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[Ignatz Mouse]

Did anyone mention the Sony Net MD player yet?

I remember in grade 10, like every 3rd kid had one of these, and the next year in grade 11 I didn't see even one.

That's really just a Mini-Disc player with a new marketing push. Wouldn't count as a flop for the last decade, Mini-Disc is nearly 20 years old.

 

[GSG Flash]

That's really just a Mini-Disc player with a new marketing push. Wouldn't count as a flop for the last decade, Mini-Disc is nearly 20 years old.

Wasn't the difference between the regular old mini disc players and the Net MD that you could record songs onto the Net MD using a USB cable? I remember it being advertised fairly heavily next to portable MP3 players, so I assumed that it was meant to compete with them.

 

[Slavik81]

Holy crap, I forgot about that one :lol

:lol

That's my phone, minus the red and the ESPN branding. The Samsung a900.
Works beautifully. I wouldn't call it a failure.

It sounds more like the ESPN service was a failure, because that's a pretty standard phone.

 

[Lazy vs Crazy]

I don't think I've ever known anyone with a minidisc player. I don't think I've ever even seen a minidisc.

 

[neptunes]

Wasn't the difference between the regular old mini disc players and the Net MD that you could record songs onto the Net MD using a USB cable? I remember it being advertised fairly heavily next to portable MP3 players, so I assumed that it was meant to compete with them.

On the subject of MiniDiscs failing

The broadcast industry just weened itself off MiniDiscs, they actually served a purpose outside of the consumer market. It was mostly used as a means of backing-up/archiving audio recordings.

 

[KHarvey16]

That's my phone, minus the red and the ESPN branding. The Samsung a900.
Works beautifully. I wouldn't call it a failure.

It sounds more like the ESPN service was a failure, because that's a pretty standard phone.

Had the same one as well, liked it. Also still have a minidisc player somewhere.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Wasn't the difference between the regular old mini disc players and the Net MD that you could record songs onto the Net MD using a USB cable? I remember it being advertised fairly heavily next to portable MP3 players, so I assumed that it was meant to compete with them.

Yeah, there is a pretty big difference.
NetMD is effectively an mp3 player. [sure it would convert all your music to atrac3 and made you use crappy software but you get the point]

The non NetMD players were literally like a portable tape recorder. You'd have to plug something into it's input and record the tracks in realtime.

 

[wayward archer]

I don't think I've ever known anyone with a minidisc player. I don't think I've ever even seen a minidisc.

I bought one and used it for a while. If Sony had written a driver that let you drag and drop onto the minidisc from the desktop it would have been great. The software for that thing was terrible.

 

[silverbullet1080]

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Minidiscs were fucking awesome though.
I still have my Minidisc collection but no player to play them on.

I figure someday I'll find a cheap one somewhere it will be hilarious to listen to all my mixes from when I was younger.


Plus Minidiscs are just plain BADASS.

 

[LogicStep]

Plus Minidiscs are just plain BAD.

fixed

 

[bigosc2k]

Seriously why all the hate for the PSP Go, I know the launch sucked

 

[medrew]

PS3? You guys can't be serious, you could say that Blu Ray became the defacto HD format thanks to the PS3.

It put Sony from first place to potentially third. They've lost billions of dollars and won't recoup it all in the coming years on the PS3 (and possibly won't even with Blu-Ray royalties). I don't see how it isn't a flop based on what their initial goals with it would have been.

And the defacto HD format so far is looking like digital distributed content via a service provider (be it over the internet or through your cable company).

Wasn't the difference between the regular old mini disc players and the Net MD that you could record songs onto the Net MD using a USB cable? I remember it being advertised fairly heavily next to portable MP3 players, so I assumed that it was meant to compete with them.

Pretty much. You could transfer music onto it via Sonicstage, the biggest piece of shit software ever designed. Previous to that you had to record the songs 1:1 through a player in real time. It was still really the same underlying tech as the previous MD though and was pretty great at a time when portable mp3 players were very expensive in comparison. I think you could fit up to 5 hours of music on a disc at low bitrate.
ATRAC only support was a huge barrier though.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Holy Fuck! :lol
30 bucks for a new Minidisc player!

That's awesome.

 

[Wark]

HD DVD (2006-2008)

We've got to hand it to Toshiba. It gave Sony a run for its money in the next-gen DVD format wars and actually had better (and cheaper) players in the early going. For a brief moment, it could have gone either way, but then Warner went Blu-ray exclusive, and it was game over.

