Category talk:Failed Apple Computer initiatives

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This category was nominated for deletion or renaming on 2006 February 4. The result of the discussion was no consensus. An archived record of this discussion can be found on this log page.

Contents 1 POV: clarify description? 2 Claris? 3 Macintosh Portable 4 Rename or delete this category? 5 Ok back, restarting here.

[edit] POV: clarify description?

I'm not actually disputing any of the initiatives being listed here, but describing them as "aborted before any success" seems very open to interpretation. There is groundbreaking technology involved in some of these initiatives (Newton, Lisa) so from an R&D, software, QA, or manufacturing perspective perhaps they were not failures for Apple. Likewise, it's possible that Apple successfully learned about its market during these initiatives and set themselves up for subsequent successes, making the "failure" pay for itself (Lisa helping Macintosh, for example).

Expenditures and experiments can be justified as "successful" in ways other than immediate market share or profit. Maybe "financial" is simply the right word to be added here, but someone suggest objective criteria that could describe this list (and for future additions)? --Ds13 04:14, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Failed" here means Apple intended it to make money, but it didn't. This shouldn't include research projects that were never supposed to be directly marketed. Did the Newton project make money? If not, it should certainly be here regardless of its effect on the rest of the industry. —Ashley Y 02:49, 2005 Apr 30 (UTC)

Wouldn't "Cancelled" be a better name? --Dtcdthingy 11:35, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

I just did some major work on the article about Kaleida Labs, where I used to work. I am wracking my brains to remember the details, but wasn't there some kind of plan to create a consumer version of Applelink? I would not include Applelink in my definition of a failed Apple initiative. Indeed, for a couple of years, it was brilliant, and served the company well. Still, it was strange to go to Apple as an employee, early in 1996, and find them still using Applelink, at a time when just about the whole world had already adopted the web. --Metzenberg 08:59, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

• Moving my response to Maury, from below, up to this topic, where it belongs: The problem is, as I wrote, this category is completely vague and inconsistent. I am no longer advocating rename. Just that it needs a precise & neutral definition (I suggested several), so it can be verified which articles are appropriately part of the category. There has been discussion. There are plenty of posts on this talk page saying this category makes no sense, is a mess, needs a definition, a rename, needs to be less POV/subjective, deleted, ,etc. I don't think there's a single post in favor of this category staying as-is, including on the archived "nomination for deletion" discussion. I have been editing this talk and the category page. No one has been acting on this. I finally did. "Be bold", right?

Not that consensus is required by wikipedia guidelines before editing, but clearly there's consensus that it's screwed-up. And wikipedia explicitly states no one owns a page, so while I'm all for consensus, I'm not going to ask for a specific person's ok before I do a mod that I think is ok to do. If you had an opinion on how to fix this category, why haven't you offered it up in the past? I won't ask your ok, but I would certainly listen to your opinion, had you offered one in all this discussion. No one seemed to know how to solve this. I thought of a solution, and implemented it ("be bold"). I feel this was bold (i.e.--good), but not reckless. I did not change large amounts of text that were pain-stakingly hammered-out over a long time. I changed no text at all...just de-categorized some articles (and if that act was going to break all links to Apple, I made sure they stayed linked to Apple categories in some way). And this isn't some controversial topic like stem cell research or something.

If you think my action was POV, you're free to start a talk topic, and if there's consensus, reverse my action. But until this category has a precise, neutral definition, it seems like nothing belongs on it, because how can anyone verify an article belongs here? I have not edited the text of any article in this process. However, editing the articles categories was the only way to affect this category page.

On the Microsoft side of things, their failed page is "announced but not released". By that measure, Pippin & DAL are a success. If people agree this category should be defined as "announced but not released", Pippin doesn't belong in here. If people agree this category should be defined as "products that never turned a profit for Apple", Pippin belongs here.

The DAL page says "These days, DAL enjoys a healthy, high performance life in PrimeBase SQL servers from SNAP Innovation GmbH". That doesn't sound like a "failure by any measure". Of course, it was a failure for Apple, but not a failure in toto. Now if people agree this category should be defined as "Apple initiatives that didn't achieve the original goals Apple set out for them", then by all means, DAL belongs in here. Though that may not be a good definition. What were the ORIGINAL goals for Macintosh, Claris, Balloon Help, Apple Guide, QuickDraw 3D, HyperCard, etc. A product may not meet its initial goals, but still end up being a "success", depending upon the definition of success.

