Licence to fail

Take a walk down memory lane as we recall the 20 biggest computer industry flops of the last 20 years

The consumer technology field is, without a doubt, an absolute hotbed of technological innovation. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen computing make incredible strides in processing power, graphical capability, and data storage. There have been inspired new moves, like the introduction of simultaneous multi-threading and hyper-threading to double the available threads of CPUs, as well as improvements to software, hardware, and network infrastructure that have made things like 4K video streaming a reality. It wouldn’t be an overly bold claim to say that the PC hardware industry and community are in the best place they’ve ever been (any global pandemics notwithstanding, of course).

However, it hasn’t always been happy faces and full coffers in the computing industry. There have been mistakes, bad judgements, humiliating missteps: Some tragic, some hilarious. It’s not uncommon for a brand to release a product or service they firmly believe is going to be the Next Big Thing, then throw all of their marketing resources behind it only for it to fall flat on its face, selling like a Boyz II Men Christmas album in early April.

The past two decades have brought us some incredible innovations, but plenty of flops as well – and they are what we’re going to focus on today, in pursuit of comedy and perhaps a few cautionary tales.

20 Windows Millennium Edition

It seems fitting to start with Microsoft’s turn-of-the-century blunder, Windows Me. That’s “Millennium Edition”, in theory. In practice, it was dubbed the “Mistake Edition,” with a cavalcade of issues plaguing it after release. Sometimes it would refuse to function with existing software; sometimes it would refuse to start up at all. Microsoft scrambled to fix the stability issues and numerous glitches, releasing patch after patch, but the damage was done, and Windows Me was immortalised as one of the worst operating systems ever to be released.

19 Seagate Barracuda 7200.14

There was an awful lot of drama around this one. In 2008/2009, customers around the globe reported drive failures and data loss using Seagate’s 7200.11 hard drives. The issue was identified as a firmware problem, and led to a demonstrably higher rate of failure in the 7200.14 and other drives in the family. Seagate did release a firmware update and offered free data recovery services for affected drives, but the damage was done. The manufacturer was also accused of censoring posts on its forums that discussed the failing drives, leaving many customers angry.

18 OQO

It’s a tiny Windows system! The first OQO device, the Model 01, actually had a lot going for it, including Bluetooth connectivity and a Wacom-designed stylus, but sadly the technology just wasn’t there yet. The five-inch LCD display was too small to properly encapsulate the excellence of Windows XP (still, to this writer’s mind, the greatest OS of all time), and the initial OQO handheld was released before Microsoft finalised the Tablet PC Edition of XP. Attempting to run XP Professional on this tiny tablet was, by all accounts, hellish. OQO soldiered on to release four more models, but sadly declared bankruptcy in 2009.

17 Google Glass

Glass was a cool piece of tech, but the world wasn’t ready for augmented reality glasses in 2013. Wearable tech is swiftly finding more of a purchase in our society, so we wouldn’t be surprised to see a triumphant return for Glass in a few years’ time – Google is already marketing a reworked version to enterprises. The original Glass, though, was branded by many as a privacy-invading badge of purported intellectual and financial superiority, and it was wound down after nine months.

16 HP TouchPad

HP’s modern Windows tablets and convertibles are top-notch hardware (we adore the sleek and silent Spectre x360 2-in-1), but the computing giant was late to the party. The TouchPad was supposed to be HP’s answer to Apple’s wildly successful iPad, but the late Steve Jobs held a killer keynote not long before the TouchPad’s release, announcing the iPad 2. The products released within the same window, and the world was busy fawning over Apple’s latest gem, so the TouchPad sunk into obscurity with alarming speed. The wonky OS didn’t do it any favors, either.

15 Facebook Portal

Little more than a glorified monitor for easier video calling, the Facebook Portal released in 2018 to minimal fanfare. With allegations of data theft and privacy invasion being thrown in every direction, consumers were – perhaps unsurprisingly – reluctant to spend hundreds of their own hard-earned dollars to install a Facebook-controlled camera and microphone in their homes. Critics also tore the product to pieces, and some fairly murky language from Facebook surrounding the datagathering functions of the Portal didn’t help matters. Although the social media titan has since launched a 2nd generation of the product, the low sales of the original Portal mark it as something of a misstep for Facebook.

14 Google Nexus Q

Another early effort to cash in on the home media streaming boom, the Nexus Q was a weird little orb that could stream content from YouTube, Google Play, and... no, that was everything. The limited content library, high asking price, and clunky user interface meant that the Nexus Q was never destined for greatness. The killing blow was undoubtedly the fact that speakers were not included by default. The product never even made it to a full release; the public launch was indefinitely postponed while production wound down in favor of the Chromecast, and some early adopters were even given the product for free, albeit without ongoing Google support.

13 Windows 8

It was bad, wasn’t it? This might be the item on this list that is freshest in most people’s memories, especially given that it is still widely used. The goal was to create a “best of both worlds” OS, ideal both for desktop PCs and tablets, where Microsoft’s Surface line was in hot competition with iOS. Unfortunately, Windows 8 proved slow on portable devices and clunky on desktops, with a fiddly Start screen formed of numerous tiles of varying sizes. A metric tonne of preloaded bloatware was the final nail in the coffin. Windows Vista might have been the subject of many IT department jokes for years, but Windows 8 was not such a laughing matter: It simply wasn’t good.

