Tech Fail! Biggest Flops of The Last 10+ Years

[cookiedude]

They didn't fail technologically but failed in their respective markets. It's the same if you go further back to betamax for example. It was actually a superior product to VHS. If I remember correctly when the HD-DVD vs Bluray battle commenced I think the reading I did pointed to HD-DVD as the better format.

I'm 90% sure that in this instance the technologically superior format won, largely due to BR offering higher capacities so not a vast difference between the two... but still :grin:

 

[mrtraver]

Ami i the only one who LIKED Windows Me? Or is that cognitive dissonance kicking in, telling me i liked it becasue i actually paid for the upgrade? Yes, I was young and stupid. I bought it mainly for the system restore feature, but i never did have any of the compatibility issues that everyone seems to bring up.

 

[cookiedude]

Seems I was lucky to have skipped ME, thanks to the advice of a friend I jumped straight to Windows 2000, one of the best versions I've used.

 

[HalfHuman]

i must say i enjoyed win me and had a good experience. of course when i switched to winxp i did not look back. did not touch vista but happily jumped on win7.
drm is of course a dumb ideea, at least the way it's implemented.
i kinda agree with "android" being included here. i'm a android guy myself, using a galaxy tab 7inch as a phone. bought my wife a htc wildfire s. however i'm greatly annoyed by the fragmentation. there are lots of customizations that change the experience significantly. many models (phones/tablets) are abandoned shortly and we do not get updates and we are left with underperforming and unstable os versions. i'm sick and tired of custom cables for data/power (especially ipad like ones or the many "little" usb formats) that cost tens of dollars. this is however common for laptops also.
i know all these were covered by many articles but i repeat this so maybe google gets a grip and starts putting some order into this mess. let the carriers customize but allow me to remove the customizations if i choose to. make sure that we get upgrades for devices at least for several years after buying them (don't care how but please provide the updates).

 

[CrisisDog]

HEY! No picking on the Dreamcast, I stil have two that I use, plenty of great games. Blame SEGA marketing.

And I still don't see why everyone still picks on Vista. I jumped on the x64 bandwagon with Vista's release and never had a problem.

I used to be for HD DVD too, but as time goes on, the disks are "rotting" and become unplayable, so I'll give you that one...

 

[HalfHuman]

blue ray was not so much better tham hddvd but offered better drm, or should i say "better" as in worse. hddvd had the advantage of being quite similar to dvds and it was cheaper to convert dvd fabs to make hddvd. also from the compatibility point of view was better as it's cheaper to make a drive supporting cd/dvd/hddvd than cd/dvd/blueray. anyway then can stick it as the disc are going down the drain. flash memory or online content are more convenient so it really does not matter much now.

 

[Guest]

I would totally agree with this article if they didn't say android tablet is a failure.
I love my Transformer Prime.

 

[mlauzon]

Add to the list Windows 8 already... And call me a prophet!

I wouldn't jump in on that one just yet.
If its the interface that drives this comment, I think they have done an ok job in melding a "Touch" interface with the more "Traditional" input methods.

The problem with ME and Vista were actual technical limitations and poor coding.

Only time will tell

Win8+Metro should've only been for tablets.

The guy who did the following video should've been hired by MS, as what he did would've been amazing on the desktop!

http://vimeo.com/4255076\

 

[mlauzon]

What the hell, it didn't quote the comment, just crammed everything together with the quote I was commenting on.

 

[Guest]

Where are P4 (especially its Prescott implementation) and Iomega & Syquest removale disk drives of pure fail ?

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Good article! Glad you mentioned DRM-- didn't see that one coming. Also surprised about the inclusion of Android tablets, but I'd have to admit that the iPad does seem much further along than the competition.

You didnt' see it coming because DRM isn't a product anyone tried to sell or get people to use. If this was a list of tech stuff we just don't like I'd add people complaining about DRM.

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

They didn't fail technologically but failed in their respective markets. It's the same if you go further back to betamax for example. It was actually a superior product to VHS. If I remember correctly when the HD-DVD vs Bluray battle commenced I think the reading I did pointed to HD-DVD as the better format.

I'm 90% sure that in this instance the technologically superior format won, largely due to BR offering higher capacities so not a vast difference between the two... but still :grin:

Actually Blu-ray won because Sony agreed to include much stronger piracy protection than Toshiba (I think?) was willing to include on HD DVD. This got the studios on board and once they signed on, it was over. Most industry analysts agreed that both Blu-ray and HD DVD would be smaller formats anyway (nothing like VHS or the DVD) because upconverting DVD was so easy and streaming HD movies replace all the discs anyway.

 

[DanUK]

nVidia GTX 480.


Dreamcast tho <3 Loved mine. Endless hours spent on Powerstone 1 & 2 and Soul Calibur. The Sonic game it was release with was quite solid also.

Wasn't this one of the first consoles to really try the whole online thing?

