10 Biggest Computer Flops of all time

Over the years, computers have changed the way we live!  In order to get us to where we are today, many software development and hardware companies have pushed the envelope to create what we use today.  Software development companies have evolved, Hardware has improved. Although we currently live in an age of amazing hardware and software achievements, these products did not come without a price.  Below is a list of some of the worst flops in computer history.

1. The Xerox Alto
   Developed in 1972 at Xerox's Palo Alto Research center, the Alto had a bitmap display, windows, drop-down menu bars, a mouse, built-in Ethernet and hard disk, keyboard, word processor and more in their software productivity suite, a paint application, and even e-mail.  Xerox was far too busy fighting the copier patent war, and was not interested.  Steve Jobs was, and in 1984, Apple introduced Apple Lisa, and the Apple Macintosh.  Although this was the most ingenious creation of the time, quite possibly responsible for the way we use computers today, it should be viewed also as a huge flop when Xerox did not capitalize on its innovation.
   
2. NeXT computer
   This seemed like a great idea at the time.  Steve Jobs resigned from Apple back in 1985 to start a new company called NeXT.  The NeXT computer would be the most affordable UNIX super computer of its time.  Running a Motorola 33-MHz 68030 processor, enclosed in a black case, there was no doubt this was the hottest and most powerful computer of its time.  However at $6,000 apiece, and with no software that would run on the machine, it was really a $6,000 brick.  Roughly 50,000 were ever produced.  The company had spent over $250 million producing them.  Although a huge disaster, this was also the computer that Tim Berners-Lee would later use to create the World Wide Web, and Steve Jobs would use as the core principles behind the new OS X.
   
3. IBM PCjr
   IBM was trying to build an affordable machine for the classroom and the masses.  Unfortunately, they ended up building an inferior non IBM-PC compatible machine with a ridiculously small keyboard that wouldn't run any software.  The costs was a few dollars less than some IBM-PC compatible clones, so it was pointless to buy one.  Another nice feature, the keyboard communicated with the computer via infrared beams.  This provided hours of enjoyment in the classroom screwing up other peoples computing.
   
4. Apple Newton
   Although produced for six years, it was never as successful as Apple had hoped.  The main reasons:  High price, Large size.  It's handwriting recognition was notoriously bad, a problem that was featured in the Doonesbury comic strip.  However, although the Newton product itself never made mass appeal, the technologies that were developed for the Newton are still used today and responsible for many huge success' for Apple (iPod, OS X) and started the PDA line of computer products.
   
5. Apple 3
   Released in 1980, the Apple 3 became one of the worst computers ever built and most expensive.  It was designed for the high end business market, but at a cost of $7,800, even businesses had trouble justifying the cost.  To make matters worse, the computer was made far too cramped with parts to make it smaller.  When it became too hot inside the computer (Engineers opted to not use a fan), chips would start popping out of the boards!  In order to correct the issue, Apple tech support could be heard saying "please lift up your Apple 3 about 10 centimeters off the desk, and drop it."  this would put the chips back in the slots sometimes.
   
6. Apple Lisa
   How much to get into an amazing Apple Lisa?  $10,000 dollars.  Announced in 1983, this was a complete disaster for Apple.  Hardly any were ever sold.  How many were produced?  100,000.  The machine itself was far from powerful, and Apple users simply preferred the Macintosh.  The development costs aren't to be found.
   
   
7. Microsoft Windows ME
   Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition was touted as the first operating system to support Universal Plug and Play.  Unfortunately, this operating systems was quite possibly less compatible with hardware, than its predecessor, Windows 98.  It was also notoriously difficult to re-install, which was terrible since this operating system needed to be re-installed almost weekly.  This was one of the worst software development projects of all time for Microsoft. Hardcore users claimed that Windows ME was more stable than 98, or 98SE, and the instabilities came from users installing bad drivers that were not approved and certified.  Nevertheless, most users of Windows were beginners, and thus the perception that Windows ME actually stood for "Microsoft Experiment", "Moron Edition", "Mistake Edition", and "Memory Eater".
   
8. Microsoft Bob
   Another Software development disaster. This one is great.  In 1995 Microsoft released a software package and interface that was aimed at replacing the Windows desktop with one aimed at novice computer users.  The interface featured a big yellow smiley face with glasses and virtual rooms.  Complete disaster!  Far too simple, not powerful enough, overpriced, and all and all, ridiculous.  This software development project was run by Bill's wife by the way!It was replaced that same year by Windows 95.
   
9. IBM OS/2
   In the 1990's after feeling "Had" by Microsoft, IBM decided they could trounce Microsoft and come up with their own operating system.  A great idea gone bad by marketing,  the idea became to market OS/2 and the PowerPC Chip together.  Had IBM pushed OS/2, and later OS/2 Warp as an operating system alternative to Windows, the computing landscape might have been different today.  Instead, by the latter half of the 1990's, Windows 95 and 98 had obliterated OS/2.
   