The store I work at has at least five or six of those HD-DVD 360 add-on drives. Although I already have a PS3 and buy blu-rays, I do admit it is tempting to buy a HD-DVD drive because it is around $10 and the HD-DVDs are around a buck or two a piece. :lol

 

[benjipwns]

Tch, kids.

The Zip drive was amazing for the time. We didn't have writable CDs or portable HDDs or USB thumbdrives (we didn't even have USB ports!)

100MB in 1994/1995 when these drives were released was massive compared to the 1.4MB you got from a floppy disk and would continue to be for some years until CD writers and media came down in price.

Had a professor in 2004 tell the class that Zip drives were the wave of the future and that everyone should buy one for at home to be ready when it happened. And had everyone in the class turn in files on zip discs he handed out.

 

[Zaptruder]

It put Sony from first place to potentially third. They've lost billions of dollars and won't recoup it all in the coming years on the PS3 (and possibly won't even with Blu-Ray royalties). I don't see how it isn't a flop based on what their initial goals with it would have been.

And the defacto HD format so far is looking like digital distributed content via a service provider (be it over the internet or through your cable company).

The market place is been split between digital download media and traditional media.

It's not that traditional media has become obsolete yet (or even in the middle term future).

 

[mattiewheels]

I don't think I've ever known anyone with a minidisc player. I don't think I've ever even seen a minidisc.

it was a consumer-level failure, but radio stations and studios used minidiscs extensively. it was a big format for radio, i believe.

 

[Operations]

:lol

 

[Vomiaouaf]

Yoostar.

 

[Drkirby]

CueCat (1999-2001)

A device created for no existing demand. You could scan a barcode from a magazine and it would take you to the products webpage.

late 2000, advertisements containing CueCat barcodes briefly appeared in some high-circulation U.S. mass-market periodicals, notably Parade magazine, Forbes magazine and Wired magazine. For a time, RadioShack published catalogs containing these barcodes, and even distributed CueCat devices at no charge. CueCats were also bulk mailed (unsolicited) to certain mailing lists, such as subscribers of technology magazines, notably Wired magazine. For roughly a year, starting in October 2000, The Dallas Morning News and other Belo-owned newspapers added the barcodes next to major articles (Belo had invested in Digital Convergence).


edit: whew, that was a close one.

I owned one of those, I just found it one day in my house :lol

It was fun playing around with it a for a few minutes, seeing as it worked as a normal bar code scanner, but since it was 2006 when I found the thing, it was useless other then to output barcodes into notepad by scanning them.

 

[The Chosen One]

Tch, kids.

The Zip drive was amazing for the time. We didn't have writable CDs or portable HDDs or USB thumbdrives (we didn't even have USB ports!)

100MB in 1994/1995 when these drives were released was massive compared to the 1.4MB you got from a floppy disk and would continue to be for some years until CD writers and media came down in price.

Also, Surface is still a very new technology. To call it a flop is like calling a 2 month old baby a failure at life because it doesn't have a job.

Truth.

You youngins' don't know what you're talking about it. Zip Drives simply became outdated they were never a flop. But I do need to start transferring all my data on Zip cartridges to a USB stick before serial ports become obsolete. :lol Many computers don't ship with serial ports anymore...

But it does make me glad that I was at the beginning of the Internet (the 90s) at least at the consumer level. It's our generations automobile or airplane. It's completely changed our lives and connected us in a whole new way. It's interesting seeing kids and teens who already basically can't comprehend the world without the Internet.

 

[Buckethead]

Mac Mini should be on that list..

 

[GhaleonEB]

Truth.

You youngins' don't know what you're talking about it. Zip Drives simply became outdated they were never a flop. But I do need to start transferring all my data on Zip cartridges to a USB stick before serial ports become obsolete. :lol Many computers don't ship with serial ports anymore...

But it does make me glad that I was at the beginning of the Internet (the 90s) at least at the consumer level. It's our generations automobile or airplane. It's completely changed our lives and connected us in a whole new way. It's interesting seeing kids and teens who already basically can't comprehend the world without the Internet.

Yup. It was a crucial transition technology. My Excel and Word files in college were big enough that I was having to split them into 2-3 floppy discs EACH. Upgrading to a Zip drive was essential for all of my college years (which started in 2001) because read/write CD's just weren't around yet.

