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WOF: Biggest tech failures of 2012

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On December 14, 2012, 6:00 PM

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 failures of 2011. The threat to freedom of the web through initiatives like SOPA rounded out the top five. Fortunately, the bill was shelved along with PIPA and CISPA this year following a massive Internet blackout that several heavyweights including Reddit and Wikipedia took part on.

On that note, the latter is probably worthy of a mention as one of the biggest tech triumphs of the year, but we’ll keep our champaign bottles corked for now as the idea of legislative action lives on among those in power.

As you’d expect 2012 brought on a fresh batch of tech failures and we’re putting them up for another vote. Among my picks (in no particular order) are the troubled Facebook IPO amid a technical fault on Nasdaq’s system, HP overpaying for Autonomy and taking a multi-billion dollar charge, RIM’s inability to deliver BlackBerry 10 devices on time, and AMD’s continued decline as a serious competitor to Intel.

But there’s plenty more to choose from. There’s the Google Nexus Q that was killed off before launch, Apple Maps, the ongoing litigation over mobile patents, and though it’s too early too tell perhaps even Microsoft’s Surface tablet along with the Metro interface could be worthy of the list.

Cast your votes below (up to three picks) and let us know about any tech failures we've left out.

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User Comments: 28

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  1. A tie for me between Windows 8 and The Iphone 5 itself. All the hype that built up to the 5 fell flat. Just a half inch longer slightly faster and a new back, goes to show the most die hard Apple fans will buy anything they put out. Not at all the changes we were expecting. Windows 8 speaks for itself. I for one wont be upgrading when 7 runs just fine.

  2. Wow, that is a pretty distinctive lead we have for the top four.

  3. Windows 8. anything else is just small.

    It's not that they're small. They just look it because they're not fullscreen.

    Perfect reply. I could not help but smile. ^_^

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