Top 10 Apple Flops

Kelly McNeill writes "Though Apple computer is known for some of the computing and technology industry's most notable innovations, its not as if the company hasn't also taken its lumps. Thomas Hormby submitted the following editorial contribution to osOpinion/osViews, which supplies us with his top ten list of Apple's (and some of associated partners) most significant flops throughout the company's history."

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[bobetov]

I love it. As perfect a description of a slashdotting as I've ever seen.

Do you want to play a game?

site already /.ed

[all your mwbassguy a]

did they host this on a newton, a pippin, or an apple ///?

I must commend Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Even at flopping, they're quite innovative.

First on the list...

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the first one in TFA:

Problem in database connection

You'd think they'd be a little more specific.

Re:Powered by "PostNuke"

[Dorothy 86]

As long as I don't have to be the damn O's. I ALWAYS have to be the O's.

"This Website is powered by PostNuke"

[richcoder]

What a bad place for this notice on this website. I know where to go if I want a server that can't stand the heat.

-rich

down

[Anonymous Coward]

The database would appear to be hosted on a Newton.

Re:Powered by "PostNuke"

[Tackhead]

> I love it. As perfect a description of a slashdotting as I've ever seen.
>
>Do you want to play a game?

Ahem. That's "Shall we play a game?" to you, sir.

Turn in your geek card. As mistakes go, that's a WOPR. (Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play.)

Jobs' Secret Police...

[SpottedKuh]

...got to him.

Problem in Database Connection

Speak poorly of Apple, and you will suffer. The smily face in my Finder window is merely a distraction.

useful

[tfoss]

http://mirrordot.org/stories/8739fc09d2972ac58410a 3f342a33f43/index.html

So glad mirrordot is able to mirror the "Problem in Database Connection" page.

-Ted

Question...

[physicsphairy]

Just how many floating point operations is an Apple flop?

I'll need to know this information before I can top one, much less ten of them!

Re:Here is a picture of the Apple ///.

[jd]

Just one question. Which game needs the top-row '9' key all the time?

Re:Always liked the Tangerine iMac

[linuxbert]

I was once an admin for a mac only company. they ran Eudora mail sever on a tangerine imac. they ran it on a tangerine imac beacuse nobody in the office wanted that color on their desk.

I also once worked for a Mac retailer. 2 guys walked off with a tangerine ibook. the one question i had for my co-workers working at the time was how did you not notice them stealing a bright orange laptop. anyway, i doubt they were able to resell it :)

10 flops?

[slavemowgli]

10 FLOPS? Come on, guys, even my pocket calculator does more than that. :)

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[Colonel Cholling]

Ben and Jerry's.

Like hell. They stopped making "Coffee Coffee Buzz! Buzz! Buzz!" and they named a flavor after Dave Matthews.

Re:Question...

[Game Genie]

No kidding. I thought this was an article about the latest Apple super computer

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[geoffspear]

Great... someone who wasn't alive in 1984 is running two sites about Mac history?

Re:Article text, links & images intact

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the article text, but damn, you are distrubing to be including a hidden "Kill Michael" message there! (For those that didn't notice, look up all the random italicized bits.)

Re:Limits of Innovation

[Moofie]

Log in and we can talk.

Re:Here is a picture of the Apple ///.

[realdpk]

Weird-ass keyboard (why make a numerical keyboard with just subtraction?!), but cool looking.

More buttons would confuse users. You can perform any basic arithmetic operation with that keypad *.

Subtraction? x, -, y, ENTER.
Addition? x, -, -, y, ENTER.
Multiplication? 4, -, -, 4, -, -, 4, (... so on ...) ENTER.

So much less complicated than our "modern computers" with our * and / and + keys.

* Not including division.

Exploding external disk drives

[donnz]

If you plugged the pins in out of line at the next power up they went BANG and dislodged your boss' toupee. Mind you, once bitten...

Re:site already /.ed

[kinema]

I'm betting it was a Lisa [lowendmac.com].

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[ferratus]

No, no...that's linux fanatics. Apple fanatics bitch about PCs all the time ;-)

(I'm both a linux and mac fanatic and I do use PCs and Windows quite a bit, so I feel entitled to say this!)

