[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Cube. [/B]

Not true, I remember how the "Hairline cracks" got more bad press than the price.

[nforcer]

The Pippin was the #1 flop without a doubt.

The puck mouse was fine if you knew how to use it (hint: just use your fingertips). I'd have to say the puck was, in my opinion, the best one button mouse Apple ever shipped. Which means it is the best mouse they have ever shipped. Comparing Apple mice to 3rd party mice now shows that every mouse they ship is underfeatured and overpriced (and has a terrible feel). But for a one button mouse, the puck is my mouse of choice.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by nforcer:
The Pippin was the #1 flop without a doubt.

The puck mouse was fine if you knew how to use it (hint: just use your fingertips). I'd have to say the puck was, in my opinion, the best one button mouse Apple ever shipped. Which means it is the best mouse they have ever shipping. Comparing Apple mice to 3rd party mice now shows that every mouse they ship is underfeatured and overpriced (and has a terrible feel). But for a one button mouse, the puck is my mouse of choice.

Are you living in opposite land or something?

[Randman]

Originally posted by nforcer:
The puck mouse was fine if you knew how to use it (hint: just use your fingertips).

I'd have to say the puck was, in my opinion, the best one button mouse Apple ever shipped. Which means it is the best mouse they have ever shipping. Comparing Apple mice to 3rd party mice now shows that every mouse they ship is underfeatured and overpriced (and has a terrible feel). But for a one button mouse, the puck is my mouse of choice.

What about Mac clones? Something from the non-Jobs era should be No. 1.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Randman:
What about Mac clones? Something from the non-Jobs era should be No. 1.

Well that would be the Newton. Jobs hated it because it was made from his predecessor which he hated=. But he quoted once saying it was neat and was going to buy it (when the 2000 came out).

Also, I never understood why Apple came out with the Power Macintosh 4400.
"Released in November 1996, the Performa 4400/160 shipped only in europe. It came in a newly designed low profile case, with the floppy drive on the left. (a Mac rarity) It had optional 256 kB L2 cache, and was bundled with either a 14, 15 or 17 inch moniter, keyboard, and mouse. The 4400 was released in the US in February 1997 as the Power Mac 4400, with a 200 Mhz 603e. It was discontinued a year later. The 4400/200 was also released in Australia as the Power Mac 7220."

[exca1ibur]

Actually the clones weren't too bad though. Remember, Power Computing had systems faster than Apple and better marketing. Daystar created teh first multiprocessor Mac. Motorla pretty much made the first clone with a lot of typical PC architecture. IDE when Macs were all SCSI, to bring costs down. The big factor at the time was... they were all cheaper than Apple. The problem was they didn't grow the marketshare they just chipped away at the existing Apple marketshare, and it had Apple hurting which was bad for the Mac market, as a whole. If Apple went it was over, hence Steve killing clones, and getting Apple healthy as a top priority. First thing was get the OS to teh enxt generation and enter the iMac... and the rest is history.

Plus. Apple bought patents from Daystar, or the company (can't remember offhand) to make the 9500/180MP at the time and use for future MP systems.

[Aiglos]

Originally posted by Randman:
What about Mac clones? Something from the non-Jobs era should be No. 1.

I remembered the mac clones being a success for the companies that sold them, not for Apple though. PowerComputing computers were awesome and I think Motorla came out with a quad-PPC. Those were very neat times.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Aiglos:
I remembered the mac clones being a success for the companies that sold them, not for Apple though. PowerComputing computers were awesome and I think Motorla came out with a quad-PPC. Those were very neat times.

All the clones except motorola's looked and sounded junky. Yes they were faster but they had cheap assed CD-drives that ejected with the disk still spinning on the tray. The Power Computing ones also sounded like wind-tunnels.

Plus they were beige.

[exca1ibur]

Originally posted by Aiglos:
I remembered the mac clones being a success for the companies that sold them, not for Apple though. PowerComputing computers were awesome and I think Motorla came out with a quad-PPC. Those were very neat times.

Daystar Genesis ran the quad 604e Killer setup. That was also when BeOS came out to take FULL advantage of it as well.

[exca1ibur]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
All the clones except motorola's looked and sounded junky. Yes they were faster but they had cheap assed CD-drives that ejected with the disk still spinning on the tray. The Power Computing ones also sounded like wind-tunnels.

Plus they were beige.

Hell, everything was beige back then. LOL It was the 'standard' it seemed. Seems so long ago don't it? Seems illegal to have a beige computer now.

[saddino]

One word: Bedrock

Back in the day when most Mac applications were written in C++ using MacApp (Apple's framework) or TLC (Symantec' framework), companies like Adobe started wondering how best to port their applications to Windows, given both framework's lack of platform abstraction and reliance on the Mac Toolbox.

The answer? A new cross-platform C++ framework, developed by Apple and Symantec together: Bedrock. It was unveiled at WWDC in 1992.

Bedrock was no ordinary framework. In a day when the OS's of the "future" were sure to be OS/2, Windows NT and, most especially Taligent's Pink (best vaporware ever), applications written in Bedrock would be able to run on all of them with just a recompilation.

Of course, Bedrock's demise was assured: who the hell was going to rewrite their applications in a new, untested framework? Apparently nobody.