 

[Guest]

Rofl, two out of ten fails are OS's of MS. And then you call windows a superior OS to linux!

ps: sorry for this out of topic comment but i couldn't resist to the recent ubuntu review's comments!

 

[Guest]

not so hard to see that this article is written by a apple fanboy tablets aren't no flop or failure! but ppl who can't see the difference between an ipad and an tablet, are the failures

 

[Guest]

i am truly surprise to see playbooks on the list, i have one and love it. it's a lot cheaper than the ipad, has a large number of apps, works great, has a huge battery life, and works like a dream. i can't understand why it's called a failure, maybe because of low sales or lack of marketing?

 

[Arris]

They didn't fail technologically but failed in their respective markets. It's the same if you go further back to betamax for example. It was actually a superior product to VHS. If I remember correctly when the HD-DVD vs Bluray battle commenced I think the reading I did pointed to HD-DVD as the better format.

I'm 90% sure that in this instance the technologically superior format won, largely due to BR offering higher capacities so not a vast difference between the two... but still :grin:

Actually Blu-ray won because Sony agreed to include much stronger piracy protection than Toshiba (I think?) was willing to include on HD DVD. This got the studios on board and once they signed on, it was over. Most industry analysts agreed that both Blu-ray and HD DVD would be smaller formats anyway (nothing like VHS or the DVD) because upconverting DVD was so easy and streaming HD movies replace all the discs anyway.

"Studios" including Sony's own ones. Handy thing to have for the battle
As far as "bluray being better", it may have had higher capacity (still get extra features on 2nd disks) but I haven't seen that much use of it. From my research back in the day I seem to remember the encoding or something of HD-DVD being better than Bluray.

http://www.hometheaterblog.com/hometheater/2006/06/blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-fact-vs-fiction/

HD image quality is by and large dictated by its bit-rate, MPEG2 is an ancient (in relative terms) video codec. VC-1 is two to three times more efficient than MPEG2, and thus far it seems to be apparent, that Blu-ray?s smaller disc sizes are only exacerbating this inefficiency.

Until Blu-ray either adopts VC-1 as their sole video codec or releases Blu-ray movies on 50GB discs, it?s very unlikely that Blu-ray?s image quality will even match, much less surpass that of HD-DVD?s.

HD-DVD is simply delivering higher bit-rates and overall better image quality, than Blu-ray is capable of with the combination of MPEG2 and 25GB Blu-ray discs.

In theory with 50GB discs Blu-ray could greatly improve its video quality even with MPEG2, but again until it?s on shelves and in players it?s just a theory.

 

[captainawesome]

Every Blackberry os7 device ever made!

 

[Guest]

I agree my dad has one and its awesome, been using android tablets for a while, and I can't see why they're a failure. They offer a much better experience for really low cost, obviously depends on what you buy and how much you spend.

 

[LNCPapa]

It's the same if you go further back to betamax for example. It was actually a superior product to VHS. If I remember correctly when the HD-DVD vs Bluray battle commenced I think the reading I did pointed to HD-DVD as the better format.

Agree with Betamax being better technologically than VHS but disagree with HD-DVD being better than Bluray. I own two HD-DVD set top boxes, two bluray, and one multi capable disk drive on my PC. I have lots of media for both (I was buying it up like crazy while HD-DVD was on its way out... some titles for as little as $1. There was a max theoretical number of layers for HD-DVD of 3 - with each layer having a max capacity of 15 GB. Bluray's max theoretical number of layers is/was 8 with each layer maxing out at 25 GB. The audio and video capabilities were mostly identical and things could look just as good on one platform as the other.

 

[Guest]

not so hard to see that this article is written by a apple fanboy tablets aren't no flop or failure! but ppl who can't see the difference between an ipad and an tablet, are the failures

Well said, I think android tablets are really good, and I actually use them. I have used both iOS and Android devices. Windows Phone 7 is next on the list . I actually think ipod touches are failures coz the button breaks after a few months.. :|

 

[Guest]

The Android Tablets should definately not be on that list yet. If they end up to be phased out like hd-dvd then maybe but definately now is too early to say they failed.

 

[p51d007]

I had an internal & external zip drive. Never had an issue
with either one.
I think most of the problems were people leaving disks in the zip drive, powering
them off and the heads were not retracted. I saw & heard a lot of COD's from those
but mine never was one of them. I still have the disks & drives.

 

[amstech]

The Sega Dreamcast was one of my favorite systems.
Which is saying a lot for me, I have owned them all.

Ready to Rumble Boxing, Hydro Thunder, Soul Calibur, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, Powerstone, Virtual ON, Shemnue, etc etc.

Some of my favorite gaming experiences of all time.
The issue with the Dreamcast was the timing of its release.

Newer consoles packing/bringing 3D gaming goodness made the Dreamcast's hardware obsolete within a year but that system will always hold a special place in my heart.

 

[Guest]

You forgot to add Apple's Ping and Mobileme... those were both colossal failures.