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[servognome]

Slashdot is a strange game. The only winning move is not to play
Shall we play a game?
Love to. How about Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
Later. Right now let's play Slashdot Fanboy Flame War
Fine.
Apple First Strike - WINNER NONE
Microsoft First Strike - WINNER NONE
Apple vs. IBM Hardware Scenario - WINNER NONE
OSX vs Windows Software Scenario - WINNER NONE
APPLE-AMD Alliance Scenario - WINNER NONE
European Amiga Uprising - WINNER NONE
Transmeta offensive - WINNER NONE
MS-AMD Pact - WINNER NONE
Opensource theater wide uprising - WINNER NONE
Grammar Nazi hostility escalation - WINNER NONE
IBM-SCO counterstrike - WINNER NONE
Sun product announcement surprise - WINNER NONE
Amazon One-Click Conflict - WINNER NONE
DRM limited war - WINNER NONE
Internet Explorer quick strike - WINNER NONE
P2P crackdown - WINNER NONE
Worm assault on Firefox - WINNER NONE
Swedish viral attack on Windows - WINNER NONE
China-India Outsource Pact - WINNER NONE
Torvalds-Gates peace accords - WINNER NONE
ATI Graphics card Domination - WINNER NONE
BSD survival - WINNER NONE
All out format war - WINNER NONE
Programming Language Preference Battle - WINNER NONE
Browser standards confrontation - WINNER NONE
OpenOffice GPL dissention - WINNER NONE
Missing Poll Option Discord - WINNER NONE
Off-topic political rivalry - WINNER NONE

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[DarthWiggle]

Congratulations, you beat the Internet. Three - three?! - WarGames references in a two-line comment... that's fantastic.

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[raehl]

If he called them sites about ancient Mac history, would that make you feel better? Or worse?

Re:Apple ///, anyone?

[toddestan]

Only if we disregard the fact that the 1984 Macintosh has nothing, apart from the name, to do with the current models.

That's not true! They both have a one button mouse! *ducks*

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. In other news, history professors who weren't alive during Rome's heyday are writing textbooks about ancient Roman civilization.

In further new, my history prof actually WAS alive during Greece's heyday. Or at least he looked it.

Also, it might have been for the best

[SteeldrivingJon]

If the 'horror stories' are true, having an unmellowed Steve Jobs raise a child during its formative years might not have been such a good thing.

"Daddy, I drew a pony!"
"Pony? That looks like a lizard. This is shit. You're fired."
"Daddy, you can't fire me."
"Then learn to draw."

Re:Flops at Apple are predictable

[Anonymous Coward]

I will never trust that company ever again. I invested several years of my career developing software for those machines

How's it feel to carry around that baggage for 25 years?

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[sydsavage]

AND they freakin' sold out, man. Like, totally sold out, to a freakin' soap company, man.

http://www.fool.com/news/foolplate/2000/foolplate0 00412.htm [fool.com]

Re:Flops at Apple are predictable

[Anonymous Coward]

So, at this point, your beard is what, three-three and-a-half feet long now?

Re:The powerbooks and Sony?

[nordicfrost]

Honestly, I don't know if current PowerBooks can do that, but my current IBM T30 can't.

Yes they can. Someone on /. told a funny story about sitting on a plane and switching the battery in sleep mode. The guy in the next seat saw that and thought it was cool so he'd tried it on his IBM. An IBM that didn't support such things. And lost all his work.

Amiga Forever!?!

[meehawl]

Market share is just not that important.

If you really believe that then you and the Amiga people have a lot to talk about...

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[geoffspear]

Well, it's rather difficult to find anyone who was alive when there were dinosaurs. On the other hand, around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting 10 people with fond memories of the Apple ][.

Re:So much easier to knock down than to build up

[DenDave]

Yep triple platform here... and eh.. windows really does suck a frog out of a lemon on any day of the week. Linux only on alternate wednesdays..

Re:Apple ///, no. Apple SOS, yes.

[aknutberson]

initial production runs had a defective real-time clock (great idea, Apple was again ahead of its time)

Meaning, it gained rather than lost a few minutes each day?

Re:I Thought You Were Talking About OS News!

[nottsp1]

is an apple flop some kind of dessert?

Re:Powered by "PostNuke"

[starglider29a]

You forgot "Shroud of Turin" slugfest [slashdot.org] ;-)

Re:Also, it might have been for the best

[(H)olyGeekboy]

That is DROP DEAD hilarious. But you forgot the follow-up where, three months later, he asks the kid's replacement to draw something, but is unhappy with those results as well...

SJ: "This is utter crap. Where did you go to design school, some inner-city pre-school? Make it look more like a lizard..."

Re:ANS

[FredFnord]

If you're actually interested, I managed to get both AIX and Linux running on one of these puppies, actually using it for a web server and file server for a while.

It is a wholly random procedure, as far as I can tell. I tried what I believe to be an identical set of steps three or four times before it finally actually worked, when trying to get Linux installed.

And yes, every single time you tried it, you had to take the battery out for an hour or so. In fact, the time I actually got Linux installed, I had left the battery out overnight. (And the machine unplugged.)

Worth it? Well, I replaced it with a G4 Cube that runs 1/10 as hot, 1/1000 as noisy, three or four times as fast, and much, much prettier. Running Mac OS X Server, natch.

-fred