6 ms·

Apple's five worst products ever

11 points by sabon 17y ago

st3fan 17y ago
They missed the worst one: the Mighty Mouse with the scrollball that you cannot clean.
- chrismear 17y ago
  In fairness, it's given an aside in the Hockey Puck Mouse section.
- cmos 17y ago
  If you turn it upside down, press down hard and roll it usually get's unstuck. I'm pretty sure this won't work forever but it's kept the mouse alive for now. I'd take these 'failures' any day! While the ipod had an innovative design for scrolling through a long list of music, it was the decision to make white earbuds that was so mind bending. Now people knew you had an ipod even if it was concealed. Brilliant.
- mblakele 17y ago
  There are lots of ideas at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060210115417864 http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200602101154178... (first hit from http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollball+that+you+cannot+clean http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollb...). Most of them seem pretty close to Apple's suggestions at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1537 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1537 - sometimes with alcohol instead of water. Mine hasn't needed cleaning yet, but it's less than 12 months old.
tjogin 17y ago
I don't know, it seems this is more a list of products that didn't happen to strike the writer's fancy — rather than canonical failures. Whether something is a success or failure is not a whole lot about personal opinion — it's about observable, measurable fact. For instance, the white earbuds, whatever you may think of them — had a pretty important role in popularizing the iPod, as they stood out from the rest. iPod users, in spite of having the actual devices hidden in their pockets, could be identified from afar (among users of other unidentifiable brands of mp3 players). Look at the iPod commercials with the black silhouette people wearing white earbuds. I'd say Apple's earbuds, regardless of audio quality, has been a phenomenal success. They're not failures by any stretch of the imagination. You may think they suck, and you may be right, but they're not a failure. About the same thing goes for iTunes. You may think it suck, and you might be right. But it's not a failure. It is a resounding success. iTunes has become the leader in music organization (second only to manual "organization" in ad-hoc folders). iTunes has been essential to making the organization, synchronization and purchasing of music an overall smooth experience. While I agree with most of the points brought forth; iTunes is becoming increasingly bloated, being responsible for many things that has absolutely nothing to do with music — it maintaining that role has also made it easier for users already familiar with iTunes to start buying apps for the iPhone, synchronizing their calendar and contacts, etc. I agree iTunes needs a bit of an overhaul, everything not related to music organization should be moved into separate apps dedicated to just doing that. So yeah, iTunes sucks. But it is not a failure — it is an enormous success. Having the opinion that something sucks does not magically make it a failure.
- dasil003 17y ago
  I'd say Apple's earbuds, regardless of audio quality, has been a phenomenal success. Also, the author is so quick to forget what the world of personal audio devices was like before the iPod. They all came with terrible headphones. The iPod upped the ante by including a set of halfway decent earbuds and now everybody forgets what a huge step up it was.
- yef 17y ago
  Apple is a great company with many great products, but fanboyism irks me to no end. The article isn't about market failures, it's about bad products from a user standpoint. For the ones that I've used, I agree wholeheartedly: Hockey Puck Mouse: I could never feel how it was oriented. I know I'm not the only person who had this problem. Earbuds: They fall out of my ears if I'm not completely still. I know I'm not the only person who has this problem. iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well, has terrible error messages (or none at all), movie rentals don't work, sync'ing works weird, the list goes on and on and on. I know I'm not the only person, again. I would add OS X to the list in terms of usability as well. Take, for example, the 7-year long thread on Jeremy Zawodny's blog about focus-follows-mouse. Why couldn't they put an option in the mouse settings to allow focus-follows-mouse?
  - phsr 17y ago
    ^ iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well, What is considered a large library? I have about 3500 songs, and I am not having problems.
    - gb 17y ago
      I have about 16k and it's almost unusable. From what I hear the PC version performance is much worse than the Mac version though.
      - phsr 17y ago
        Ok, that is much larger than mine. :-) I'm just curious of the point that iTunes becomes unusable. So far, no problems in either XP or OS X for me
yangyang 17y ago
They say of the Mighty Mouse: "inexplicably copying the ThinkPad’s red nipple instead of using a scroll wheel" That's completely incorrect. The Mighty Mouse has a mini trackball, the trackpoint is a pressure-sensitive stick.
- lanaer 17y ago
  Indeed. And it the scroll-ball were larger, I’d probably like it. Just do that, and make the 2 buttons physically distinct, then it would be a halfway decent mouse.
tspiteri 17y ago
I think the author just doesn't like iTunes. So he picked four other products which he believes everyone dislikes, and which did not have so much market success, and says that iTunes should be disliked by everyone too. But as far as I know, iTunes is quite successful.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
jcromartie 17y ago
This is pretty shortsighted for being a "worst ever" list. What about the Pippin?
Xixi 17y ago
"Anything we missed? While these failures are big, we have restricted them to the modern-day Apple, and ignored the Jobs-less wilderness years of beige boxes and overpriced printers." Didn't I see the Quick Take somewhere in the list ? As a matter of fact Steve Jobs "steved" (as we used to say at the time) those when he came back to Apple, with all the printers, the Newton, and everything that was not, well, a Macintosh (or the softwares running on it).
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
georgekv 17y ago
ahem Newton / Cube / Lisa / Pippin / 20th Anniversary Mac
- locopati 17y ago
  I must stand up in defense of the Newton. It was way ahead of its time when it came to user experience. Version 1.0 was like most version 1.0s not quite ready and its handwriting recognition took a lot of criticism (even getting Doonesbury to riff on it). By version 2.0, that problem was completely fixed. Alas, 2.0 came 2 1/2 years after 1.0 and was too little too late. In addition, NewtonScript was an excellent language to program in (able to create apps quickly with a minimum of effort). The Palm Pilot wouldn't have been what it was without Newton having tested the ground first and finding the mines.
tedshroyer 17y ago
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_apple_flops http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_...
DannoHung 17y ago
I have one of the iHiFi's I dunno, it's a pretty good speaker and it's nice that it's good for plugging into a computer, sticking the iPod in, and bringing outside. The biggest problem with the damn thing is that the iPhone has always been ridiculously flaky with it, and I don't mean the cellular noise.
scblock 17y ago
There have been actual failures, and then there is this list, seemingly chosen at random. Wired would do well to separate those categories.