Pieces of Taligent work were released in various ways (CommonPoint, IBM libraries, WebRunner, etc), were folded into Java, and who knows what happened to the stuff licensed to Oracle & Netscape? Some might call that a success. I wouldn't. Lots of work, lots of wasted time/money, doesn't sound like a lot a lot of intellectual pay-off even. Though what do I know, I don't work for Sun, Oracle, or Netscape and don't know how valuable they found that stuff or what they did with it or who they subsequently passed it on to. Depending on how this category defines failure, Taligent will probably belong coming back in here.

Copland is the closest to a total failure by my measure. Lots of money sunk into it, even less intellectual pay-off (so far as I know...but as with Taligent, what do I know?). Tiny bits of the Copland thinking/work lived-on in later Mac OSes, but, from the little I know, sounds like so little that Copland will end up being in here as a failure.

If this category is going to be "failure by ANY measure", I'd clarify that to mean no profits for ANYONE, ZERO marketplace acceptance, ZERO positive reputation EVER, AND ZERO intellectual pay-off for ANYONE. That would include things. But that wouldn't include DAL, Taligent, Copland, Claris, Balloon Help, Newton, QuickDraw 3D, Apple Guide, and I'm not sure what else would/wouldn't belong. Pippin might still fail by that definition, I'd have to think about that more. You could take out the "ANY" and possibly clarify as "minimal" profits to Apple, "minimal" acceptance, "poor" reputation, AND "low" intellectual pay-out to Apple. Or whatever variation of that you like, including whatever combination of "and" and "or" you like. Or something completely different.

And yes, I realize that a common sense definition including "minimal", "poor", and "low" would remain somewhat subjective. I'm ok with that. I'm just not ok with complete vagueness and inconsistency. At least with a precise definition, interested parties can debate if something qualifies. With no precision, anyone can make any claim they want.

First we need a precise, agreed-on, neutral definition. Then if an article has neutral, verifiable text that makes that item qualify for the category, then it belongs to come back in here. That can be figured-out once there's a definition. And I will likely join few of those debates. If we have some common sense definition, and common sense says Pippin, DAL, Taligent, & Copland meet that definition, I'm not going to object to that, demand references, etc. Others might ;)

If you'd like to lobby for a particular definition, by all means, please do. No one else seems to want to. Including me, but I will help refine whatever one you offer, or chat with anyone that joins the talk. If you actually read this far, I hope you enjoyed reading this even more than I enjoyed writing it ;)

--Jason C.K. 17:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, fine, I love to hear myself talk ;) Plus I'm thinking about all this now anyway, so here's my personal thoughts on my "common sense" failure definition. Candidates for inclusion: Failure is about whether an initiative had value. Announced, or released, is irrelevant. If Apple spent enough money working on an initiative, it's notable to classify as success or failure. But if the thing is never more than an idea, they just SAY "we're going to make a holographic iReality device", but don't actually spend time/money to develop it, it's an irrelevant item for classifying as success/failure. Profits: If it turned reasonable (we can define that) profit for anyone, not a failure. So if Apple writes iSpreadsheet, fails with it, sells it, the next owner makes a mint off of it, it wasn't a failure. Sure, not good for Apple, but clearly the item in question didn't suck. Reputation/acceptance: If it got substantial acceptance/positive reviews in the marketplace or industry, or added to Apple's reputation, not a failure, even if it didn't turn a profit. So if the iPhone gets lots of glowing reviews, and a few hundred thousand customers love them, even if it loses money and is cancelled, not a failure. IP (intellectual property): If a substantial portion of the intellectual work/thinking lives on in something that isn't a failure, then the origin isn't a failure either. So if Apple adds face recognition to iSight so you can control your computer with facial gestures, and it fails in marketplace, if they sell that to the government and it becomes effective in catching criminals or something, not a failure. If people like my thinking here, or some variant of this--I expect some objections, and am ready to compromise ;) --I could come up with concise wording/definition.

--Jason C.K. 18:15, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear there's been lots of discussion here on this page, but it's essentially invisible. To answer your question, I didn't offer an opinion because I had no idea this discussion was even taking place. There are over a million pages here. Given that I wrote or was prime on many of the articles in question, a note on my talk page wouldn't have been too much to ask for. No, you were under no obligation, but certainly a check of the histories of most of the pages in question would have suggested posting something. Come on, this isn't a matter of "ownership", it's common sense, if someone is clearly an expert on these topics asking them their opinion is generally a good idea.

