WOF: Biggest tech failures of 2012

When we asked this question a year ago most of you agreed that AMD's FX brand relaunch, Sony's PSN data breach, Netflix's Qwikster spin-off, and HP's handling of WebOS while almost quitting the PC market were among the worst tech...

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Hybrid and convertible laptops are amazing. Its a shame they are pretty much forced windows 8 at this point.

Windows 8 itself is a failure. Not for the reason I thought it would be though. It really reminds me of WinME. Sure it has some nifty new features and changes, but overall, the whole OS is pointless other than a new hub just to sell stuff. Once you uninstall all of that stuff..Its Win 7 without a START button.

If this had been UK-centric I'd have expected to see (and voted for) Everything Everywhere (EE) & their 4g network with no unlimited data plans (& extortionate pricing).

so the team behind windows 8 development just removed the start button of windows 7 and called it windows 8?
all those wasted time for nothing.
/s

Don't get me wrong, I know some people really like Win8 and I'm glad for them. In my opinion, however, I really do not believe it is much different than Win 7. I think they just rushed it out the door just for the sake of selling apps and to get a piece of Google's and Apple's pie.

Like apple did with the ipad mini? lol

This writer must be an apple fan boy... He forgot to mention apple maps

With iPhone 5 and ios6 and purple camera

You couldn't find room for AMD's Piledriver FX chips? They could have won back to back Tech failure of the year awards with them!

Those chips are about on par with processors AMD was releasing 4 years ago. How is that not worthy of a biggest tech failure of the year nomination?

Yeah I mentioned AMD on the post but forgot to include it in the poll... my bad

Perhaps you should take another look. Apple Maps is mentioned and so far is the most voted on the poll as well. The iPhone 5 is definitely not a 'failure'. You may dislike the phone, the company, or iOS but that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people do like it and it's selling like crazy.

I don't see Piledriver as a fail it's a great mid-range chip for encoding video. What is a fail is Intel's mobile market share versus ARM. Intel has spent so much time focused on kicking a 3 legged dog that's it's overlooked the scorpion.

hmm, I wonder why "never ending clash between Apple fanboys vs Win fanboys" not included in the poll?

Seeing as Microsoft and Apple are competing for top spot on this list, I'd say neither has many fans on this forum right now.

How is Zuckerburg et. al. duping people into buying FB on the IPO not at the top of the list?

Apple Maps: Embarrassed Apple, frustrated users.
FB IPO: Embarrassed analysts, FB, the NASDAQ, and took a whole lot of people for a whole lot of money.

The complete and utter fail of RIM is one to certainly take note of. RIM and Apple were the two major developers who rammed smartphones down our collective consumer gullet. They helped spark the smartphone revolution. Now they cant even release a phone. There was a time when BlackBerry was literally EVERYWHERE. This is a tech giant who didnt end with a bang but with a gurgly sigh.

Windows 8. anything else is just small.

Well said. You have my vote on this one.

Well... for one, Zuckerburg didn't want an IPO. It was required from the SEC once FB got enough investors. They got to the point where they needed money, but couldn't continue to get investment without going public. They were also pushed into going public by it's current investors who wanted a return on the money they had given FB. It shouldn't even be on the list... no one thought FB was ever going to be some big money making machine, it's why the stock went down immediately and stayed there.

Part of defining failure should be an element of surprise... like Apple maps. Who would have thought Apple would fall on their face with a piece of software.

Windows 8 should be a failure of marketing. It's so different from Win 7 that it's more of a side-grade than an upgrade. They should have called it Windows Metro or something and marketed it as an option for your desktop if you wanted your computer to act more like a tablet/phone.

I think the patent war is the biggest failure, but it'll go beyond 2012 of course. There doesn't seem to be any end in sight.