Don't Believe the Hype: The 21 Biggest Technology Flops
We fondly recall 21 overpromoted products and technologies that
utterly failed to live up to their hype.
April 04, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Hype is the coin of the realm in the
technology business. If you listen to vendors and the media, it may
sometimes seem as though every new product, service, concept or even
security threat will be the Next Big Thing. Some live up to all the
fuss, but many don't -- and some fail spectacularly.
Take the Michelangelo virus, the subject of a media frenzy 15 years
ago. March 6, 1992, was the day that the dreaded virus was supposed to
strike. Journalists went overboard covering this virus, which had
supposedly burrowed itself into hard drives around the world
throughout 1991 and was set to start destroying data on March 6, the
birthday of the famous artist.
It didn't happen that way, of course: Damage was minimal. But in honor
of Michelangelo's birthday, we thought we'd track down history's
biggest technology flops.
Here we nominate 21 of our favorite overhyped failures, presented in
alphabetical order.
The Top Flops
First we present the biggest flops, in which the hype-to-success ratio
was farthest out of whack. The 14 products and technologies listed
here weren't all bad. In fact, some were quite good but were either
too far ahead of their time or were victims of overblown expectations.
Others, of course, were downright lousy.
Apple Newton
In 1993, Apple hyped its Newton PDA as only Apple can, with clever
advertising and relentless word-of-mouth campaigns. While the device's
physical size was gargantuan by today's standards, it was full of
features, such as personal information management and add-on storage
slots, that remain essential parts of today's mobile devices.
So why did Newton flop? One reason was the ridicule heaped on it by
talk show comedians and comic strips (most notably "Doonesbury"),
which focused on the supposed inaccuracy of the handwriting
recognition.
Also, Newton was expensive -- about $700 for the first model and as
much as $1,000 for later, more advanced models. In addition, Newton
was arguably ahead of its time.
Still, before it faded away in 1998, Newton paved the way for PDAs,
which led, in turn, to today's smart phones. In particular, the
smaller, cheaper Palm Pilot, which was released in 1995 and became a
runaway success.
To clarify, the official name of Apple's product was the MessagePad;
Newton was really the name of the operating system. But Newton
captured the public's imagination, so that's what the device was
popularly called.
Digital audio tape
Take yourself back to the mid-'80s when analog tape cassettes were
still a common method of purchasing and transporting music. They were
easier to manage than old vinyl LPs but they didn't sound as good.
So it was logical that digital audio tape (DAT), developed by Sony and
Philips, would become a Next Big Thing: It was digital, didn't use
compression and used higher sampling rates than audio CDs. Indeed, a
quick office poll found that at least two Computerworld editors put
off purchasing CD players because they were waiting for DAT to take
off.
Alas, this was another good idea that failed miserably. First, there
was the matter of competing formats. Audio CDs, which were introduced
around 1983, were starting to be embraced by consumers. Then the
recording industry became concerned that DAT would encourage piracy
because it could be used to make near-perfect digital copies of
recorded music. The industry convinced Congress to pass the Audio Home
Recording Act in 1992, which required strong -- some might say
Draconian -- copy protection for DAT. It also required that DAT
equipment vendors pay royalties to the recording industry.
That stumbling block cleared the way for audio CDs. DAT survived a
while for professional recording applications, but never came close to
justifying its early hype.
DIVX
Presaging our current era of Netflix and downloadable movies, DIVX
(not to be confused with DiVX, the video codec) flashed brightly in
the late '90s, then flamed out. The idea, hatched by electronics
retailer Circuit City, was interesting -- you would rent movies on
DIVX discs that you could keep and watch for two days. Then you'd toss
or recycle the discs, or pay a continuation fee to keep viewing them.
Prices were to be competitive with video store rental fees, with the
added benefit of not having to return the disc. All that was required
was a DIVX player, which Circuit City would be happy to sell you, and
the movie discs, which Circuit City also would be happy to sell you.
Hardware vendors went along for a while but weren't overly
enthusiastic, since the DVD format, for which they also were
manufacturing players, was starting to gain traction at the time. And
the video-rental industry fought the concept tooth and nail, loudly
proclaiming the benefits of the DVD format, which they called "Open
DVD," over DIVX.