11 points by sabon 17y ago

st3fan 17y ago

They missed the worst one: the Mighty Mouse with the scrollball that you cannot clean.

chrismear 17y ago
In fairness, it's given an aside in the Hockey Puck Mouse section.
cmos 17y ago
If you turn it upside down, press down hard and roll it usually get's unstuck. I'm pretty sure this won't work forever but it's kept the mouse alive for now. I'd take these 'failures' any day! While the ipod had an innovative design for scrolling through a long list of music, it was the decision to make white earbuds that was so mind bending. Now people knew you had an ipod even if it was concealed. Brilliant.
mblakele 17y ago
There are lots of ideas at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060210115417864 http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=200602101154178... (first hit from http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollball+that+you+cannot+clean http://www.google.com/search?q=Mighty+Mouse+with+the+scrollb...). Most of them seem pretty close to Apple's suggestions at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1537 http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1537 - sometimes with alcohol instead of water. Mine hasn't needed cleaning yet, but it's less than 12 months old.

tjogin 17y ago

I don't know, it seems this is more a list of products that didn't happen to strike the writer's fancy — rather than canonical failures. Whether something is a success or failure is not a whole lot about personal opinion — it's about observable, measurable fact. For instance, the white earbuds, whatever you may think of them — had a pretty important role in popularizing the iPod, as they stood out from the rest. iPod users, in spite of having the actual devices hidden in their pockets, could be identified from afar (among users of other unidentifiable brands of mp3 players). Look at the iPod commercials with the black silhouette people wearing white earbuds. I'd say Apple's earbuds, regardless of audio quality, has been a phenomenal success. They're not failures by any stretch of the imagination. You may think they suck, and you may be right, but they're not a failure. About the same thing goes for iTunes. You may think it suck, and you might be right. But it's not a failure. It is a resounding success. iTunes has become the leader in music organization (second only to manual "organization" in ad-hoc folders). iTunes has been essential to making the organization, synchronization and purchasing of music an overall smooth experience. While I agree with most of the points brought forth; iTunes is becoming increasingly bloated, being responsible for many things that has absolutely nothing to do with music — it maintaining that role has also made it easier for users already familiar with iTunes to start buying apps for the iPhone, synchronizing their calendar and contacts, etc. I agree iTunes needs a bit of an overhaul, everything not related to music organization should be moved into separate apps dedicated to just doing that. So yeah, iTunes sucks. But it is not a failure — it is an enormous success. Having the opinion that something sucks does not magically make it a failure.

