Great cimputer and tech flops

[Fred the Fop]

I found a nice wikipedia article about flops....part of it dealt with computers..

The Coleco Adam, Atari Falcon, and Apple Lisa amoung them.

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 flops. Many of the Lisa's features were later incorporated into the far more successful Apple Macintosh.

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.

BeOS, Inc.

Mid-90's personal computer maker/OS vendor founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis GassГ©e. 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

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. Commodore went on to achieve success with the Commodore Amiga, but went bankrupt in 1994.

Enterprise 128

Announced in September 1983, but failed to be produced until May 1985 when its features were not so impressive anymore. It also suffered several name changes: First it was called Enterprise Elan, then Flan, then Samurai and finally just Enterprise.

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.

IBM PS/2 and IBM PCjr

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

Netpliance iOpener 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. The Internet appliance would later be named by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

NeXT Computer

Steve Jobs founded NeXT after his 1985 ouster from Apple Computer. The product and company were media darlings, but sold in small numbers. NeXT was ultimately bought out by Apple, and after Steve Jobs took charge of the company, NeXT technology became the foundation of Mac OS X.

Sinclair QL

A somewhat unsuccessful attempt by Sinclair Research to make a 16 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".

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.

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.

Compact Floppy 3 Inch floppy disk

With 360k or 720k DD, used mainly in obscure systems like Osborne Computers, Einstien, 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".

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.

Iomega Clik! drive

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

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.

Itanium

Intel expected its new server CPU, the Itanium (referred to by detractors as "the Itanic"), to revolutionize the microprocessor industry. In 2001, after 7 years of development and billions of dollars spent, the first Itanium chip proved an utter technical and commercial failure. The Itanium 2, released a year later, improved the chip in some areas. However timid managment 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.

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.

[keropi]

yes, I like cimputers too, I wish I had one...