Consumers didn't warm to the scheme either, fearing that DIVX vs. DVD
could turn into another costly Betamax vs. VHS debacle. DIVX died a
rapid death -- it was launched in 1998 and was pretty much sunk by the
middle of 1999, leaving some people with worthless equipment --
although vendors did offer a $100 refund for those who bought a DIVX
player. Still, left behind were lots of bad feelings about yet another
bright idea that flopped
Dot-bombs
Oh, those glorious days in the late '90s, when everyone thought they'd
get rich off the Internet! One poorly conceived dot-com company after
another was launched and promoted with an influx of money from the
venture capital community. The lucky ones went public and saw their
stock prices go through the roof and then plummet after the bubble
burst in 2000. Many others never even made it that far before fizzling
out.
Although they represented a wide range of concepts and products, it's
hard not to think of these "dot-bombs" as one entity, which is why
we've entered them as a single nominee.
If there's one enduring symbol of the dot-bomb era, it was Pets.com's
wretched sock puppet advertisements, which figured prominently during
the 2000 Super Bowl broadcast. Other advertisers for that year's big
game included forgettable (and forgotten) companies like LifeMinders,
OurBeginning.com and the cheerfully named Epidemic.com.
Maybe the dot-bomb CEOs should have banded together to start
Hubris.com. The CEO of OurBeginning.com, which spent $5 million to
advertise on the Super Bowl, was quoted in BusinessWeek as saying, "I
consider myself a visionary." He apparently couldn't foresee that his
Super Bowl spending would hasten the end of his company.
E-book readers started being sold about 10 years ago and are still
being developed. The most recent entrant into the market is the Sony
Reader. But they're still a flop.
The idea is attractive because, theoretically, e-book technology
allows you to load many books and periodicals on a reasonably small
handheld device, making it easier to travel with lots of reading
matter. Also, e-books are easily searchable, another huge advantage
over paper books.
However, e-books are much in need of standardization. Specifically,
the number of potential formats for e-books remains huge -- the
Wikipedia entry for e-books lists more than 20 formats. It's not
pleasant to contemplate buying an e-reader and then finding out that a
book or periodical you want is available only in an incompatible
format.
Furthermore, the devices themselves just aren't good enough yet. Some
folks find them unwieldy; others say they're difficult to use. And for
many people, there's just no replacing the old-fashioned, reassuring
feel of paper.
IBM PCjr
Like the Apple Newton, IBM's PCjr was ahead of its time. Unlike
Newton, PCjr was poorly designed.
Released to great fanfare in 1984 with at least two magazines devoted
to it, IBM hoped PCjr would catch on as a relatively inexpensive
version of its IBM PC for homes and schools. In those days, the Apple
II and console devices like the Commodore 64 dominated those
still-small markets.
The PCjr was both expensive and unpleasant to use. Its infamous
chiclet keyboard was wireless, but the raised keys -- kind of like
BlackBerry keys that overdosed on growth hormone -- were uncomfortable
to use for basic tasks like touch-typing. And, in another burst of
dubious inspiration, PCjr didn't come with a hard drive. Instead,
programs were contained on cartridges that you plugged into the front
of the device.
IBM pulled the PCjr from the market in 1985. The company targeted the
home and educational markets again a few years later with the PS/1,
which met a similar fate as PCjr.
Internet currency
Remember Flooz and Beenz? These two Internet bubble vendors arguably
deserved to die simply because of their goofy names. They provided
online currency, which many dot-com proponents in the late '90s
considered the secret sauce that would lead to the wild success of
e-commerce.
The idea was to create an "Internet currency" that was not legal
tender in any particular country but could be used to purchase items
on the Web. Both vendors generated a lot of hype, but Flooz's
commercials featuring Whoopi Goldberg received the most attention.
Unfortunately, consumers inexplicably preferred to use real money and
credit cards. And Flooz faced a battery of consumer complaints before
its demise in 2001. Before they expired, Beenz and Flooz agreed to
work together, proving once again that in the warped universe of
techno-hype, one plus one can equal zero.
Iridium
It was an undeniably brilliant idea to launch 66 satellites and link
them with mesh technology for routing calls to and from any point in
the world. And when it started in 1998, Iridium entranced the
technology world. "Iridium's core identity is defined by its
transcendence of national borders, a structure that is particularly
post-Cold War," Wired magazine gushed in its October 1998 cover story.
"Iridium may well serve as a first model of the 21st-century
corporation."
