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Top 10 Apple flops (with pix)
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Eug
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Oct 30, 2008, 09:55 AM
 
Forbes: When Apple Failed --- In pictures

I didn't even know an Apple QuickTake digital camera existed.



BTW, I'm not sure if the Motorola ROKR is truly a flop. (I'm ignoring the fact it ain't an Apple product for the moment.) According to the picture, it functions well as a portable orgasmatron.

     
Big Mac
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:08 AM
 
You never heard of the Digital QuickTake? It was one of the first consumer digital cameras.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
Spheric Harlot
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:14 AM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
You never heard of the Digital QuickTake? It was one of the first consumer digital cameras.
*The* first, if memory serves.
     
Dakar V
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:15 AM
 
What the slut
     
shifuimam
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:17 AM
 
Interesting that the Apple TV is listed on there. I predicted that it wouldn't be *that* successful.

I wonder if the Air will show up on that list in a few years...
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Spheric Harlot
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by Dakar V View Post
What the slut
I love you too.
     
cjrivera
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:32 AM
 
I had one of the Quicktake 200s. I think I got it free when I bought a Mac (I forget the promotion).

It was kind of cool, but the pictures were blurry. I wouldn't have called it a flop.
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Oct 30, 2008, 10:43 AM
 
I remember a teacher of mine in junior high had a Quicktake, I think it was actually black and white.
     
Eriamjh
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:07 PM
 
Forget the flops (most people do).

How about the 10 best Apple products of all time.

1. iPod
2. iPhone
3. iMac
4. iBook
5. iCan't Think of any more...

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Laminar
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by Eriamjh View Post
3. iMac
This one could count as several on its own.
     
Big Mac
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:18 PM
 
Where's OS X?

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badidea
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:20 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
This one could count as several on its own.
True!
And I even would put the white Intel iMac on first place of the list of the best computer ever made!
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SirCastor
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:23 PM
 
I never owned a Quicktake, but the only ones I was familiar with were the kind that looked more like binoculars from the future than a camera.

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SirCastor
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:32 PM
 
Oh, and is anyone else surprised that the 20 Anniversary Mac didn't make the list? Geeze, the Apple TV has sold better than that thing.
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Eug  (op)
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:56 PM
 
#1 - Apple II of course!

Originally Posted by Eriamjh View Post
Forget the flops (most people do).

How about the 10 best Apple products of all time.

1. iPod
2. iPhone
3. iMac
4. iBook
5. iCan't Think of any more...
     
Art Vandelay
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Oct 30, 2008, 12:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by SirCastor View Post
Oh, and is anyone else surprised that the 20 Anniversary Mac didn't make the list? Geeze, the Apple TV has sold better than that thing.
No, because it was meant to be a very limited, special edition model. It was $10,000 and came with concierge service.
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Andrew Stephens
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Oct 30, 2008, 06:41 PM
 
performa 6300. Pure beige crud

     
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Oct 30, 2008, 07:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by SirCastor View Post
I never owned a Quicktake, but the only ones I was familiar with were the kind that looked more like binoculars from the future than a camera.

I had one of those. The picture quality was about equal to the first mobile phone cameras (which came half a decade later) at 640x480. It was pretty amazing for it's time.

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Oct 30, 2008, 07:08 PM
 
Regarding the Pippin:
But equipped with a 14.4 kilobyte-per-second modem, it could hardly handle real-time gaming online--a single chat message required about 10 minutes to send and receive.
.

This sounds strange to me. I had 14.4k and even 9.6k modems and they were more than capable of chatting in real time. WTF?

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Oct 30, 2008, 07:10 PM
 
And despite TV being "dismissed" as a hobby, I believe it's way too early to call it a flop. I believe Apple has bigger plans for it. (Altough looking at the sad state of Front Row, media centers might be slightly beyond their grasp).

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Oct 30, 2008, 07:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by Big Mac View Post
Where's OS X?
That's not an Apple invention. Some dude from Microsoft laid claim to making the mach kernel back in the Beatle's era.
     
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Oct 30, 2008, 07:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens View Post
performa 6300. Pure beige crud

I had a 6200CD!

