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Biggest tech flops of the decade
- Thread starter ToxicAdam
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There's actually a moderate amount of useful stuff that can be done with those, after you "neuter" them.JoshuaJSlone said:
Example howto.
They're pretty neat if your webcam isn't good enough for cataloguing software like Libra or Delicious Library.
maharg said:
HD-DVD was the best format by miles from a consumer point of view, but, Blu-ray offered all of the DRM shit that Disney, Sony and Fox insisted on. They were never going to jump ship to the red camp in a million years. And with Toshiba loss-leading like mad with their players, there was absolutely no room for any other manufacturer, so they all stayed Blu too.
I was happy when Warner ended the war because it meant I could finally buy some fucking HD movies already.
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.
Oh, I agree, but by that point it was already too late. The Classmate was already shoring up every potential market the OLPC could have hoped for.
The deal with the devil was the last throw of the dice. They were damned if they did or didn't.
Ignatz Mouse
Banned
GSG Flash said:
That was a difference, but I'd still say it's old tech with a new feature, not new tech.
FWIW, I had MD both before and after NetMD, and until mp3 players came down in price/went up in capacity, they were awesome.
AiBO was not a flop. It was a product sold to tech enthusiasts and those with more money than sense. It was never a mass market product and never would be at its price point. The "floppiest" part about it was that when all was said and done, you were paying something like $3000 for a robot dog that really didn't do much. i don't think it was until the later models that they would actually walk themselves to the charging station. Software upgrades were in the hundreds.
Regarding NetMD, another big difference between the older MDLP-only Minidisc recorder/players and the new NetMD models is that the later often lacked the optical line in for recording digitally from sources. Later the NetMD models would get rid of line in altogether.
As much as i hate proprietary formats, MD and ATRAC3 was better than the CDRs and limited storage of the MP3 players we had at the time. People forget or just don't know that the first MP3 players were typically 128MB or less, which made them novelty devices that could hold at most three CDs of "CD quality" music. It wasn't until you transcoded them that you could fit more.
i won't even go into the cool, "collectible" MDs which were durable as hell or the fact that players had awesome sound quality. They also got awesome battery life, particularly for a device with motor. ATRAC3 was a much better format than MP3, and was more comparable to MP4 in terms of compression ratios. Sony drug their feet releasing transfer software that didn't suck ass, and then with releasing software. They're far better in comparison now, but back then they were their own worst enemy. In the face of the oncoming flash media player onslaught, MD was a doomed format, sure, but it could've been relevant for longer in the US had Sony not been so inept. Hell, it lasted way into the iPod's life in the UK and of course Japan.
Xbox and Gamecube... failures? Xbox was Microsoft's foot in the door. A box that was friendly enough to hacking and piracy which helped establish the brand. It succeeded as part of Microsoft's "toss money into a market until we're relevant" strategy, and on the first try. And the Gamecube, was not popular, but profitable. The Dreamcast was the biggest failure of the decade (distant second to Nuon), and i say that was a big Dreamcast/Sega hardware fan.
Don't even get me started on Zip drives. The only flops in that line were the Zip 250 and 750 which didn't work in the Zip 100 drives and competed with CDR discs that were cheap enough to add more sessions to until it was full. Even for those of us who had a CDR drive (read: Not a CDRW drive), the Zip 100 was the easiest way to transport those "too big for a floppy" files.
Regarding NetMD, another big difference between the older MDLP-only Minidisc recorder/players and the new NetMD models is that the later often lacked the optical line in for recording digitally from sources. Later the NetMD models would get rid of line in altogether.
As much as i hate proprietary formats, MD and ATRAC3 was better than the CDRs and limited storage of the MP3 players we had at the time. People forget or just don't know that the first MP3 players were typically 128MB or less, which made them novelty devices that could hold at most three CDs of "CD quality" music. It wasn't until you transcoded them that you could fit more.
i won't even go into the cool, "collectible" MDs which were durable as hell or the fact that players had awesome sound quality. They also got awesome battery life, particularly for a device with motor. ATRAC3 was a much better format than MP3, and was more comparable to MP4 in terms of compression ratios. Sony drug their feet releasing transfer software that didn't suck ass, and then with releasing software. They're far better in comparison now, but back then they were their own worst enemy. In the face of the oncoming flash media player onslaught, MD was a doomed format, sure, but it could've been relevant for longer in the US had Sony not been so inept. Hell, it lasted way into the iPod's life in the UK and of course Japan.
Xbox and Gamecube... failures? Xbox was Microsoft's foot in the door. A box that was friendly enough to hacking and piracy which helped establish the brand. It succeeded as part of Microsoft's "toss money into a market until we're relevant" strategy, and on the first try. And the Gamecube, was not popular, but profitable. The Dreamcast was the biggest failure of the decade (distant second to Nuon), and i say that was a big Dreamcast/Sega hardware fan.
Don't even get me started on Zip drives. The only flops in that line were the Zip 250 and 750 which didn't work in the Zip 100 drives and competed with CDR discs that were cheap enough to add more sessions to until it was full. Even for those of us who had a CDR drive (read: Not a CDRW drive), the Zip 100 was the easiest way to transport those "too big for a floppy" files.
Skiptastic
Member
I'm glad they got off to such a great start including technology from last decade in this one (Dreamcast).
lolololololololololMr. Snrub said:
I saw one of those (or something incredibly similar) in a hotel when I went to PAX. The whole weekend I never saw a single person that wasn't having significant issues getting it to work correctly.eggandI said:
Microsoft Surface, anyone? I've never seen one of these. Anywhere.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
DMczaf said:
Oh God yes. Win ME was fucking trash. I remember installing it years ago, and less than 10 minutes after the installation was done, it gave me a BSoD. What a piece of shit that OS was. Going from Win 98 SE to Win ME almost felt like downgrading.