But Iridium's technology cost an immense amount of money to deploy,
and most users were resistant to paying dollars per minute of call
time and carrying around a phone larger than a brick. Less than a year
later, Wired News backtracked, saying, "After losing nearly US$1
billion in two disastrous quarters, the engineering marvel is in
danger of becoming the Ford Edsel of the sky."
In 2000, the company was taken over by Iridium Satellite LLC, which
recently said that it wants to launch new satellites and hopes to
attract partners to provide services beyond basic voice calling, such
as a next-generation global positioning system. Time will tell if its
current incarnation is more successful than its first.
Microsoft Bob
Bob was a graphical user interface built on top of Windows 3.1. The
idea was to make Windows palatable to nontechnical users. But Bob,
released in 1995, was far more stupid than its users, most of whom saw
the interface as an insult to their intelligence.
Bob's cartoon-like interface was meant to resemble an office or living
room. You were walked through tasks by silly-looking cartoon
characters (something Microsoft persisted in doing with its Windows
Help system long after Bob perished).
Perhaps worst of all, Bob's logo included a yellow smiley face for the
"o" in the name. Bob eventually faded away, and even Microsoft
executives agreed it had been a miserable failure.
The Net PC
The Net PC was yet another small, overpromoted computing device aimed
at home users.
Like the thin clients used in corporate IT, Net PCs consisted of a
screen, keyboard and pointing device with little built-in
intelligence. They were designed to be placed unobtrusively throughout
the home, providing a simple user interface for Web and e-mail access.
The best-known Net PC was the iOpener by Netpliance, which ran ads
during the 2000 Super Bowl, along with a host of other hype-happy
technology start-ups that no longer exist. 3Com Corp. got into the act
with its Audrey, and Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellison launched a company,
New Internet Computer, to develop and sell the devices.
The problem: Net PCs were introduced just as the price of more
intelligent desktop PCs was plummeting. Why buy an extremely limited
device when you could get a full-featured computer for around $300?
After a couple of years of hype, Net PCs faded away.
The paperless office
It's not known exactly when this dream of marketers and technology
vendors emerged, although the Christian Science Monitor suggested in a
2005 article that the term "was probably first coined in a 1966
article in the Harvard Business Review in reference to the emergence
of digital data storage."
Just as futurists in the 1950s boldly but inaccurately predicted that
computers would cut our work days in half, offices without paper have
turned out to be a pipe dream. A book published by MIT Press in 2002
called The Myth of the Paperless Office found that e-mail caused a 40%
increase in paper use in many organizations.
True, the role of office paper has been changing recently. Most large
organizations now depend on digital, not paper, storage of documents.
And the Christian Science Monitor found that sales of plain white
office paper are, indeed, leveling off. But even if office paper
consumption is leveling, take a look around your office: Is it
paperless yet? Will it be paperless anytime soon? We didn't think so.
Push technology
We're not talking here about pushing e-mail to mobile devices, which
was made incredibly popular by BlackBerries. This is about companies
like the PointCast Network, which launched its software with a hype
storm in 1996. The hype focused on how this technology could "push"
news and other information to computer desktops with no user
intervention.
However, most users never became excited about push. Those who did
take the technology for a spin found themselves inundated with news,
weather, sports and more; it wasn't easy to filter what specific
information was received. There was also a strong backlash from
employers, which prohibited the use of push products for fear they
would hog network bandwidth and distract workers.
Push technology hasn't really gone away. In addition to mobile e-mail,
RSS feeds and many of today's desktop widgets are a form of push, but
with more filters and controls than their early forebears. But the
original hype was so far off the charts that companies like PointCast
faded away.
Smart appliances
Your refrigerator knows when you are low on milk and automatically
orders more over the Internet. The cow juice and your other groceries
are delivered to your front door. How has our species survived so long
without this?
The (supposedly) irresistible appeal of smart appliances created a
buzz at trade shows and was widely discussed in the media in the two
years before the dot-com bubble burst. The idea was supported by
virtually all major appliance vendors as well as dot-com grocery
delivery services like Peapod and NetGrocer. Supermarket chains also
scrambled to get a piece of the action. And Intel, always eager to
sell chips -- even those used in refrigerators -- was part of the
frenzy too.
Long story short: The bubble burst, and we haven't heard much about
intelligent appliances since. Somehow, we're still surviving.