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Cipher13
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Oct 31, 2008, 12:11 AM
 
The 7200 was worse.

Manufactured by Acer if I recall correctly.
     
Andrew Stephens
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Oct 31, 2008, 12:31 PM
 
actually I meant 6200, not 6300. Boy those performer models were confusing. Anyway Wikipedia says

"The 6200 shares the logic board with the Power Macintosh 5200. Because they use a logic board design directly adapted from the 32-bit Quadra with a 64-bit data path CPU, these models are sometimes described as being among the worst Macintoshes ever produced. [1] Other hardware issues include problems with the IDE controller, the SCSI controller and the serial ports."
     
Laminar
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:10 PM
 
Performa
     
Dakar V
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:13 PM
 
Not a flop, but I hated those Centris' with every ounce of my being.
     
rickey939
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:26 PM
 
Where is the iWalk?
     
sdilley14
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:31 PM
 
That's too bad the Cube was on there. To this day I still think it is a great looking computer. My high school actually had a lab full of G4 Cubes with Cinema Displays back in the day. Pretty cutting edge considering my high school had 250 kids and we got 20-30 G4 Cubes right when they came out.
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Eug  (op)
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:37 PM
 
The Cube was there because it indeed was a flop. A damn good looking collectors' item type of flop, but a flop nonetheless.
     
Spheric Harlot
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Oct 31, 2008, 01:52 PM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
Performa
Which Performa? There were over fifty models - and some of them quite successful!
     
Laminar
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Oct 31, 2008, 02:14 PM
 
Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot View Post
Which Performa? There were over fifty models - and some of them quite successful!
I was just correcting whoever called it a "Performer." Our first computer was a Performa 6116CD.
     
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Nov 1, 2008, 07:35 AM
 
Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens View Post
performa 6300. Pure beige crud


I had Performa 630m, a similar looking machine with 12 mb of RAM, 350 MB of hard drive IDE, and I have most fond memories of it. I used it for drawing on Illustrator, Photoshop 4 work, Aldus Pagemaker and word processing on Word 5.1a. While it wasn't a design marvel, it was small and relatively affordable machine. Its also my first Mac and got me hooked on Macs. Countless numbers of computers which I worked on passed since, but I still keep it, my first Mac.
     
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Nov 2, 2008, 02:48 AM
 
Originally Posted by Eug View Post
Forbes: When Apple Failed --- In pictures

I didn't even know an Apple QuickTake digital camera existed.



BTW, I'm not sure if the Motorola ROKR is truly a flop. (I'm ignoring the fact it ain't an Apple product for the moment.) According to the picture, it functions well as a portable orgasmatron.

Don't see the Apple relation here.

The woman seems to have an orgasm.
     
Laminar
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Nov 2, 2008, 01:24 PM
 
Originally Posted by Veltliner View Post
Don't see the Apple relation here.

The woman seems to have an orgasm.
Congrats on both not reading the link and using the joke they already made.
     
Laminar
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Nov 2, 2008, 01:25 PM
 
Also, wtf?

     
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Nov 2, 2008, 02:42 PM
 
Originally Posted by Cipher13 View Post
The 7200 was worse.

Manufactured by Acer if I recall correctly.
You are thinking of the 7300 - yeah - it was a bad "equivalent to clone" outsourcing experiment. The 7200 was a rock-solid Mac. I have one that works to this day.
     
hayesk
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Nov 2, 2008, 02:47 PM
 
A few mistakes on there:
The QuickTake 200 was not Mac only.
The Newton's handwriting recognition was quite good in the last few models, and was turning a profit when Steve killed it.
The Apple TV - as others have said - remains to be seen.

As for the Mac portable, I wouldn't call that a flop for its time. The thing also had a full size (vertically) keyboard and a 9 hour battery! Try to find that in a laptop today.
     
Laminar
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Nov 2, 2008, 03:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by hayesk View Post
You are thinking of the 7300 - yeah - it was a bad "equivalent to clone" outsourcing experiment. The 7200 was a rock-solid Mac. I have one that works to this day.
The 7300 was great, PCI slots, real ethernet (I think?), compatibility with the other Macs like the 7500 and 7600 and everything - the 7200 sucked, though, it wasn't incredibly expandable, wasn't compatible with a lot of hardware, no real ethernet...
     
