User:Blaxthos/Tech failures

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Here is a list of flops in computer technology:

[edit] Hardware flops

[edit] Personal computers

3Com Audrey and Kerbango

The failures of these simple web and audio devices were widely seen as the death-knell for internet appliances.

Amiga CDTV

This early multimedia computer was overpriced and suffered from using the obsolete AmigaOS 1.3, when version 2.0 was already available.

Apple Computer flops

The Apple III, Apple Lisa, and arguably the Apple Newton are notable failed Apple products. Many of the Lisa's features were later incorporated into the far more successful Apple Macintosh. Many of the features found in SOS, the Apple III's operating system, would later be incorporated into ProDOS, which was written for the Apple II line.

Atari 1200XL

The Atari 1200XL home computer was introduced in 1982 to replace the aging Atari 400 and Atari 800; both the 400 and 800 was abandoned that same year.. Although the computer was the first Atari computer to have 64 kilobytes of RAM standard, software incompatibility with the 400 and 800 (due to a faulty XL OS) caused people to avoid the 1200XL. It is said that sales of Atari 800 computers increased with the failure of the 1200XL, as people rushed to buy the 800 before it disappeared. The failure of the Atari 1200XL (along with the collapsing video game market) may have been a key factor in Warner's decision to sell Atari to Jack Tramiel.

Atari Falcon030

The Falcon came right at the time when the PC "Wintel" and the Macintosh computers had eluded the competition of smaller products, such as the Atari ST, the Amiga, or the Amstrad CPC. Virtually no software was written for the Falcon030.

Be Inc.

Mid-90's personal computer maker/OS vendor founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée. Hopes of an acquisition by Apple Computer in order to develop a successor to the Mac OS waned after Apple chose instead to acquire NeXT. After the failed introduction of the BeBox and Apple's decision to acquire NeXT, BeOS was unsuccessfully marketed as a replacement for the then-ubiquitous Microsoft Windows. Ultimately, Palm acquired what remained of the company.

Coleco Adam

A home computer created by toy/video game company Coleco that nearly bankrupted the company.

Commodore Plus/4 and Commodore 16

In the 1980s, Commodore International became the first company to sell a million home computers. Hoping to repeat the success of its multi-million-selling VIC-20 and C64 computers, it released the Commodore Plus/4 in 1984. It flopped. The Commodore 16, its 16k counterpart, flopped as well. Commodore went on to achieve success with the Commodore Amiga, but went bankrupt in 1994.

DEC Personal Computer trio

DEC was prepared with not 1, but 3 competing entries. The DEC Professional series was based on the PDP-11 which was limited to 64k bytes of address space for any one program, though up to 2M could be installed, and had no base of office applications. The DEC Rainbow 100 ran CP/M on a Z-80, but refused to support MS-DOS on the 2nd Intel 8086 processor until the market standardized on software specifically adapted to IBM PC compatibles. The DECmate II was a word processor based on the doddering 12 bit PDP-8, and was not competitive with dominant Wang word processing. The LK201 keyboard had no fixed ESC key. You had to buy expensive pre-formatted floppies. In the 90s, the entire computer industry in New England collapsed with the death of the minicomputer. The economy in Redmond would benefit.

Enterprise 128

Announced in September 1983, but failed to be produced until May 1985 when its features were not so impressive anymore. The manufacturers change of name from Samurai to Elan helped sales no more than the massive delay; the great specs of 1983 looked average in 1985: "with obselecance built out" was dropped as quiickly as a tag line as the Enterprise was by stockists.

Go (pen computing corporation)

Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

Hip-e

Announced with great marketing and hype in mid-2004 by the Digital Lifestyles Group, this personal computer, which aimed at teenagers, failed miserably in the market. As a result, all productions and support stopped just one year later. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

IBM PS/2 and IBM PCjr

After the rise of PC clones and compatibles, IBM struggled in the PC market.

Netpliance i-Opener and New Internet Computer (NIC)

Despite being created as "Internet appliances", cheaper alternatives for consumers to access the Internet without buying a PC, both the iOpener and NIC were flops. Netpliance went bankrupt in 2001; the company would later change its name to TippingPoint Technologies but was later acquired by 3Com.

Sinclair QL

A somewhat unsuccessful attempt by Sinclair Research to make a 32 bit computer in the mid-1980s.

WebTV (now MSN TV)

Internet delivery via television set and set-top box. Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

[edit] Large computers

HP 300 Amigo Computer / Stan Sieler

HP 3000

The first implementation of this stack based multiuser mini was so slow it was withdrawn soon after its introduction. Later models were successes; it was eventually one of the last proprietary minicomputers to survive, outlasting the highly regarded VAX in RISC form.

HP 300 Amigo

Personalized adaption of HP 3000 in late 1970s was feature of HP Magazine. Personal workstation with Screen Labeled Function Keys and windows, sealed hard drive, stack architecture, graphical editing of RPG program. Very few examples survive.

Advanced Scientific Computer supercomputer by TI

Convex C3 mini-supercomputer

Cray-3 gallium arsenide supercomputer

IBM 7030

Also known as "Stretch", the 7030 was IBM's first attempt at building a supercomputer. Its actual performance was less than one third of its original specification. This resulted in IBM drastically dropping the price and losing money on every machine sold.

ILLIAC IV

array processor supercomputer

Fifth generation computer

Japan's vision to leapfrog the west in computer technology, the FGCS Project did not meet with commercial success for reasons similar to the Lisp machine companies and Thinking Machines. The software was not suitable for commercial applications and the proprietary architecture was eventually surpassed in speed by less specialized hardware (for example, Sun workstations and Intel x86 machines).