I, for one, oppose the outright removal of this cat, because it provides an excellent history of the problems Apple was having throughout the 1990s in terms of getting real-world useful products to market. Time after time after time they would introduce the "next great thing" and then utterly ignore it. This is important history, the story of a company in crisis. By simply removing the cat because no-one can think of good def we do everyone a disservice.

I understand the problems with the cat's definition, but surely we're smart enough to come up with one that people agree on? It shouldn't be that hard, it would need to include Copeland, Taligent, Pipin, AOCE, DAL, that ridiculous 3D navigator, the original Cocoa, etc. NuKernel would not be included, it never had a chance to fail. Neither would Newton, it was almost a success in spite of all the same problems.

And many of the examples you noted above are outright failures, and your use of them demonstrates the problem I'm complaining about. Consider, for instance, The DAL page says "These days, DAL enjoys a healthy, high performance life in PrimeBase SQL servers from SNAP Innovation GmbH".. I consider it likely this was posted by someone from SNAP. SNAP is a tiny little company that has been selling (or attempting to I suppose) a DAL database for classic Mac OS since the 1990s. As you can see on their web page, they have a customer list of about a dozen, all using it for a single application. How does this define success? It doesn't, but for some reason you consider it evidence enough to question the claim that DAL was a failure? Quick: name a single large company that used DAL in the context it was intended for, to provide a cross-platform format neutral database connection service. That's a trick question, because the answer is "there are none". PrimeBase doesn't change that even if it is a roaring success, it is not being used for the original intent DAL was invented for (if it is being used at all, something I question).

DAL is, by any informed definition, a complete and abject failure. That you use this as an example of something questionable makes me feel, through the limited media of text messaging at least, that you're not really in the best position to make the decision that you took. And lets face it, you didn't even really discuss it. I see two people involved who commented on the topic. A TfD would have been more appropriate.

Sure, I agree, everyone was putting practically everything into this cat. But just because it was being unwisely used doesn't mean one should get rid of it entirely. That's just a bad argument. So what would I put in? Well for starters, any time that Apple tried to introduce a "standard" in order to take over some chunk of the market and failed to do so would apply. This includes things like DAL, GeoPort and that 3D interface garbage. Things that were supposed to "change everything" on the Mac itself would also be reasonable, which would include AOCE and Copeland. I don't know what you would call Pipin, because it was never actually sold. Maury 14:51, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• I notice that with Apple's rename, a robot moved the category to [1]. How does the talk get moved to there too? I think you've assumed I deleted the category, but if you read my posts you'd see I was not advocating delection, just clarification, and I posted in the talk about what action I took, which was only to clean out the category and ask for definition. "I'm glad to hear there's been lots of discussion here on this page, but it's essentially invisible." LOL, well now it's not :P Isn't that one of the ways Wikipedia works? You make a change you think appropriate, if others don't, it draws people into the discussion. And see, it worked! You're here! :) "if someone is clearly an expert on these topics asking them their opinion is generally a good idea." This isn't a question about any specific article (DAL, etc), it's a question about this category, and the definition of failure. Being an expert on DAL and 100 other articles doesn't make you an expert on the definition of failure (or at least, no more an expert than I). Though I'm sure you have an opinion about it...and I'm glad to hear it.

"I, for one, oppose the outright removal of this cat" As I wrote in prior posts, I'm not advocating rename or deletion, just that it be defined reasonably precisely, then populated only with what belongs. "surely we're smart enough to come up with one that people agree on?" Yes, that's what I said in prior posts, and my 2nd post above offered some thinking on it. Do you have comment, suggestions, alterations, a new one of your own to offer (I can guess at some objections you'd have to what I wrote ;) The original Cocoa? You mean the one for kids? I wrote a tiny game in that, I thought it was cool, didn't seem useless, though probably not a good distraction for Apple to get involved in. Jobs, killed it before release, didn't he? "Neither would Newton" Yet it was in here, defined as aborted before any success (emphasis not mine...that was the definition of this category).