10. Gary Kildall's CP/M
    Grab a cup of coffee for the biggest mistake, and largest computing stroke of luck that created Microsoft, and one of the wealthiest fortunes the planet has ever seen.  This one created the software industry as we know it! In 1980, IBM finally realized they needed to put a home computer out on the market extremely fast.  However they could not find the time to wait around to build their own operating system.  They wanted to buy one, and the best one at the time, Gary Kildall's CP/M operating system.  Where was Gary Kildall on this fateful day that the IBM suits came knocking?  Out of office flying a private plane.  IBM went back to the office's and looked up Microsoft, which they thought had a broad license to sell CP/M.  Microsoft came in and negotiated a per licenses model to sell the operating system at 50 dollars per machine.  Bill Gates had created the Software Licensing Industry! 
    
    Microsoft did not have such an operating system themselves, nor did they have a license to sell CP/M.  In fact, Gary Kildall's Digital Research didn't have CP/M ready to run on the 16-bit computers IBM would manufacture.  Tim Patterson did at the Seattle Computer Company, which Microsoft bought for $50,000.  Had Gary Kildall been at the office, Microsoft and Bill Gates might have been eating macaroni and cheese, and the Digital Research operating system would be running on all of our computers. Gary Kildall died in July 1994 at the age of 52.  The computer media mainly ignored his passing.

What do all of these stories have in common?  Yes they were all mistakes (at the time), but almost all of them paved the way for some of the largest success's in computing history.  Sometimes for the same company, sometimes for other companies.  The lesson here is persistence, determination, and perseverance.

If you would like to read other software development disasters, specifically Microsoft software mistakes, make sure you read Ten Biggest Microsoft Flops of All Time!

Comments

[Ken McKee]

At $6000 a NeXT Cube as about half what a Sun 3 Workstation (both Motorala 68030 CPUs) cost.

My NeXTStation ($3200) cost about what a 486 PC cost. The NeXTStation ran SAS (statistical software) about 20 times faster than the 486 because Windows/DOS was such a pathetic excuse for an operating system.

Oh yeah, NeXT assimiliated Apple and is doing very well ;-)

Cheers,
Ken

[DiFFeReNT]

Windows ME stands for "More Errors"

[Nacho]

Now THAT was interesting.

I think for number 11- it would be XP media center edition... the build of it on my computer is absolute garbage and won't run for anything.

Number 12- would be copyright protection software- starforce (I believe thats the name) anyone?

Number 13- BF2. Just cause I need my fix.

[George Gray]

Ok, BeOS...a minor flop that really does not belong even in the top 20 of all time flops. If I remember correctly, it did see some moderate success in a couple of niche markets and enjoyed a very small following amongst the anti-Windows/don't want Mac crowd. However, I think the company came out ahead whem Palm bought it. The debt they had accumalated was, I'm pretty sure, wiped away by the sale and also by a lawsuit that they won. Hardly a flop if money was made, don't you think?
I could be wrong, this is all from memory--which, at the moment, needs refreshing.

[CollinM]

I don't know what he is talking about, Microsoft Bob was/is awesome... I never did understand the point of it though. It runs perfectly on my Pentium1, 1 gig hard drive, Windows 95 desktop!

[1337 h4x0r]

0MG! Wh3r3 1z da fl0p of all t1mez - M$! M$ sUx0rz! Linux rulz! Rulz! Firefox!

[Reg]

Steve C: "What about QuickTime 3D?"

You're probably thinking of QuickDraw 3D. Great 3D API, far more extensive than either OpenGL or DirectX at the time, very well thought out framework (including a clipboard format for 3D models that the industry still hasn't caught up with), huge potential ... but no developers or hardware vendors used it, so it died.

That's a theme in some of the products above: their failure is often more to do with the market than the products themselves.

Was Betamax inferior technology to VHS? No. Was it a flop? Yes.

[Keith]

My sympathies go to Windows ME, OS/2 Warp and IBM. When Windows 95 goes to Windows 98, everyone was so excited. However Windows ME did not really pick up any momentum as people speculated that there is not much difference from Windows 98. OS/2 Warp is one software that provides GUI before DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1 were introduced, but OS/2 never get anywhere close because of its lack of publicity. IBM was once the reigning king of computing, now it's been thrown off the throne.

http://www.neohide.com

[Jason]

"If you took reversi.exe from Windows 1.0 and ran it on a Vista RC2 install, it would work."

Not true, Windows 1.x and 2.x programs were not compatible on Windows 3.0 or later. If you try to run them in XP or a modern OS you'll get a "This is not a valid win32 program" error.

[Mark]

"Was Betamax inferior technology to VHS?"