[edit] Devices and technology

ATI Rage Fury MAXX

In an attempt to compete with NVIDIA's newly released GeForce 256 graphics cards, ATI created a dual-chip version of their Rage 128 Pro series. Not only did it not outperform the GeForce, it proved to be incompatible with any operating system other than Windows 98 and Me.

BTX motherboard form factor

Designed by Intel to replace the ATX form factor, it has been widely rejected, including by Intel's main competitor, AMD. It was widely seen as an attempt to redesign the form factor only to cool a next generation of Intel multi-hundred watt CPUs. Intel has abandoned further development of the BTX form factor, instead producing new low-wattage CPUs with lower heat production.

Bubble memory

Heralded as the next big thing, it was widely expected to all but replace every other form of storage. The technology and engineering were sound, and numerous products were actually brought to market, but it was never able to gain any significant cost edge over the rapidly improving technologies it was supposed to displace.

CueCat barcode scanner

Designed to allow magazine readers to read magazines while seated at their computers, and navigate effortlessly to advertisers' websites by passing the CueCat over barcodes printed in ads that caught their fancy. Thousands were given away free at Radio Shack stores. What killed it was people's utter lack of interest in its functionality.

Philips' CD-Interactive technology

Released in 1991, CD-i consisted of a player console utilizing a new compact disc format. The intent was to make CD-based software more interactive for the user through the use of multimedia. Although it was heavily promoted by Philips through their infomercials, CD-i never truly caught on with the public, and was discontinued in 1998.

Compact Floppy 3 Inch floppy disk

With 360k or 720k DD, used mainly in obscure systems like Osborne Computers, Einstein, MSX (in some regions, though 3.5" disks were more common with the platform) and famously Amstrad CPC/PCW range before being outclassed by the now standard Sony 3.5".

DataPlay CD replacement disk technology

Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

IBM's Micro Channel Architecture PC bus (MCA)

Solved the problems IBM had itself created with its predecessor, the PC-AT bus. IBM and many industry analysts assumed that the need to be "IBM-compatible" would force other vendors to adopt the MCA, for which IBM charged high licensing fees. In fact customers did not care, and the industry largely ignored the bus. This flop was significant because it was widely interpreted as indicating that IBM no longer controlled the PC architecture and had lost its leadership position.

Imation SuperDisk

Also known as the LS-120 or the LS-240, the SuperDisk was a drive using special disks that could hold 120MB or 240MB, depending on the model. Although it enjoyed some initial success, the prevalence of CD writers and the falling cost of CD media brought about its demise, as well as that of most other forms of removable media.

Iomega Clik! drive

Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever". Iomega later renamed the drive "PocketZip", as "Clik!" reminded people of the infamous "click of death" plaguing Iomega's Zip drives.

INMOS Transputer

This attempt at a different way of computing is now largely forgotten.

Intel iAPX 432 microprocessor

Introduced in 1981 as the next great computer architecture after Intel's x86 line. Considered one of the most complicated microprocessors ever built, it delivered low performance and went nowhere in the market.

Intel i860

Introduced in 1989, this was Intel's second attempt to replace their x86 line with a new VLIW architecture. Like the i432 before, it did not succeed in the marketplace as a general-purpose microprocessor, though it was adopted for use in some embedded controllers.

Itanium

Intel made a third attempt to replace their x86 line with a second generation VLIW CPU in 2001, after 7 years of development and billions of dollars spent. The first Itanium (called "the Itanic" by some detractors) proved an utter technical and commercial failure. The Itanium 2, released a year later, improved the chip in some areas. However timid management at competing companies, scared by the Itanium, abandoned the DEC Alpha and an advanced version of the SPARC, giving Intel less competition; in this sense it may have been a success for Intel. AMD beat Intel to a 64 bit extension to x86, and Intel was forced to reverse-engineer the chip made by the people that made a living copying Intel instruction sets.

Rambus's RDRAM

RDRAM can arguably be considered a flop. Competitors feared that Intel was trying to control the memory market through Rambus, so they joined together to develop DDR SDRAM. DDR SDRAM offered comparable performance to RDRAM and was much less expensive. This forced Intel to abandon exclusive support for RDRAM. As of 2004, Intel has abandoned RDRAM with all new products using DDR SDRAM or DDR2 SDRAM. (RDRAM's successor XDR DRAM is used by the IBM/Sony/Toshiba "Cell" processor.)

Sony HiFD

Intended to replace the 3.5 inch floppy drive, but was prevented from doing so due to an early recall, compatibility problems, and the rise of cheap recordable CDs.

[edit] Software flops

Adobe LiveMotion

Adobe's animated vector graphics program, which failed to compete with Macromedia's Flash. Adobe bought out Macromedia in 2005.

IBM's OS/2

re-launched as "OS/2 WARP" around 1994.

The OS/2 Warp 3 startup screen.

Originally developed as a replacement for DOS, in partnership with Microsoft. APIs were rationalized, so were usually incompatible with Windows. Consistently mismanaged by IBM, who failed to market it properly in the mid-1990s against the Microsoft Windows juggernaut, it nevertheless still retains a small number of loyal users. Unlike Windows 3.0, it was originally based on the capabilities of the Intel 286 rather than the more powerful Intel 386, although OS/2 2.0 was a 32-bit operating system using the 386's capabilities.

Microsoft Bob

This "user-friendly" replacement for the Windows 3.1x interface was one of the biggest flops to ever come out of Microsoft.

Microsoft Windows 1.0 and Windows 2.0

Microsoft's first two major versions of the Windows graphic environment failed due to high system requirements at the time, and were largely ignored. Microsoft's first successful version of Windows was Windows 3.0 which was the first environment (running on the DOS operating system) to really leverage the power of the Intel 386.