"your use of them demonstrates the problem I'm complaining about." Feel free to disregard any specific arguments I made about DAL, Pippin, Taligent, & Copland. This is why I wrote in my prior post "I will likely join few of those debates." I am not going to debate the failure-ness of something I don't feel very expert in. Since you brought up DAL, Pippin, Taligent, & Copland, for argument's sake I debated back, under the assumption that what was said about them on Wikipedia was accurate, neutral, & verifiable. But whether I've even heard of these things before Wikipedia (I have) or not, am expert or not (varies depending upon subject), I'm still competely qualified to call into question the completely open definition this category had and its complete lack of consistency by including Claris and Newton along with Copland.

"How does this define success? It doesn't, but for some reason you consider it evidence enough to question the claim that DAL was a failure?" As I said, for debating, I was only going to go as far as what Wikipedia said...at this time I have no intention of researching every topic & article to decide if Wikipedia is accurate, neutral, & verifiable, and if each of those items really is a success or failure. According to Wikipedia, DAL lived on quite vitally. To me that means it doesn't qualify as "failed before any success." (of course, it had no success FOR APPLE). "PrimeBase doesn't change that even if it is a roaring success, it is not being used for the original intent DAL was invented for" I don't agree [yet?] that "original intent" should be a prime litmus test for failure/success. However, if you want to argue "success vs. failure TO APPLE" (as opposed to another company), while I don't entirely agree with that, if you feel strongly about that I'd yield to that...provided no one comes along that agrees with my original point. If failure TO APPLE is part of the definition, then certainly DAL is a failure even if PrimeBase succeeds. "you're not really in the best position to make the decision that you took." I did not decide whether or not DAL or anything else was a failure or not...I decided that this category needed a complete overhaul, and I stand by taking that action, though certainly it's up for discussion, as we are doing now.

I note that between this talk page and this one approx. 10 different people had a problem with this category or an item on it. And their problems with individual items went right back to the underlying problem, the category itself was screwed-up and inconsistent, and poorly defined. The debate has been going on since 2005 with no one doing much about it or knowing what to do about it (other than request deletion, which you & I agree is not the right approach). Should we have gone at it item-by-item? And how long would that have taken? More importantly, given a definition of "failed before any success", then my interpretation of that definition says that if ANY of Taligent or Copland thinking, work, or code, lived on in any fashion in something that wasn't also an abject failure...then they weren't complete failures. Realistically, of course, they were failures, but to debate anything based on the original worthless definition would've been...worthless. In any case, my intention isn't now or in the future to debate the failure-ness of any particular item, just to get a definition, and then the experts on that item can debate its inclusion. If I think I have a worthwhile opinion to offer on a particular item, then I might join some debates.

"Sure, I agree, everyone was putting practically everything into this cat. But just because it was being unwisely used doesn't mean one should get rid of it entirely." Right, everything was getting thrown in here, so, no, don't delete it, but clean it out, define it sensibly, then re-populate it sensibly. And that action got you here right away (but no one else :( And now, as of the moment I took that action, I think Wikipedia is better...because it doesn't have a mix of stuff listed as "failed before any success". And we'll build it back to be right. "So what would I put in?" Let's agree on a definition first. After that, put in anything you like. If I think something doesn't merit going in, or I want clarification on why you think it does, I'll join the debate, otherwise I'll leave the individual items entirely up to you and any other interested parties. So, my "short" 2nd post above offered thoughts about "failure". Do you like/dislike any of that thinking (I can guess at some objections you'd have to what I wrote ;) Do you have comment, suggestions, alterations, a definition of your own to offer?

--Jason C.K. 17:28, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

• Ok, feel better, see you when you're healthy. Hey, I'm assuming you're going to say that "failed" must relate to Apple (as opposed to saying, "hey, Apple sold it, next company made a profit, therefore it wasn't a failure"), so, given that assumption, what do you think of this definition? "Announced initiatives, released or intended for release, into which Apple invested significant resources, that yielded no profits, no market-place acceptance, and no positive reputation for Apple." DAL, Taligent, Copland, & Pippin would all qualify, right? But not Claris nor Newton. How would you classify QuickDraw 3D? By the way, I can easily makeup a list of everything that used to be in this category.

--Jason C.K. 18:37, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Claris?