It didn't last, but it filled in a gap between floppy and CDs that needed filling.

 

[Timedog]

Yup. It was a crucial transition technology. My Excel and Word files in college were big enough that I was having to split them into 2-3 floppy discs EACH. Upgrading to a Zip drive was essential for all of my college years (which started in 2001) because read/write CD's just weren't around yet.

It didn't last, but it filled in a gap between floppy and CDs that needed filling.

Huh? I had a CD burner in 2001 that I bought for I think 125-150.

 

[The Chosen One]

Yeah but CD-Rs were write once and CD-RWs were a bit unreliable. It was good for backing up data, but not really for constant read/writes. Zip Drives allowed you to store, move, and retrieve large amounts of data with relative ease. Also the Zip disks were nice and sturdy. It was definitely a good transition technology. It really didn't become obsolete until large video and music media files became prevalent (thereby making the Zip drive storage capacity seem smaller) and of course USB drives.

 

[mollipen]

Zip discs were the most amazing thing in the world back in the day. I remember wanting to get a drive when they came out but everybody was sold out of them. Finally got one, and holy crap 100MB of storage was the most awesome thing ever. I was sure that they'd end up replacing the floppy drive, and even had a Mac tower that had a built-in ZIP drive.

I also have a soft spot in my heart for MD. No way would I want to go back to them, but I still love the little discs to this day. When I lived in Japan, I didn't have an iPod (that was around first gen when they were still expensive), so my MD player was wonderful when riding the train or walking the streets of downtown Osaka.

 

[bucknuticus]

Microsoft Surface, anyone? I've never seen one of these. Anywhere.

We have 3 here on my college campus in dining halls.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

I didn't know how to unzip files and then I saw zip drives in the store. Almost bought one. In the end I never had one.

 

[numble]

We have 3 here on my college campus in dining halls.

What is it used for?

 

[bucknuticus]

What is it used for?

Well most are games now jsut to play with some friends; but theyre building a new student union that opens in the the spring. It is supposed to have a lot more in there, from which you can order food from.

 

[baultista]

 

[SlipperySlope]

Yes, Xbox only had one game.

Sigh.

Xbox and PlayStation 3 do not fit into the category of biggest tech flops of the decade.

How so? They each lost their companies many billions of dollars. Probably more than any of the other products in the OP.

That should at least "fit them into the category".

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Yeah but CD-Rs were write once and CD-RWs were a bit unreliable.

Yeah, I misguidedly bought a pack of RWs thinking I could just reuse them all the time.

They would burn out in like a week or less.

 

[Stencil]

I had one of those. Before I could afford an iPod. Compared to having a CD player on which I could barely play CD-Rs on, it was a godsend. I remember, my last MD had a playlist of Johnny Cash, Flaming Lips and (ugh) Polyphonic Spree.

Yoostar.

Oh god, I just saw a commercial for that on TV yesterday. I couldn't tell if they were serious. "You get to set up your own green screen!!"

 

[Parl]

I agree with all of these.

PS3 is a flop for two major reasons, a massive loss in market share, though part of that isn't their fault because they weren't exactly going to go up, but they could have prevented a good chunk of it if they didn't screw up.... and massive loss of money - at the end of the day, it can't be a success, if it doesn't makes money, or if it makes its money back indirectly (Blu-ray, but it ain't gonna bring back ~$6 billion).

Xbox because despite the point not making a profit and protecting the Windows operating system, and to also get a foothold, it lost nearly as much money as the PS3 has so far, mostly down to poor design of the hardware, crappy branding.

GameCube, because of its low market share, though it made a tidy profit, and combined with GBA, doubled PS2's profits. Still not enough market share for a company with so many unique advantages, as they've utilised with DS and Wii.

I think PS3 has to take it though. A massive decrease in market share, but most of all, the biggest loss maker this industry has ever seen.

 

[gimmmick]

LOL I had to use these things in college. Only 100MB and there were different ones formatted for PC and Mac. Thank God for the USB thumb drive!

Well compared to what we have now, this was the total shit when it came to portable storage. (remeber... 1.4 megs over 250?). This was in a time when cdrws weren't popular as well.

 

[maharg]

You know what I really liked about my HD-DVDs over my Blu-rays? All my HD-DVDs started up with the movie, not trailer after trailer after trailer after trailer. "We've got 20 more gigs of space now? Lets use it to punish consumers and throw in as many commercials in front of the product they paid for!"

