[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

"Apple and its compatriots have been highly innovative. These companies have proven that even if their ideas are well implemented, they cannot always promote them correctly. Other times, a good idea is implemented poorly, and despite their best marketting effort, the product fails. I have compiled 10 of the most notable products released by Apple or its comrades that failed."

http://macreate.net/reloaded/?q=node/view/224

[shmerek]

nevermind

[Apple Pro Underwear]

pippin since it never even made it to a single home

[waffffffle]

The Cube should be on this list. Word 6, while it sucked (so did all of Office), was not Apple's flop, it was Microsoft's. It just hurt Apple.

[sideus]

eWorld was great. I miss all the people on there. You two know who you are.

[Mafia]

dunno about flop but i hate that puck mouse.

[ManOfSteal]

[Buck_W]

Originally posted by waffffffle:
The Cube should be on this list. Word 6, while it sucked (so did all of Office), was not Apple's flop, it was Microsoft's. It just hurt Apple.

I love my Cube

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by waffffffle:
The Cube should be on this list.

The Cube did sell over 140,000 for a high price tag though.

In terms of hurting them in terms of dollars though I would have to say copland, cost them a TON of money and slowed down on the next OS. They eventually had to buy one which cost them a tons more.

[PurpleGiant]

Copland for sure. Years of hype and investment all for nothing.

[Cubeoid]

Bang!

[dlefebvre]

Rhapsody

[Super Nova]

I'll probably get flamed for this, but i think the shuffle should be a flop. I mean, you can shuffle songs on a regular iPod, you can only hold a small amount of songs.....

I really don't see why so many people like it so much.

SuperNova

[ReggieX]

Originally posted by dlefebvre:
Rhapsody

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

[TailsToo]

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

I miss it too! Along with AppleLink Personal Edition before it became evil.

[Daveecee]

Normally I'd say the keyboard+mouse, but I could live with those. However, that portable just looks painful...

[E's Lil Theorem]

Originally posted by Cubeoid:
[img]http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Tower/1448/coplandslyshootsbig.jpg[img]
Bang!

Boom!

Most definitely Copland.

[maxintosh]

Newton's not on the list?

I mean I loved Newton and still have one around, but it was a total disaster for Apple.

[PurpleGiant]

Originally posted by Super Nova:
I'll probably get flamed for this, but i think the shuffle should be a flop. I mean, you can shuffle songs on a regular iPod, you can only hold a small amount of songs.....

I really don't see why so many people like it so much.

Off-topic: It's smaller than regular iPod, it's lighter than regular iPod, it's cheaper than regular iPod, it has longer battery than regular iPod. If you want everything an iPod does, and can afford it, get it. If you don't need/want/afford a regular iPod or mini, you may want a shuffle.

[chris v]

Yeah, Copland was a terrible movie.

[Super Nova]

Originally posted by PurpleGiant:
Off-topic: It's smaller than regular iPod, it's lighter than regular iPod, it's cheaper than regular iPod, it has longer battery than regular iPod. If you want everything an iPod does, and can afford it, get it. If you don't need/want/afford a regular iPod or mini, you may want a shuffle.

good point, I mean, I have a G3 iPod so i guess im not really open to newer thangs.

SuperNova

[CD Hanks]

Copland, easy.

But I gotta admit, it would have been the absolute coolest thing ever had it been finished. Then again, that was the problem from the start, they just wanted to make everything cool. Functionality and practicality were put in the backseat.

I always wanted to run Copland on a PowerBook 5300ce.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Super Nova:
I'll probably get flamed for this, but i think the shuffle should be a flop. I mean, you can shuffle songs on a regular iPod, you can only hold a small amount of songs.....

It wont be. I mean I sold my 15 gig iPod in exchange for a 1 gig shuffle which I like 10x more.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

I can't believe they didn't mention the TAM. Seems like it would be a bigger investment and flop than the flower power iMac.

[Luca Rescigno]

Originally posted by CD Hanks:
I always wanted to run Copland on a PowerBook 5300ce.

Which, of course, brings us to another Apple flop...

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by Luca Rescigno:
Which, of course, brings us to another Apple flop...

The 5300 wasn't a flop because of the same reasons as most of the above but more because it was very defective in many ways. Cost Apple a TON of money in recalls and bad publicity.

[MARINEOSX]

Mac xl/Lisa. Don't know what it is but it had not been voted on. Figured it felt a little left out.

[discotronic]

How about the iPod Socks? Sounds like a big flop to me.

[iDriveX]

I think the biggest flop ever was either that version of Mac OS X 10.0.3 I think, which was replaced like two days later with 10.0.4 (or it was 10.0.2 ---> 10.0.3). Or maybe it was that upgrade to iTunes that erased everyone's external hard disks.

[exca1ibur]

I wouldn't consider Copland a flop being it never saw the light of day. Vaporware would be more ideal. Same with the Pippen. Rhapsody was just a transition from OS9 to OSX.