What about Claris? Swirsky 00:53, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Claris was a going concern for many years, until Apple spun off FileMaker into it's own company and merged the remainder into Apple's consumer software division. I suppose someone decided to list it on this page because it is no more, but I would hardly call it a failure, financial or otherwise. --Chris Page 16:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

--Jbmcb 18:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC) I think a better name would be "Defunct Apple related technologies and products". It should contain technologies and unique products that have no bearing in the current marketplace. Examples: Pippin, the PowerCD player (battery powered portable CD player/CD-ROM drive for laptops, one of the first of it's kind I belive) MacTV (one of the first integrated multimedia machines) 20th Anniversary Mac (one of the first integrated home computers with an LCD) GeoPort, ARTA (The integrated general-purpose DSP system) AppleVision displays (integrated color calibration, software display controls) Apple Network Servers (high powered machines that ran AIX) I belive these are relavant entries as innovative technologies from a company that normally leads in consumer computing devices.

[edit] Macintosh Portable

I'm not sure how to add something to a category. Does anybody remember the first Macintosh portable computer, before the Powerbook came out? What was the damn thing called? --Metzenberg 09:16, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

It was called the Macintosh Portable. --Chris Page 16:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rename or delete this category?

This category is problematic both because the title doesn't seem neutral and because it isn't clear what belongs in this category and what does not. Why is Balloon Help in this category? It was a feature of the Macintosh operating system for many years and was widely used. Claris was a profitable business for many years. HotSauce was a research project that (as far as I am aware) was never turned into a product.

• Ok, this category will make perfect sense...once someone who cares to gives it a neutral, verifiable definition. Perhaps "announced but never released"? "Released but didn't turn profit"? "Cancelled due to...."? Whatever. But until then, I'm emptying it out. This category currently contained everything from software APIs still in use today, to profitable ventures that had a good life (the Claris company and line of products), some of whose products are still sold today, to products that sold hundreds of thousands of units, to initiatives announced but never released. A total, inconsistent mess. If someone gives it a neutral definition, and if an article has neutral, verified text in it confirming it as matching said definition (i.e.--"The Macintosh Digital Watch was a huge financial loss for Apple..."), then by all means, add it back in to this category.

--Jason C.K. 15:57, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

This category should be deleted or renamed to something that makes it more obvious what belongs in it. --Chris Page 17:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Renaming the cat isn't going to help. Do you think it would be appropriate to call it "Apple products that were not widely used or later ignored after a period of time that depended on many factors"? How will that help? The Pipin was a failed product. Period. DAL was a failure by any measure. Taligent and Copeland were disasters. What exactly is the problem classifying these as such? Maury 16:14, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

• I responded up above, in the top topic, where it's more appropriate.

--Jason C.K. 17:36, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, not ignoring, just really sick. :-) I'll be back by the weekend. Maury 14:41, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ok back, restarting here.

Ok, let's start with a single example. You suggested QuickDraw 3D. I couldn't agree more: abject failure. It was a bad idea in the first place, a classic example of Apple engineers feeling that they could do anything better than anyone else. This included thinking they could make a 3D lib better than SGI, who pretty much p0wned the market for good reason. A Mac-like GLUT would have delivered exactly the same end results, but have been based on industry standards and work on existing hardware. Then there was the failure to correctly separate the upper and lower layers of the stack, making it useless for high-performance work like games, forcing the separate introduction of RAVE. And then everyone just used RAVE, and QD3D's higher levels were essentially ignored. Trust me, I know all about this story. Go into google groups and type in my name and QuickDraw 3D in a search box some time.

QD3D is a perfect example of all of the problems that were endemic to Apple during that era: developer hubris, a complete lack of management oversight, pet projects that had no reason to exist but were nevertheless left to stagger on, the endless evangelizing of "the next big thing" that, sadly, always managed to snag a few developers, and then finally the complete abandonment of the product. This happened over and over.

So let's try this on: a "failed initiative" is an attempt by Apple to define a market space or "next big thing" when such an effort was hopeless. Examples would include DAL/DAM, QD3D, Pippin, Hot Sauce (finally remembered the name!), GeoPort, etc. No one was ever going to standardize on these things, and the fact that Apple offered them up as such shows how out of touch they were. I'm sure there's lots of other good ones, but those literally pop into my head as I'm writing this.

But then there's projects that simply failed under their own weight. This would include Copeland/Gershwin, AOCE/AppleMail, QDGX, the original Cocoa, etc. These were examples of empire-building disasters. All of these could be defined as falling into the first group too; for instance, Copeland was the next big thing for the Mac OS, and failed. However the exact circumstances are different, these were not being offered as any sort of "standard" per say, and failed due to development problems, not due to a lack of marketspace. But I still think these should be included on such a list.

Maury 15:06, 12 March 2007 (UTC)