God yes. For all the bitching this forum did about HD-DVD, there's so much that it *did* get right as a *content* format. While nearly every HD-DVD I owned had a streamlined overlay menu and instant movie startup, Blu-Ray has been nearly the opposite. I dunno if it was just that the studios on HD-DVD cared about that, or there was some kind of imperative to do it as a competitive feature or what, but I liked that a lot and I really miss it.

As for Minidisc, it's still the device and format of choice for live recording of stuff like interviews. That's a niche that mp3 players haven't even attempted to touch. To call it a failure is ridiculous.

 

[gimmmick]

Cell Processor

All that money invested for RD, and what exactly did IBM, sony or tosihiba do with the technology?

 

[benjipwns]

Well, there's about 13,000 of them in this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner

 

[Night_Trekker]

oh, yeah, let me fix that. only one game that didn't SUCK. there.

So, so damn ignorant.

 

[JoshuaJSlone]

CueCat (1999-2001)

A device created for no existing demand. You could scan a barcode from a magazine and it would take you to the products webpage.

late 2000, advertisements containing CueCat barcodes briefly appeared in some high-circulation U.S. mass-market periodicals, notably Parade magazine, Forbes magazine and Wired magazine. For a time, RadioShack published catalogs containing these barcodes, and even distributed CueCat devices at no charge. CueCats were also bulk mailed (unsolicited) to certain mailing lists, such as subscribers of technology magazines, notably Wired magazine. For roughly a year, starting in October 2000, The Dallas Morning News and other Belo-owned newspapers added the barcodes next to major articles (Belo had invested in Digital Convergence).


edit: whew, that was a close one.

Haha, yes. I know this best as a piece of "set design" in my place (read: sitting in a pile of things like DK bongos and third party SNES controllers). Reading this made me rush over and plug the thing in. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it other than read encoded product barcodes into Notepad for laughs. .C3nZC3nZC3nYChz2Cxb7CxnX.fHmc.DxvXCxD7ENn7C3r1.

 

[rezuth]

Cell Processor

All that money invested for RD, and what exactly did IBM, sony or tosihiba do with the technology?

They are using it in Playstation 3, Servers, HDTVs, Supercomputing etc etc. I would hardly call that a failure.

 

[Osaka]

All the console trolls are in the wrong thread.

 

[Blackhead]

That guy? If you want to thank anyone for the death of OLPC, it's Intel. The idea of having AMD chips in a non-profit charity laptop upset them too much, so they came out with their own and made serious cash with it, killing the charity in the process.

I think he's talking about Negroponte selling out and putting Windows and Intel on the device even though they weren't the best options. There was some serious moneyhatting going on (the Nigerian case being one of the worst examples). The olpc laptop is still very good for kids in the third world, hackers are still refining and adding stuff to sugar, but once I got an iPhone I never turned mine on again and eventually sold it.

 

[jonnybryce]

For the medicore gaming system N-Gage was, it was a pretty cheap and unique S60 device at the time. I really loved the form factor. The second one, the QD, was actually kinda nice and the games got better, but by the time they got their act together it was too little, too late. It did have some fun, exclusive games like System Rush, Pathway to Glory, High Seize, One, anything by Gameloft (Ghost Recon had great graphics and gameplay for the time, hell even now)...but they managed to do everything wrong for a very long time.

N-Gage Arena was cool though. Xbox Live community on the go, shadow racing for action games, actual online play for strategy and turn based games. Sony and Nintendo still haven't stepped up to the plate on this one.

Most people laugh at the N-Gage, but I gave it a shot. The first was a heavily flawed but interesting idea, the second was a solid device with some good titles that fizzled out. Nokia really had no idea what they were doing. I would love another N-Gage type phone, with a gamepad, good buttons and horizontal layout to come around.

 

[djdac]

I still use a Zip drive for my MPC2000.

 

[shuri]

Can the gamers go smell up the gaming section instead?

 

[Dead Man]

Can the gamers go smell up the gaming section instead?

Oh noes, people talking about gamez on MY GAF?!?!>?!!!?!? :lol Get over yourself.

 

[Osaka]

Oh noes, people talking about gamez on MY GAF?!?!>?!!!?!? :lol Get over yourself.

Except they're not talking about games, they're just mocking the consoles that they don't own/like/whatever. Which wouldn't really stand on the gaming section, either, really.