Zhund0r said:
While the launch of Vista undeniably was a flop in terms of reception and popularity, I'd say the OS was decent enough as soon as MS rolled out the service packs and the driver support got better. Win 7 is superior, though.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
GhaleonEB said:
Yup. When I was in college until 99, Zip drives were a necessity. CD Burners were not common enough and the write speeds were slow as hell. CDRW was even worse and unreliable. Zip was for larger file sizes that you needed to access and rewrite on a lot, which was handy in photoshop and 3dsmax classes. Jazz drives were in use too, but only a few classes.
Zip was great for the time before USB Flash drives started coming into rampant use.
~Devil Trigger~
In favor of setting Muslim women on fire
Holy Shit YES this xworldrunover said:
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!
talk about getting left behind
maharg said:
Ignatz Mouse said:
Well I was specifically talking about the NetMD players (as you can see in my original post), since Minidiscs came out in the early 90's it'd be kinda hard to classify that as the flop of the decade :lol
D
Deleted member 22576
Unconfirmed Member
The Ngage QD was actually a pretty cool as a phone.
My friend had one when it came out. The port of TonyHawk was actually pretty if I remember.
My friend had one when it came out. The port of TonyHawk was actually pretty if I remember.
What about Spore?
Although it's unfair to think of a single video game as "tech", Spore promised to be unlike any video game before it. Then when you factor in the time and money spent in developing it, you would have to call it one of the biggest flops of the decade (for video games).
Although it's unfair to think of a single video game as "tech", Spore promised to be unlike any video game before it. Then when you factor in the time and money spent in developing it, you would have to call it one of the biggest flops of the decade (for video games).
maharg said:
I guess so, but would you agree that NetMDs themselves weren't so successful even if the underlying technology was and still is widely used?
ToxicAdam said:
Man if we're including flop video games, the list wouldn't be finished until well into next year :lol
silverbullet1080
Banned
This was supposed to come out Winter 09 too, and there's only a couple of weeks left :lolbaultista said:
Anaxagoras
Banned
Not the biggest flop but still worth mentioning.
GSG Flash said:
Sure, it wasn't very successful, but it's not like Sony was banking anything serious on it either. It was an attempt to breathe some last life into a dying format (as far as consumers were concerned), and it did that to some extent but obviously didn't last. Meanwhile, Sony was making mp3 players and pushing memory sticks like there was no tomorrow.
I don't think flop is really synonymous with unsuccessful.
BigJonsson
Member
I own a Dreamcast, not a flop for me
Was the Segway really a flop? I mean obviously it didn't CHANGE YOUR CONCEPT OF THE ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE like they said it would, but the things still managed to stick around, even if only as novelty things. There's actually a Segway store in my town (which I've been meaning to check out for a while but haven't gotten around to it for some reason), and I see mall cops on them all the time.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
KevinCow said:
Didnt Jobs call Segway like "the most important invention in all of human history?" Well Segway fell short of that so i consider it a flop.
edit: im serious! i got hyped up like a fool thinking the invention was some kind of super cheap abundant energy thingie or some kind of new medicine or something.
Corwood Rep
Member
Okay, slight tangent: was the Phantom game system *actually* a pump and dump? I never actually followed it.
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
6.8 said:
You are probably right. It was awhile ago :lol
deadhorse32
Bad Art
6.8 said:
"They'll build cities around them." - Steve Jobs
megashock5
Member
XCell9200 said:I use apple tv
Me too. I think it all comes down to what you want out of it. I want to put my library of music on the the Mac upstairs and access all of it on my home theater downstairs.
This does exactly what I want it to do, elegantly, and is unobtrusive next to the TV.
NekoFever
Member
:lol I watched that the other day and thought what a great GIF that moment would make.Buckethead said:
Also, no way are Zip Drives and MiniDisc flops. Zip drives were awesome up until large capacity flash drives came out - it certainly had advantages over CD-RWs - and I remember loads of people having MD players, not to mention how prevalent they were (are?) in radio. When you can hear them changing discs around on the radio, those are MDs that they're changing.
HD DVD was a flop, but I still like some of its benefits. On top of the aforementioned ones it was also completely region free, which was awesome when you don't live in the US. Perversely, the advantages that we've cited are big reasons why it didn't get support from certain studios, because the likes of Disney and Fox are the absolute worst when it comes to trailers at the beginning and region coding. From a consumer perspective it was also nice that it had less DRM, which both avoided the early compatibility problems with stuff like BD+ and makes it easier to rip.
To be fair, I remember reading that manufacturers weren't happy with the Blu-ray market, because the PS3 had it tied up. It's only now that you can get cheaper players that approach what people are used to with DVD players in terms of size, speed, functionality, etc that standalones are gaining market share.Burai said:
Battersea Power Station
Member
I remember seeing a lot of marketing about that Helio thing. How did that pan out?
stephendedalus
Member
Almost every major metropolitan police department in the US uses the Segway instead of on-foot officers and sometimes in place of bicycles.
... and a lot of national news organizations use the Microsoft Surface for their broadcasts. NBC and MSNBC of course, that is a given.
... and a lot of national news organizations use the Microsoft Surface for their broadcasts. NBC and MSNBC of course, that is a given.
neptunes said:2005:
Steve jobs: Hey guys, here's the iPhone you've always wanted.
listen to how enthusiastic the audience is upon seeing it.
http://www.theiphoneblog.com/2009/09/21/monday-fun-video-steve-jobs-intros-2005-motorola-rokr/
:lol :lol :lol Proof that Steve Jobs can sell any crap if he put up a show.
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