My vote goes for the Cube.

[RonnieoftheRose]

Pippin has to be the worst idea to come out of Apple.

[Luca Rescigno]

There are so many different categories of "failures" you can use. There are hardware products that failed due to poor quality (PowerBook 5300, Apple III, iBook G3). There are ones that were of perfectly fine quality but failed due to poor design (Mac Portable, MacTV, puck mouse) or marketing (Newton, Cube).

I think I'd define a flop as something that was actually not bad, but due to bad marketing was never as successful as it should have been. The Cube and Newton fit the definition perfectly. The Portable and the MacTV, while they weren't really bad, weren't very good either. Even with really great marketing behind them, they wouldn't have done that well.

Why's the Lisa there? Okay, so maybe it wasn't the greaterst thing Apple ever made but it was the first thing with a GUI and it was extremely important. Even if the Lisa itself was a bit of a flop, the concept behind it was certainly not.

[badidea]

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

I miss you too (if I ever met you there)!

[Judge_Fire]

OpenDoc lives...

... hiding underground, waiting for the right moment. It will be back.

J

[- - e r i k - -]

Copland-tech still lives on even today in Tiger with the V-twin engine. Copland heavily influenced Mac OS 8 and 9. They did spend way to much time for little salvage, but despite the flop some really cool things came out of it. Platinum for example.

[Randman]

The mouse. I wonder how many Windows users might have migrated sooner if not for the mouses Apple offered, one-clickers and that gawd-awful hockey puck.

[Eriamjh]

In order to be a flop, it has to be publicly for sale. Projects that are killed before they mature don't count. Projects that get aborted or absorbed into other projects also don't count.

The Newton gets my vote for biggest flop.

Now "mistakes" would include all of the above. Especially the ones that sucked up lots of money and resulted in no value gained to the company.

[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.

[Sherwin]

11: Hiring whoever it was they hired in the product development department who's responsible for product colour.

"What colour shall we make this in then?"

"Silver, of course. It's really hip and modern, is here to stay and doesn't at all remind anyone of Buck Rogers' wardrobe"

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Copland-tech still lives on even today in Tiger with the V-twin engine. Copland heavily influenced Mac OS 8 and 9. They did spend way to much time for little salvage, but despite the flop some really cool things came out of it. Platinum for example.

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.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
That wasn't worth 8 years and a billion dollars of research.

A billion dollars is always worth something in research, even when the product is ditched. If they didn't make useful mistakes, it wouldn't be research, would it?

[wdlove]

Yes, Apple has made mistakes. Their success today shows that they are learning from them.

[DeathMan]

cube

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by DeathMan:
cube

The thing about the cube is that the people who own it LOVE it to death. It was not a defective, crippled or bad product, it was just to expensive.

Originally posted by maxintosh:
Newton's not on the list?

I mean I loved Newton and still have one around, but it was a total disaster for Apple.

I wouldn't call it a disaster. Newton was turning a profit when Steve axed it. It still has a better interface than any PDA available today. I admit, the synch software sucked though.

Originally posted by - - e r i k - -:
Copland-tech still lives on even today in Tiger with the V-twin engine.

The V-Twin engine was first developed and shipped in an Apple product called AppleSearch (I used to have a copy) - it was started before Copland.

Some other failures:

- PowerTalk (messaging system in System 7 Pro, System 7.5)
- PowerCD
- Mac IIvx
- PowerQuickOpenTalk Pro*











* ok, so I made the last one up. It seems in the 90s almost all of Apple's projects had at least one of those words in them.

Originally posted by Apple Pro Underwear:
pippin since it never even made it to a single home

The Pippin actually did go on sale in Japan. It didn't sell well, but it did sell.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

What was that 3D web interface? Hotsauce?

Quickdraw 3D

What was that strange Printing communication they came out with in the mid 90's?

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
The thing about the cube is that the people who own it LOVE it to death. It was not a defective, crippled or bad product, it was just to expensive.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the Cube.

At the time of the cube release, you had two options.

$1799 Cube
-450 Mhz G4 processor
-20 GB hard drive
-64 MB of RAM

or

$1599 PowerMac
-400 Mhz G4 processor (single)
- 20 GB hard drive
- 64 MB of RAM

The people considering this quickly found out:
1) The cube was less upgradable (PCI was still rather important in 2000)
2) The PowerMac benchmarked faster then the Cube (so said MacWorld and many websites)
3) The cube didn't have gigabit ethernet standard (it was a bto option)
4) You saved $200

Then came the upgraded Cube

$2299 Cube
- 500 Mhz G4
- 30 GB hard drive
- 128 MB of RAM

or

$2499 PowerMac
- dual-processor 450 Mhz
- 30 GB hard drive
- 128 MB of RAM

The dual processor thoroughly trumped the cube for speed and expandability. And it was only $200 more bucks.

Price failure, yes, technical, aesthetics, functionality failure... no way...