Virtual reality
The idea sounds fantastic -- put on special goggles, gloves and
perhaps other connected clothing and immerse yourself fully in a 3-D
game, training session or other activity. That idea made early VR
proponents heroes to many technologists. One of those folk heroes was
Jaron Lanier, who in the mid '80s started a company called VPL
Research to create virtual reality products.
Maybe VR failed in the mass market because of consumer concerns that
the equipment would cost too much or make them look silly. Or maybe
virtual reality worlds were less real and compelling than our own
imaginations. In any case, VR never took off commercially, even though
some useful niche applications, such providing surgeons with a way to
practice tricky medical procedures, still exist.
The Runners-up
Not all flops were as spectacular as the ones mentioned above. Many
were momentarily successful or technically adept -- or they simply
weren't hyped as much as our main flops. Here we present six
additional flops that we consider also-rans -- but perhaps you'll
think differently.
Apple Lisa
Before the Macintosh, there was the Apple Lisa, released in early
1983. Unlike the Macintosh, the Lisa went nowhere fast.
It sported a graphical user interface and supported multitasking, but
it was slow, slow, slow and expensive -- just under $10,000 at first.
Its demise was hastened both by the growing popularity of the IBM PC
and by the release of Apple's sleeker, less expensive Macintosh in
1984.
Dreamcast
Sega was an important early player in the game console business, but
its fortunes had faded by the late '90s. It hoped its Dreamcast
system, launched in the U.S. in late 1999, would help it regain its
place in the game console pantheon.
But even though the device sold more than 10 million units, Dreamcast
fell victim to other game consoles, most notably the PlayStation 2,
which was released in spring of 2000.
NeXT
If it's possible for a failure to be a huge success, this is it.
Launched by Steve Jobs in 1985 after his exile from Apple, NeXT's
platform and high-end computers didn't sell well.
But when Jobs sold NeXT to Apple in 1996 for a reported $400 million,
the NeXT operating system eventually became a significant part of Mac
OS X.
OS/2
This operating system wasn't a true failure, but its hype far exceeded
its success.
When it was released in 1987, OS/2 was a joint project between
Microsoft and IBM, but when that marriage hit the rocks -- about the
time Microsoft released Windows 3.0 -- IBM decided to go it alone with
OS/2. Remarkably, even though IBM's interest in OS/2 faded out in the
'90s, it only stopped supporting the operating system at the end of
last year.
Qube
Talk about an idea that was way before its time. Qube (not to be
confused with The Qube, a Sun server appliance) was launched in 1977
by Warner Communications as an attempt to give the company a leg up in
the early cable TV wars. The system used a set-top box and remote
control to give viewers features like interactive television and
pay-per-view feature movies. (For details, see Ken Freed's "When Cable
Went Qubist".) Launched to great fanfare in Columbus, Ohio, Qube
spread to a handful of other cities. It was popular among many users,
but it couldn't overcome other Warner mistakes and met its demise in
the early '90s.
Speech recognition
Over the years, Bill Gates (among others) has repeatedly predicted
that speech recognition will be a major form of input, but it hasn't
happened yet. Part of the problem is that, even with 99% accuracy,
there are still a lot of errors to correct. Plus, many of us use
computers in public places where speech recognition would be clumsy,
embarrassing or downright rude. Still, the technology continues to
improve, and it is being used in niche markets such as in medicine.
Maybe someday it'll make it to the rest of us.
WebTV
This flop is still around, and Microsoft remains its primary
proponent. In simple terms, it consists of a set-top box that connects
your TV to the Internet. WebTV Networks was founded in 1995, and Bill
Gates was enamored enough with the concept to buy the company a few
years later -- it's now called MSN TV. Among the reasons this idea
never caught on was that set-top boxes don't have much intelligence,
and the Web looks wretched on standard low-definition televisions.
Undaunted, Microsoft continues to plug away.
Contributing editor David Haskin was once was an executive for a
start-up offering highly publicized search engine technology.
Unfortunately for him, the company folded several years before the
Internet -- and search engine technology -- became popular.
What's the Biggest Technology Flop?
Apple Lisa
Apple Newton
Digital audio tape
DIVX
Dot-bombs
Dreamcast
E-books
IBM PCjr.
Internet currency
Iridium
Microsoft Bob
The Net PC
NeXT
OS/2
The paperless office
Push technology
QUBE
Smart appliances
Speech recognition
Virtual reality
Web TV
Other
|
|