Actually, yes it was. It only allowed you to record for one measley hour compared to twice that on VHS. It would take two tapes for one movie. Yes Sony later came out with longer recording times but it was too late. There were other factors that doomed it of course but that was a huge one. As for picture quality if you set a VHS tape to SP I doubt anyone could tell a difference.

[regeya]

Agree with many of the comments that NeXT was hardly a failure, since anyone with a modern Macintosh is essentially running NEXTSTEP, though it's called MacOS X these days. ;-) Also agree on the price; the real stumbling blocks were marketing and lack of software (which can be linked to the first stumbling block, 'coz it wasn't hard to develop for NeXT.)

Heh, OS/2 Warp, GEOS and BeOS. There's three operating environments that really need to be mentioned together, because they were all vastly superior operating systems that failed it miserably. OS/2 Warp and the DOS-based-variant of GEOS just because they went up against the Microsoft machine, and BeOS just because they failed to beat out Jobs. I really truly feel that the Mac experience would be more enjoyable with BeOS; I feel consoled, though, since several Be devs went to Apple.

GEOS on DOS was a weird loss, though. Let's face it, they had a lot going for them. It had a low memory footprint, especially compared to Windows 3.0. I'd have been shocked if it had been a memory hog, since they'd developed versions for the C64 and Apple II. Plus, Windows 3.0 just wasn't everything MS made it out to be; how it managed to win people over still boggles my mind. Did anyone out there ever try to run a serious DOS application under Windows 3.0? It was horrible!

[My Name Is Bob]

MS Bob: Bill Gates married the product manager, Melinda French. After she made the supreme sacrifice, what else could he do.

Betamax: Sony would not license the tape technology to others, whereas VHS could be licenses by anybody. Do we remember that Philips came up with the standard audio cassette design? They also licensed it to everybody.

[xman]

The Newton 2000 was a fantastic machine and the handwriting recognition was superb. There still isn't a PDA to touch it today.

Betamax is/was widely used by professionals in the video industry so it wasn't that much of a failure.

And how anyone can suggest that OS/360 was a failure is beyond - clearly a young person with no idea of what they are talking about.

[George Gray]

""If you took reversi.exe from Windows 1.0 and ran it on a Vista RC2 install, it would work."

Not true, Windows 1.x and 2.x programs were not compatible on Windows 3.0 or later. If you try to run them in XP or a modern OS you'll get a "This is not a valid win32 program" error."

Sorry, not quite right. Until I got XP MCE, I could run several Win 2.x applications, reversi was one of them. I also have a version of a PASCAL INTERPRETER that was written for Win 2.1 and STILL runs on my XP Home machine. Why MCE made any difference escapes me, but for whatever reason, it did. Oh, and I had something called 'JPL' which was some kind of programming language/ide that run under 2000 but not XP.

[None of those]

"Apple Newton
[...]
It's handwriting recognition was notoriously bad,"

Slow (before Newton 2000/2100) maybe. Bad? Never. My handwriting is looking like a bunch of drunk pigs having dipped their noses into the ink. Nevertheless it was better than anything else I've ever found.

[spaceman37]

Ah the Apple Newton - Surprised the Doonesbury reference made it and not the Simpsons one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JFaUiWtx9s

[Bill Machrone]

CP/M a flop? Kildall wasn't out flying; his lawyer told him not to sign the onerous IBM nondisclosure agreement. Gary told me this personally, and several mutual friends backed him up. Meanwhile, I was running CP/M-86 on S-100 systems, and Gates bought the rights to a CP/M port that Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Works had done to run his 8086-based boards. Gates tweaked a few things and renamed it DOS.

Gary couldn't claim infringement, since CP/M itself was a port of a DEC operating system.

Xerox had a long history of ignoring great internal inventions, but whether they capitalized on it or not, the world changed the day that Steve Jobs got a tour of PARC and played with one.

Lisa was slow, but it was the prototype for the Macintosh. The Model T was slow too, but it was the prototype for the mass-produced automobile.

And +1 to everyone defending NeXT. The development hardware for OS X; Jobs just had to do it outside of Apple!

[Sam]

Great story. It makes me a bit misty eyed, though. I've actually had hands on every one of these except the Newton:

1. Used an Alto on a US Government job at China Lake Naval Weapons Center (very cool, at the time)

2. Worked an integration job with a NeXT (nice system)

3. Tested a software product on PCjr (it was a piece of junk - the PC, that is)

5. Developed software on an Apple 3 (I liked it at the time)

6. Developed software on an Apple Lisa for the Apple Macintosh (the Lisa had the strange-sounding variable speed micridiskette drives that Woz developed, as I recall. It was a nice system, with a bigger screen than the Mac, so I liked it as a developer platform. I didn't have to pay for it, though!)