dasil003 17y ago
I'd say Apple's earbuds, regardless of audio quality, has been a phenomenal success. Also, the author is so quick to forget what the world of personal audio devices was like before the iPod. They all came with terrible headphones. The iPod upped the ante by including a set of halfway decent earbuds and now everybody forgets what a huge step up it was.
yef 17y ago
Apple is a great company with many great products, but fanboyism irks me to no end. The article isn't about market failures, it's about bad products from a user standpoint. For the ones that I've used, I agree wholeheartedly: Hockey Puck Mouse: I could never feel how it was oriented. I know I'm not the only person who had this problem. Earbuds: They fall out of my ears if I'm not completely still. I know I'm not the only person who has this problem. iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well, has terrible error messages (or none at all), movie rentals don't work, sync'ing works weird, the list goes on and on and on. I know I'm not the only person, again. I would add OS X to the list in terms of usability as well. Take, for example, the 7-year long thread on Jeremy Zawodny's blog about focus-follows-mouse. Why couldn't they put an option in the mouse settings to allow focus-follows-mouse?
- phsr 17y ago
  ^ iTunes: Great in 2001. Now it's bloated, slow, doesn't handle large libraries well, What is considered a large library? I have about 3500 songs, and I am not having problems.
  - gb 17y ago
    I have about 16k and it's almost unusable. From what I hear the PC version performance is much worse than the Mac version though.
    - phsr 17y ago
      Ok, that is much larger than mine. :-) I'm just curious of the point that iTunes becomes unusable. So far, no problems in either XP or OS X for me

yangyang 17y ago

They say of the Mighty Mouse: "inexplicably copying the ThinkPad’s red nipple instead of using a scroll wheel" That's completely incorrect. The Mighty Mouse has a mini trackball, the trackpoint is a pressure-sensitive stick.

lanaer 17y ago
Indeed. And it the scroll-ball were larger, I’d probably like it. Just do that, and make the 2 buttons physically distinct, then it would be a halfway decent mouse.

tspiteri 17y ago

I think the author just doesn't like iTunes. So he picked four other products which he believes everyone dislikes, and which did not have so much market success, and says that iTunes should be disliked by everyone too. But as far as I know, iTunes is quite successful.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

jcromartie 17y ago

This is pretty shortsighted for being a "worst ever" list. What about the Pippin?

Xixi 17y ago

"Anything we missed? While these failures are big, we have restricted them to the modern-day Apple, and ignored the Jobs-less wilderness years of beige boxes and overpriced printers." Didn't I see the Quick Take somewhere in the list ? As a matter of fact Steve Jobs "steved" (as we used to say at the time) those when he came back to Apple, with all the printers, the Newton, and everything that was not, well, a Macintosh (or the softwares running on it).

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

georgekv 17y ago

ahem Newton / Cube / Lisa / Pippin / 20th Anniversary Mac

locopati 17y ago
I must stand up in defense of the Newton. It was way ahead of its time when it came to user experience. Version 1.0 was like most version 1.0s not quite ready and its handwriting recognition took a lot of criticism (even getting Doonesbury to riff on it). By version 2.0, that problem was completely fixed. Alas, 2.0 came 2 1/2 years after 1.0 and was too little too late. In addition, NewtonScript was an excellent language to program in (able to create apps quickly with a minimum of effort). The Palm Pilot wouldn't have been what it was without Newton having tested the ground first and finding the mines.

tedshroyer 17y ago

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_apple_flops http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_...

DannoHung 17y ago

I have one of the iHiFi's I dunno, it's a pretty good speaker and it's nice that it's good for plugging into a computer, sticking the iPod in, and bringing outside. The biggest problem with the damn thing is that the iPhone has always been ridiculously flaky with it, and I don't mean the cellular noise.

scblock 17y ago

There have been actual failures, and then there is this list, seemingly chosen at random. Wired would do well to separate those categories.