12 Microsoft Surface RT (& Windows RT)

The Surface RT brought us the worst of both worlds: A mediocre tablet with a massive bezel and a broken, confusing OS. Windows 8 was already in dire straits with low adoption figures, but the version that Microsoft adapted for the lightweight new tablet’s 32-bit ARM-based processor was an utter mess. Software compatibility was poor from the outset, and the OS frequently ran slowly or failed to launch Windows Store apps. The tablet itself was fine but unimpressive next to the other Surface models. It was a massive commercial failure for Microsoft, costing the company somewhere in the region of US$1 billion as unsold tablets were discarded en masse.

11 Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

The original GDDR5 version of Nvidia’s GT 1030 was a perfectly serviceable low-end gaming GPU, ideal for 720p and sometimes 1080p in less-demanding games. It was also modestly popular for cryptocurrency-mining rigs, and sales were strong thanks to a sensible asking price of around $100. The problems arrived when Nvidia quietly released a new model with DDR4 memory transplanted in. Despite having about a third of the original’s memory speed, it wasn’t much cheaper, and many uninformed buyers ended up with a crap card that often failed to hit even 30fps at 1080p. The only real advantage was the somewhat lower TDP, and since some third-party manufacturers were unclear about which memory type their cards used, buying a GT 1030 became a very risky endeavor. A rather embarrassing boo-boo for Nvidia.

10 Radeon R9 285 2GB

This model of AMD’s successful Radeon R9 series of GPUs wasn’t really a bad product, it was just a victim of bad timing and sub-par marketing. Released shortly after the R9 280, the 285 only offered modest performance improvements of a few percent against its predecessor, along with an unimpressive 2GB of VRAM and DirectX12 support that wasn’t widely used at the time. It mostly just served to clog up the market, as the R9 280 was already a decent GPU. A price drop followed almost immediately after release, as Nvidia released the superior GeForce GTX 970, further diminishing the R9 285’s legitimacy. Ultimately, this card had little impact and faded into obscurity.

09 Google Fiber

Okay, so this one actually did enjoy some limited success, although things didn’t really go according to Google’s plan. It managed to get the ball rolling, but progress was slow and costly, with proper fiber broadband and phone services ultimately only reaching nine locations across the planned entire United States. Google burned through billions of dollars digging up US roads and installing fiber-optic cabling, but saw less than half a million customers in 2016, even after five years of work. Google hasn’t given up yet – just last year, the corporation laid 1,000km of fiber-optic cables in San Antonio, Texas – but the corporation has also had to pull out of Louisville, Kentucky, amid claims of poor workmanship.

08 Google Daydream

Oh Google, we’re surprised to see you appear so many times on this list! Hang on, let us check our notes... no, actually, we’re not surprised at all. Google’s ill-fated foray into virtual reality was barely able to trade blows with its main competitor, Samsung’s Gear VR, since it launched too late to make an impact. Smartphone-based VR was already struggling in the face of the more powerful PC-tethered Oculus Rift and HTC Vive headsets, and we now have fully wireless all-in-one models like the Oculus Quest, which incorporate a compact gaming system inside the VR headset itself. The other main issue that hamstrung Daydream was a lack of variety in its software library. Despite being touted as a great new platform for Android VR, many phone manufacturers and developers took no steps to accommodate or support it.

07 Skype

How do you blow such a hefty lead? Skype rocked up early to the video-calling arena, launching way back in 2003 and cornering a major chunk of the market, mostly due to lack of competition. The app was so successful at first that its name became unanimous with video-calling as a whole: To “Skype” someone often just meant to video call them, regardless of platform.

Of course, success in the tech industry always draws in the big fish, and Microsoft snapped up Skype in 2011 for almost US$9 billion. At the time, the service had over half a billion users worldwide, but it’s been downhill since. The coronavirus pandemic has seen an uptick in use, but early 2020 saw daily usage figures of lower than 30 million. Other (read: better) services like Zoom and Discord have diluted the market despite Skype’s huge head start. Not even specialised hardware could save it.

06 Apple “Butterfly Keyboard”

The butterfly keys are an example of Apple refusing to admit when it got it wrong. The design (first introduced in the 2015 MacBook) allowed for a thinner laptop thanks to a flat key switch that was hinged in the middle, instead of two hinges on either side that crossed in the center. This made it more vulnerable to small debris getting trapped under the keycap and preventing the key from functioning. Defunct keys, sticking, and unintentional double-pressing were common problems, but Apple was quick to deny that the butterfly keys were the problem. Repairs from Apple itself were costly, as often the entire keyboard would need replacing. Multiple iterations of the butterfly key attempted to fix the issues, but were only met with moderate success. Last year, Apple released a new MacBook Pro, and the butterfly keyboard was conspicuous in its absence.

05 So, so many Linux distributions

Linux is a fantastic platform, with a number of highly recommended distributions such as Arch or the excellent elementaryOS. However, the open-source nature of Linux means that it has seen some dodgy iterations. Some are simply unimpressive, like Mint, which runs like Ubuntu with a few limbs lopped off, but others reach beyond the territory of merely bad and into the domain of weird and twisted. The bizarre Moebuntu plasters the classic Ubuntu UI with anime girls and pastel colours, while the now-legendary Hannah Montana Linux tried to entice young women into the computing field with a bright pink desktop and images of the Disney Channel-era Miley Cyrus character. Some aren’t quite so innocent, though, with more dubious distros like the North Korea-endorsed Red Star OS, which entirely restricts access to the wider internet. Then there’s “Ubuntu Satanic Edition,” supposedly the OS of choice for Satanists around the world.