The good, the bad and the hyped
p2pnet.net news:- “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.”
So says Computerworld in its own hype of a story on, “overpromoted products and technologies that utterly failed to live up to their hype”.
“First we present the biggest flops, in which the hype-to-success ratio was farthest out of whack,” says the story, hastening to add the products and technologies listed, “weren’t all bad” and in fact, “some were quite good but were either too far ahead of their time or were victims of overblown expectations”.
But, “Others, of course, were downright lousy.”
The list is in alphabetical order, with the Apple Newton at the top of Page 1.
Of it, “In 1993, Apple hyped its Newton PDA as only Apple can, with clever advertising and relentless word-of-mouth campaigns,” says the story, going on:
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.
Page 2 features Flooz and Beenz and, says the story, “These two Internet bubble vendors arguably deserved to die simply because of their goofy names.” It goes oni:
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.
On Page 3 comes Microsoft Bob, “a graphical user interface built on top of Windows 3.1.”
Say Computerworld:
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.
At the end of the list on Page 4 is a flop that’s still around, and it’s another from Microsoft, “its primary proponent”
Say the story:
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.
It’s last, but is it least?
Computerworld wants readers to vote for the biggest flop of all. Here’s the complete list:
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; and, Other.
Also See:
Computerworld – The 21 Biggest Technology Flops, April 4, 2007
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April 5th, 2007 at 9:36 am
“The most illustrative failure of permanet is the airphone. The most spectacular was Iridium. The most expensive will be 3G.”
http://shirky.com/writings/permanet.html