scanner. Might help my grocery shopping easier.

My vote goes to the schmuck scientist who stole a capacitor electrolyte formula, but didn't get the additives right. The fault formula was sold to many capacitor manufacturers, which mean that many motherboards would die after a few years.

I've seen a few motherboards that succumbed to that problem.

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1044575544.html

Including one of my motherboards. They tell me they will send me $100 for it. I need to get that packed up. Maybe make up for the Syquest drive debacle.

And not just motherboards ... virtually every electronic device made during that era.

Number 26 will be added in about a year: Blu-Ray - HD Discs.

It will be done in by two failures -

First, the copy prevention methods employed are draconian in the least and extremely user unfriendly. There will be many players returned because they won't play HD on the buyer's HD-ready TV set. (The list of ways for the content owner to screw the honest consumer goes on and on...)

Second, the data layer is on the outside of the plastic disc. Yes, you read correctly. The data layer will be "protected" by a very thin "scratch resistant" coating, but very much vulnerable to scratch damage that a DVD would ignore. I see, in my crystal ball, lots of damaged media returns to the retail stores that sell them.

There will be so many consumers totally pissed off by the content restrictions that sales are going to tank and the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs will join the CED Video Discs in the dustbins of technology that just didn't get it.



Steve Mann

huh ??

'"It will be done in by two failures -

First, the copy prevention methods employed are draconian in the least and extremely user unfriendly. There will be many players returned because they won't play HD on the buyer's HD-ready TV set. (The list of ways for the content owner to screw the honest consumer goes on and on...) ""

in less than 6 monhts of teh formats launch, there will be ripping and reauthoring tools available to circumvent ANY copy protection.. it took a while to get to this level with DVD, but considering HD-BD Discs are using a VERY similar authoring method, it wont take long..
Also where did u get this info that these players wont run HD content on a HD display?? I really dont see Sony shooting themselves in the foot with the PS3 by NOT allowing it to run on a HD panel... and thats jsut the begining considering the PS3 WILL be the dominant HD playback device upon launch... theres 5 million (or so) strong user base already ready and waiting for it..

"Second, the data layer is on the outside of the plastic disc. Yes, you read correctly. The data layer will be "protected" by a very thin "scratch resistant" coating, but very much vulnerable to scratch damage that a DVD would ignore. I see, in my crystal ball, lots of damaged media returns to the retail stores that sell them."
Have u ever seen a BD disc???
have u ever seen an XDCam disc? ?XDCam is virually idential save for the disc cartridge type housing case...

Im just curius where u got this information from...

There will be so many consumers totally pissed off by the content restrictions that sales are going to tank and the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs will join the CED Video Discs in the dustbins of technology that just didn't get it.

I liked os/2 and it had true multi taking. IBM did not know how to market it! WARP? Give me a break.

My personal worst is the mouse. I always get very annoyed when running out of room and only have a half of an inch to go,what a waste of energy. Track Ball Baby,Track ball !!

Wakiyan

"in less than 6 monhts of teh formats launch, there will be ripping and reauthoring tools available to circumvent ANY copy protection.. it took a while to get to this level with DVD, but considering HD-BD Discs are using a VERY similar authoring method, it wont take long.."

I don't think he's worried about this.


Also where did u get this info that these players wont run HD content on a HD display?? I really dont see Sony shooting themselves in the foot with the PS3 by NOT allowing it to run on a HD panel... and thats jsut the begining considering the PS3 WILL be the dominant HD playback device upon launch... theres 5 million (or so) strong user base already ready and waiting for it.."

Current word is that they will only play half-resolution through the component cables, which is the only HD input many HDTVs sold up to 2003 have.

Apple Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh!
“This one came with a Bose sound system and leather palm rests….”
Leather palm rests…I find that hilarious.

I can’t wait for Apples 30th Anniversary Mac!

I can see it now – The NEW Leather Apple BMW Core Dual, in a fine mahogany case. Handcrafted mouse & keyboard. Comes in a nice tote bag with Apple apparel – like apple head sweat band, for the high speed computing etc.
Also included is a very soft “Sham-E”cloth with turtle wax, so you can buff and care for your fine work of art.
And the new Apple i Mirror – now you can see yourself driving this elegant machine.

Hmmm..I dunno about this list. Actually I would go so far as to say they overlook much (of fail to "disclose") of the things that made the things they list good. I can start with their number 1 - AOL. There was Comuserve and there was AOL. I tried Compuserve and it was dos based and than I tired AOL and it had a nice GUI. Ok, sure - at the start there were those who had "real internet" and those that had AOL...but I fully disagree with the article claim that users have suffered through awful software, inaccessible dial-up numbers, rapacious marketing, in-your-face advertising, questionable billing practices, inexcusably poor customer service, and enough spam to last a lifetime. And all the while, AOL remained more expensive than its major competitors. That sounds a lot like AOL now than AOL in '89. The internet was not even close to being what is is now - and most consumers did not have access to it as easy as they do now. AOL succeeded initially by targeting newbies, using brute-force marketing techniques is another sort of kind of truth. If you call a disk in the modem box part of AOL's "brute-force marketing techniques" i am shocked they don't list every software that was ever "freely" offered in the early days. (You all remember right - buy a PC because it came with hundreds of dollars in "free software" only to find out it was trialware or demo disks). And what were the choices at the time? The real internet normally was found in business with their own hard wired line or schools - not in the home. So the differance was AOL with it's 10 bucks or so charge or a hard wirded line at a few hundred a month. And while I am on the subject - whay wasn;t compuserve on this list? AOl allowed real names while compuserve assinged numbers - you could somehting like 2234956821003@cis.com or you could be myrealname@aol.com. And Compuserve charged more for certian "premium" areas of the site. AOL was more more less, "free". But that was then - around version 3 is when all things started going to hell. The started making thier software more "Mtv"-ish and forgetting about all the old, loyal at that time, users. When i used AOL there were about 500 of us. By the time verison 3 software came out they had jumped to 250,000 plus users. And at that point I would agree with the comments I quoted above - the software was horrid, the access numbers were unaccesable, free disks and CD's were simply getting oput of hand, billing issues abounded. But, like the rest of the list, it isn't really based on what was, more about what is.