These days, I'm kicking myself for throwing out the Bedrock developer's preview CD I used to own. I don't believe it ever was released, but it certainly took up a lot of time given how concerned our PHBs were about "make sure you're targetting Bedrock for future projects."

[Skip Breakfast]

How about the HDI-45 connector on the back of the 61xx models?

[exca1ibur]

Good call. Also if you want to get current. ADC.

[macaddict0001]

Originally posted by RonnieoftheRose:
Pippin has to be the worst idea to come out of Apple.

not really, at the time game consoles seemed to be the way people gamed but it was quickly changing into gaming on a computer, apple saw this trend and decided to do something.

[Mastrap]

Allowing flops, errors and mistakes to happen is vital for any company that wants to move on to bigger and better things. The important thing is to learn from them.

[waffffffle]

Originally posted by TailsToo:
I miss it too! Along with AppleLink Personal Edition before it became evil.

So by evil you mean AOL?

I was on eWorld for a while too. It was scary how similar to AOL it was. But it was certainly fun. I still have those floppy disks.

[waffffffle]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Many on the list never made it to market. I'm sure Microsoft, Sony, etc. etc. all have their fair share of "ugly stepchildren" hidden away in secret R&D labs. The cube wasn't a flop, it was amazing, the price was a flop. The shuffle is selling like hot-cakes so don't even go there. 5300ce wasn't horrible. If you think that was a flop, I've got a Performa 6400 to sell you. It was slow out of the box... seriously.

I think Copland was the biggest of all. Apple hyped it as the "savior" OS that's "just around the corner". When it flopped, I honestly considered going PC. I was tired of waiting. Sure OS 8/9 weren't bad, but I could see the cool things Windows NT had coming in the pipeline... and thought "I think they figured it out..." Thank God the wheels fell off that train.

I have both a Performa 6400 and a PowerBook 5300ce in my house right now. The 6400 was no flop. While the Geoport modem certainly did suck (and there was no way to tell if you were getting one with a Geoport or not) the PowerBook 5300 series was pretty awful. In terms of build quality, the machine has simply fallen apart and cannot withstand the daily use of any of Apple's other 'books, both before and after.

As for Copland, all wasn't lost. Technically, Copland was not as sound as what OS X is. Copland still didn't really understand the internet as an integral concept and still thought about it as an application-level service and not an OS-level service. The memory management, multitasking and performance would have been inferior to what OS X gives us now. The really gems of Copland where the enhanced UI features, most of which we gained with OS 8 and later revisions and in fact the interface in 8.5 and later was superior to Copland's in many ways (like those 8 bit icons masks, which Windows didn't get until XP). NeXT acquiring Apple is the best thing could have happened to Mac users. While it certainly took a long time for us to see the fruits of this marriage, we should all be grateful that Copland didn't work out and that Jean Louis Gass�e was too greedy with his price for Be.

[dlefebvre]

Originally posted by ReggieX:
Rhapsody was not a "flop," it's what became OSX Server 1.0. It was an absolutely necessary step in getting OpenStep over to Mac hardware. It was never meant to be anything else, really. And yes I have a copy

Sorry for the confusion. It was at the period where they were anouncing every few month what was supposed to become the next generation OS. A very confusing time.

[The Ancient One]

Originally posted by sideus:
eWorld was great. I miss all the people on there. You two know who you are.

I STILL miss eWorld. I was a beta tester from start to finish (and I have both t-shirts from Apple to prove it).

I suspect the fellow who made up the poll is a young'un. No question about Apple's biggest flop - it was the Apple III.

[Fyre4ce]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
I remember in 1996 you could get a 50k extension that made your computer look like copland though. That wasn't worth 8 years and a billion dollars of research.

I thought Copland was what ultimately became Mac OS 8. Seems I'm not up on my Apple history. I was in middle school at the time, though.

[sugar_coated]

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by sugar_coated:

Ah good old hotsauce!

[MilkmanDan]

How about the iivx? Sure it was the first Mac with a built in CD drive, but man was it expensive and was soon replaced by the Performa. Oh, and it had the fastest loss of value of any Mac. Ever. I would know, my parents bought one was I was in 4th grade. Used it for about 6 years.

In defense of the Cube: I lobbied a friend for a couple of years to buy his Cube from him, but he wouldn't give in. Still won't. Its a sexy computer, just too high priced for the market. What the cube did for Apple was start a trend of making sexy computers with some power behind the hood. One could say that every failure Apple has had taught them something or gave Apple some technology or idea that they would later build on. Not every product can be a winner. Heck, I even liked the 20th Ani. Mac. It was very cool for its day.

Learning form your mistakes is always good. Some companies never learn.

[cacarr1]

I can't believe no one's mentioned the iPod Photo...
While I don't have any figures, I just think this was an awful idea. $500 for an iPod!
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see a bright future for this model...

[Athens]

Cyberdog isnt listed on the big flops for the vote. I think that was the worst. Opendoc had potential at least

[sideus]

Originally posted by sugar_coated:

I remember that. It came on a MacAddict CD once.

[His Dudeness]

Originally posted by sideus:
eWorld was great. I miss all the people on there. You two know who you are.

I was on eWorld for a looooooong time. I loved that place! My name used to be crytpoman.