Buckaroo
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Nov 2, 2008, 03:46 PM
 
Don't forget the Apple III. That was a true flop. There's a bunch of new ones in the middle of a dump somewhere.
     
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Nov 2, 2008, 03:56 PM
 
Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - View Post
And despite TV being "dismissed" as a hobby, I believe it's way too early to call it a flop. I believe Apple has bigger plans for it. (Altough looking at the sad state of Front Row, media centers might be slightly beyond their grasp).
I've almost completely abandoned the native OS in my TV in favor of XBMC and Boxee.
     
Gankdawg
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Nov 2, 2008, 09:06 PM
 
Word. 6290 CD here. That's right, CD. Can't remember the MHz or RAM but it had a 1.2 GB HDD (I've got 4 GB of RAM in my iMac!!!!). I had a CIA/KGG spy game that I loved. Sorry, a little OT.
     
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Nov 3, 2008, 12:14 AM
 
I tried the QuickTake when I was in high school. It's not bad at all.

How about the PowerCD?
     
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Nov 3, 2008, 02:10 AM
 
Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
I was just correcting whoever called it a "Performer." Our first computer was a Performa 6116CD.
I think that was a reference to a similar article published by MacWorld (I think) a few years ago, saying the Performa was a flop and that its name sounded like Sylvester Stallone saying "Performer".

The 6200CD was really a flop.. I'm sure I lost at least 10 years of my life expectancy because of the stress and frustrations this machine gave me... It crashed constantly, I had to have the logic board replaced 3 times and I had to reinstall the Mac OS every week (yay for spending so many friday nights backuping 1 GB worth of files on floppies...)

Originally Posted by Laminar View Post
The 7300 was great, PCI slots, real ethernet (I think?), compatibility with the other Macs like the 7500 and 7600 and everything - the 7200 sucked, though, it wasn't incredibly expandable, wasn't compatible with a lot of hardware, no real ethernet...
I really liked my 7300, it was virtually perfect! It had really well-designed case (easy access to internals), a lot of upgrade options (plenty of RAM and PCI slots, CPU on a daughter card), 10Base-T Ethernet, etc
     
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Nov 3, 2008, 02:58 AM
 
Originally Posted by hayesk View Post
You are thinking of the 7300 - yeah - it was a bad "equivalent to clone" outsourcing experiment. The 7200 was a rock-solid Mac. I have one that works to this day.
What's wrong with the 7300? I loved mine. Solid machine. Wish I still had it.
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Nov 3, 2008, 03:18 AM
 
If we're calling the Cube a flop, then the TAM can be considered a massive flop.
     
Cipher13
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Nov 3, 2008, 06:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by hayesk View Post
You are thinking of the 7300 - yeah - it was a bad "equivalent to clone" outsourcing experiment. The 7200 was a rock-solid Mac. I have one that works to this day.
Nah, I'm definitely thinking of 7200. If you have a solid model, well... you're the only one.

7300s were great machines.
     
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Nov 5, 2008, 07:15 PM
 
My old 7200 just died about two years ago, and we were using it with Comcast broadband
     
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Nov 5, 2008, 07:33 PM
 
Originally Posted by hayesk View Post
As for the Mac portable, I wouldn't call that a flop for its time. The thing also had a full size (vertically) keyboard and a 9 hour battery! Try to find that in a laptop today.
I would have put my PowerBook 5300 in front of that. Man, that thing was a POS. Fires (thankfully not me personally), broken/inoperable hinges (me personally), slowdowns/freezes, limited/expensive expandability. Going from that to a bondi iMac was night and day.
     
SSharon
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Nov 5, 2008, 08:29 PM
 
wait, how has the Apple Hi-Fi not been mentioned? that is a flop if there ever was one.
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Nov 5, 2008, 08:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by SSharon View Post
wait, how has the Apple Hi-Fi not been mentioned? that is a flop if there ever was one.
I still want one.

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