Zip drives are moslty gone - but I was a happy camper going from my 88 mb syquest to a 100mb zip drive. And I never had the clicking of death that some had. I actualy had more issues with an external Syqest than I ever had with the Zips. But when they came out they were somehow a cool sexy alterantive to the bulky Syquests. Like compuserve why weren't the Syquest dirves in this bottom list?

And I was somewhat shocked to see Real on the list. Like AOL now i could agree with it but the don't mention what path was paved by real. You had a choice of downloading a postage sized AVI file with your 14.4 or 96 modem that would take a few hours or if you installed the free real player you could watch a postage sized video that streamed in almost real time. I loved...no, LOVED...real. I used it, I recomended it, I lived it....ok, well not really lived it. But again with the comments that are somewhat negligant of all the facts - The RealPlayer of the late 90s worked fine, but its entourage included aggressive installations, uninvited popups, and insidious Registry rewrites.In order for your browser to display the following paragraph this site must download new software; please wait. Sorry, the requested codec was not found. Please upgrade your system. Ok - so i agree with the player working fine comment...but "agressive installations"? And they site the browser errors as if Real is the only thing that triggers/ed them. Based on that why not toss in Flash, Direcotr, Windows media, Quicktime and many other software that, when not installed, will cause the same messages. And the "pop ups" mentioned - ok, this is called clever marketing and software vendors do this all the time. The "free version" of the player had limits and included "pop ups" - BFD. For a while, when dial up was still king, Real had the idea right and certianly paved a lot of the streaming media highway.

CueCat - he he...hey, wow - I had almost fotgotten about that. Sort of a brillant idea that never caught on. Sort of like real but in reverse - it would have been like Real going out to the consumer with their real broadcaster first and telling people to create streams. Most comsumers didn;t really want to use a barcode scanner to simply watch magazine ads. On the other hand for someone in business it was great to able to scan your product and if it was not already in the database, add it. And right there was the problem. When so many people still can't program their VCR it was a bit much to expect them to know what to do with a BarCode reader.

WebTV - never had it but I know people who still have it. Not sure why it is included on this list though. Talking about it past tense is even more confusing because it is still in use.

And you know - maybe I am missing the point of this all. Our bottom 25 designees are all relatively well-known items, and many had multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns behind them is the concept laid out - and maybe that is what I am not getting. Whay pick on some of the most well known ones and treat them as if they were usless? (ok, maybe some of them were - Windows ME for example) Why not, as the article pointed out, foucs on some of the ones that never make it out of somebody's garage?

Satellite telephones haven't gone away. While the intial sat/phone start-ups were big losers, the industry has been successful, just not on the scale of ordinary cell phones.

Just look in a outdoor/hiking magazine. You'll see plenty of ads for them.

Just look in a outdoor/hiking magazine. You'll see plenty of ads for them.

Yes, but has anyone actually seen one in use? I mean, you see cell phones every minute of the day, and Palm Pilots/Blackberries, and pagers, and countless other wireless devices. But satellite phones?

One reason satellite phones did not go away completely is that the US government was/is a user and would have lost several key location access capabilities.

When Iridium was in bankruptcy and announcing plans to shut down, there was an arrangement quietly worked out to prop up at least some portion of the capability. what happens when the current fleet of satellites reaches end of life is not clear.

sattelite phones aren't mant for normal every day use. Just like having a 8 foot dish in your backyard.

Anyone wonder why BetaMax wasn't on this list? I figured that would be up there with DiVX. ALong the same lines, what about VCD's in the US? I think those lasted longer then DiVX.

filmy: I agree with you about AOL. When AOL started there was compuserve, aol & thousands of BBS's. AOL & C-serve were just BBS's for cash. Considering a 14.4 modem cost ~$100 at the time, and was FAST compared to a 2400, i didn't see anything wrong wih it & AOL (I used the Tandy service myself, forget what it was called).

the list wasn't exactly a "these thing were udder useless" list but more of a "these things themselves were udder useless but brought about tons of new technology's based on them"

the list wasn't exactly a "these thing were udder useless" list but more of a "these things themselves were udder useless but brought about tons of new technology's based on them"

Yeah, they did a lousy job defining the criteria for their list. For many of the picks, a better headline would have been, "products that make us whine." Many of them were amazingly successful, popular, and important to the growth and eventual direction to the industry and therefore really don't deserve even a passing mention on such a list, especially those you guys just highlighted.

My criteria was size of failure, and this in turn was defined as size of negative return on investment, which is why the Iridium satellite debacle was such an easy #1 pick. $5 billion in; a few million back out. That CueCat scanner was another good one: $165 million in; zero back in.