7. Installed WindowsME on my Wife's Dell - big mistake. I was looking to make it more stable, and instead it was worse. This was the final straw in the MS-camel for her. We got her an iMac, and she's never gone back to MS products.

8. We had a copy of BOB in the lab at a development shop, to test that our product worked with it, as I recall. BOB was a joke.

9. Lots of clients used OS/2 - and it was a pretty good platform for development, too!

10. I had a CP/M machine, way back when. Used DR-DOS for a while, too. Good products, bad business plan, I guess!

Thanks for the article!

[Nacho]

"Until I got XP MCE, I could run several Win 2.x applications, reversi was one of them. I also have a version of a PASCAL INTERPRETER that was written for Win 2.1 and STILL runs on my XP Home machine. Why MCE made any difference escapes me, but for whatever reason, it did."

Mines the same way- the rep sold me on the enhanced functions offered by MCE in regards to media playback- it's total rubbish. MCE's MC crashes CONSTANTLY... and half the time, no sound will come out of speakers. Trying to load up 3 gbs of music takes about 25 seconds on my XP machine, about 50 seconds on my XP MCE.

[picachu]

Betamax flopped as a consumer product. But it went on to be more fully developed by Sony to become the industry standard for broadcasters and video production for years. They just dropped the "max" part of the name. ;-) With tweeks like doubling the tape running speed (for fidelity) and building larger cassettes (to hold more of the faster-moving tape) and the larger machines to run them, Beta decks killed several older tape formats (2-inch and 1-inch real-to-reel, even Sony's own 3/4-inch cassette-based U-matic format). The first digital video recording formats were recorded to Beta tape. Many smaller TV stations and production companies are still using legacy Beta decks today, even as HD and other DTV broadcast formats are demanding newer, digital solutions. So Beta was hardly a flop for Sony. Although Beta-MAX was.

[Johnny H]

Bloody nerds, get a life!

[Drew Crecente]

re: NeXT

If the computer industry were to define "failure" as "creating a cutting-edge product at a reasonable price and lose your shirt in the process." Then YES, NeXt should not have been in the list.

Sounds like there's a lotta "Bob" lovers out there as well. But they aren't complaining that it made the list.

The list was for "flop" and when we're talking about the computer industry then we're talking about the products that not only did a belly flop but often took their companies down with them.

Blame it on Marketing, blame it on being too visionary but NeXT was a flop.

[Ken]

Isn't NeXT called Mac OS X now? I hardly call that a flop

[Ryan Gray]

2. Next Cube: citing system prices this many years after is makes it sound worse than it was. As others have pointed out, it was not bad for what it was. It's just that it was cutting edge, which was and is never cheap.

3. PCjr. I had one of these, with the revised keyboard, and it was small, but small in a laptop way with fewer keys and some via a 'fn' key. I quite liked the small footprint, but the keys themselves weren't small as I recall. It also was not completely incompatible with the PC. Mainly, it just had too little RAM for many programs, and expanding the RAM was difficult.

4. Apple Newton. As I recall, the handwriting recognition was much improved, unfortunately not until after the famous Doonesbury cartoon cemented the poor initial performance in everyone's mind and in many cursory computer history accounts.

5. Apple III. Steve Jobs was the one insistent on having no fan for a quiet computing experience.

7. Windows ME. Migraine Edition. I used this, and have to say I think there was truth to it being more stable in some was if you had a clean install, but so many things you installed were not written for it, but rather Win98. Once Win2000 came out, then it was orphaned as things only had drivers for Win2000 or Win98SE.

9. IBM OS/2. I ran it for several years. It was truly the Betamax of it's time.
I mean that in a good way: it was technically superior, but overrun by the cheap alternative. It is perhaps best, however, that many of its innovations live on now in Mac OS X and Windows rather than being completely lost.

10. CP/M. As pointed out already, the common myth that Kildall missed out because he was off flying in his airplane is wrong, and is what really shows this is a computer history with not enough research done.

That said, this was interesting in the theme of them all leading to great things. Some one else including MULTICS in that vein was quite right. Another interesting list related to this would be things that were predicted to be flops when they debuted, but went on to be successful.

[xstangx]

I would say ME wasnt really a flop, it was more of a horrible OS. I know abuot 20-25 ppl that still use it today, mostly ppl running p3's still. Most of them i talked into getting faster comps or XP at least. But when i say it wasnt a flop, its because it was implemented into millions of computers and made tons of money. And to say that it wasnt 98 is wrong. THis ihow the line-up is, 98, 98SE, 98ME!!!! Windows ME is 98 Millenium Edition. Its like the Media Center XP. Last ditch effort of old OS with future OS tech in it, but makes it really unstable usually. I guess my point is that it made money, so how could it be a flop, it wasnt like 95 to 98 or anything, but it did just as well as 98se or XPMC. didnt it????????!!!