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CNET Top 5 Apple Flops
- Thread starter gkarris
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-Apple III: Definitely a flop, no question. Huge mistake for Apple, and didn't really lead to anything new.
-Newton: I wouldn't call this a flop, per se, but more like a product ahead of its time
-John Sculley: I don't see how he is a flop. If anything, Gil Amelio was. But Sculley did do some good things as president, and as Steve himself said, firing Steve was the best thing for the company at the time (Not to mention it led to the development of NeXT and eventually Steve Job's return).
-G4 Cube. Only a flop because they didn't put in a fan in it.
-Puck mouse. It's a terrible mouse, but I wouldn't say it was Apple's greatest flop. Pippin, anyone? Apple quicktake Cameras? A lot of stuff out there worse than the puck mouse.
-Newton: I wouldn't call this a flop, per se, but more like a product ahead of its time
-John Sculley: I don't see how he is a flop. If anything, Gil Amelio was. But Sculley did do some good things as president, and as Steve himself said, firing Steve was the best thing for the company at the time (Not to mention it led to the development of NeXT and eventually Steve Job's return).
-G4 Cube. Only a flop because they didn't put in a fan in it.
-Puck mouse. It's a terrible mouse, but I wouldn't say it was Apple's greatest flop. Pippin, anyone? Apple quicktake Cameras? A lot of stuff out there worse than the puck mouse.
The Cube is cool (no pun intended), and very collectible. The Mini is sort of a more compact one and is awesome - hope they replace it with something more powerful though.
Pippin - I got a chance to get one when MacWarehouse was closing them out. I unpacked it just to make sure it worked. Was cool though, not ahead of its time, just couldn't compete with Sega, Sony, and Nintendo at the time...
Yes. The PRICE was the problem. Nobody cares about the fan, or lack of fan... the cube was an expensive CPU who is difficult to upgrade, and you still needed to buy a monitor and keep throwing extras in your cart.
Users who dont want to upgrade were buying the iMac, users who wanted to buy a monitor and other stuff were buying the powermac. Apple jusdt didnt have enough marketshare or mass-appeal at the time to support 3 desktop lines and the cube died. And the main selling point of it being "super quiet" didnt create enough appeal to justify the cost.
And I think the choice of the puck mouse as the #1 failure was a softball pick to Apple. It symbolizes the trademark single button mac mouse, and the most popular whine of apple users or the newly converted "why is there only one mouse button" The puck mouse was vastly unusable and just frustrating for anyone other than small children on imac's (who I expect the puck-mouse was initialy designed for)
The product has a terrible reputation for anyone who has ever used it, and its not very controversal. So its probably the safest pick of all 5, and therefore number 1.
I never understood why so many people complained about the puck mouse. I actually kind of liked it. I have rather small hands, so it fit me nicely and I thought it looked kinda cool. Obviously I'm in the minority here, but just wanted to cast my vote in favor of the puck mouse.
That "Bob" interface was a terrible idea. What was Apple thinking? Oh wait, "Bob" was a Microsoft flop, not Apple's. 
See Bill Gates' Legacy: Microsoft's Top 10 Flops.
Yes, I'd agree that the hockey puck mouse was one of the worst-ever Apple products. Didn't they test it for more than 5 minutes before foisting it on us?
The reason it was so awful was that it was round, so you couldn't orient it to face the right direction. If it rotated a bit, your hand had no feedback; the cursor just acted strangely.
See Bill Gates' Legacy: Microsoft's Top 10 Flops.
Yes, I'd agree that the hockey puck mouse was one of the worst-ever Apple products. Didn't they test it for more than 5 minutes before foisting it on us?
The reason it was so awful was that it was round, so you couldn't orient it to face the right direction. If it rotated a bit, your hand had no feedback; the cursor just acted strangely.
I would call it a flop. Nobody bought it, whether it was a product "ahead of its time" or not.
Same with the Cube. It was beautiful, but expensive and slow for the price you paid, and it didn't sell.
The Newton was too far ahead of its time, the puck mouse was hard and uncomfortable on big hands, the Apple III flopped because of no internal fan to cool it; so the chips on the board would warp and come loose; so you had to take and slam it 4 inches back onto your desk to reseat everything. I have no opinion on Sculley, and the Cube bombed because it was more expensive then the same Powermac G4 tower that offered a lot more expandability (2GB vs 1.5GB, any AGP2X card, multiple drives, Zip, multiple PCI cards, faster HDD and DVD/CD drive). The Cube also had a problem with the cases coming with mold lines that people saw as cracks, hindering its beauty somewhat. And it didnt really cut down on clutter, espically since to have forsay a CD-RW drive AND a DVD-ROM, you had to have an external Firewire CD-RW drive, second hard drive would be a FW HDD, etc. equaling a ton of cable mess. Even without expanding it via the FW and USB, it still had as many cords as a regular G4 tower.
How long untilTV is added to the list?
HEY!!!
TV is AWESOME!!!! Watching Casablanca on it right now actually 
How long until
Isn't the main problem content? And won't that come?
And cost...and heat...and lack of other features without hacks (codecs, RSS etc)...
Features can be added (Apple have even said they intend to add more features), the cost can come down (like with the iPod), leaving heat which can be resolved with new and better hardware.
I really liked the puck mouse, after-
1. They added the ridge so you knew which side was 'up'.
2. I realized it wasn't supposed to be gripped in your palm like a regular mouse, but held with your fingertips.
1. They added the ridge so you knew which side was 'up'.
2. I realized it wasn't supposed to be gripped in your palm like a regular mouse, but held with your fingertips.
i've only ever been an OSX user... but i've read alot of things in this forum. lol.
you may have not wanted to go there.
I think flop also indicate its life span is short, for OS2-9, its too long to be called an accident event, its a during failure.
