It just goes to show you how much people love Apple. Would anyone ever post an article about SanDisk’s five worst products, or Toshiba’s five worst products? We complain because we love, so stop yer whinin’ fanboys. Wired compiled an entertaining list from the Apple rogue’s gallery. I spent a few minutes trying to think of my own list of crummy Apple products, and I realized that they were mostly things that I hated not because they weren’t good, but because they didn’t live up to the hype, or my high expectations, or they were just too ahead of the curve. The QuickTake, mentioned by Wired, is a great example of that. Too early.In fact, I could put a few of my favorite things on the bad list: the Newton, which started out weak, ended up strong, but wasn’t able to live up to its promise, being too big, too expensive, and too early.
The 20th anniversary Mac and the Cube were both examples of radical design that ended up being both too expensive and undermining the everyday computing experience by being too minimalist or too advanced, or both. Then of course there’s a half decade of underpowered, overpriced beige monstrosities released by Apple in the 90s, like the Performas and early PowerMacs. And how about that Macintosh TV?
And let’s not confine this list to just hardware. How about eWorld? Cyberdog? (Good idea, bad execution).
And let’s not just live in the distant past. Right now there’s an iPod Shuffle with voice control that makes you use Apple headphones.
What do you think? Are we too hard on Apple? We could certainly come up with a good list of crummy Sony products, too, for balance. What’s on your list of most disappointing products?
The perfect case of adding some great new technology, but then removing something that is really useful. I’d love to have the ability to use voice commands… but to be stuck with a single pair of headphones and no other means to use the player without them? Forget it.
I’m sticking with my 2nd generation shuffle. The perfect blend of function and size!
I agree with the almost everything in this article except for the negative comments about cover flow. I am old enough to fondly remember the wonders of the LP cover and I was eventually reconciled to the small CD cases (try rolling a spliff on a CD box – I have and its not so good) but I was afraid that going digital would mean good bye to all the lovely covers in my music collection.
Cover flow is the perfect solution, there if you want it and not there if you don’t. Some of my albums I have been listening too for over forty years and their covers are images from my past life and when I scroll through cover flow the images leap out and tickle my memories. What Apple undertsood from early on was that people have an emotional relationship with their music.
Really, the Apple-Bandai Pippin set-top box/game console didn’t make the list?
My guess is they’re sticking to products under the modern Apple (although the Quicktake doesn’t qualify).
The Pipin’ was under a non-jobs era where Apple was almost a completely different company. (See: Newton)
Was that actually a *bad* product? Or just a highly unsuccessful one?
It was a bad product. It was released with a slow processor for it’s task, and an outdated software platform for what it was meant to be.
Yeah, I considered mentioning the Pippin myself, but it was never even really released, so I don’t count it.
First thing I thought. Like iTunes or not, it doesn’t belong on the list, the Pippin does.
The iTunes criticisms I can vouch for all the way.
In the old days, circa 2005, before video was added, and iTunes 4.7 was the latest version, iTunes was a pleasure to use, despite it’s foreign interface, even on Windows.
It was about 30 some odd MB to install, launched relatively quickly, and had little other bloat besides installing Quicktime, which provided the necessary frameworks for it’s audio playback.
Today, my Core i7 with Windows 7 64-bit launches iTunes 8 slower on a clean, fast, fresh OS install, than my Pentium 4 did with Xp running iTunes 4.
Little in the way of actual functionality was added, and what really brings my piss to a boil is the size of updates for this program (even though my Comcast connection is quick, these updates still are larger than they need to be).
I still use it for my iPod shuffle (For running), but I much prefer WMP or Winamp for my daily listening.
Ah, I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers the days back when iTunes wasn’t bloated, slow, and generally horrible. I only ever start it to put songs on my iPhone, and it’s fairly painful to even do that.
Are you guys both using windows? (curious) as I have it on my mac and I’ve not a single problem, 57,000+ tracks too..
I wonder if the windows version is just particularly crap, which seems odd, you’d think Apple would want to make it nice to showcase their software.. then again, what do I know.
I’m running it on Windows. I’ve run it on Mac, and it is much better on OS X, but it still feels a little more bloated than it needs to be. You’re right, it’s definitely a bigger problem on Windows, and I feel that Apple would want to make sure the Windows app runs well, like you said, to showcase what they have to offer.
iTunes does a lot of things well, it’s biggest problem (on Windows at least) is performance.
I’d say one disappointing thing about Apple in general is their prices. Don’t want to complain too much about it, but it certainly hinders adoption in other parts of the world (where $200 magically become EUR200 for example).
Edited 2009-08-26 21:11 UTC
For Apple?
So this is day 1? But bad PR looks different to me .. where are all these posts for the campaign with that big announcement. I feel kind of let down TBH. Thom denied that any of his bad Apple PR posts belong to that campaign .. so is this supposed to be the first or will we have to wait a bit longer?
The wireless radio adapter thingie (airport express)
http://www.apple.com/airportexpress
The Apple TV.
( And, in my opinion, though not everyone else would agree)
Iwork.
Iphoto.
Hey what’s wrong with Airport Express?? It’s a really cool device if you travel (very small, multi-voltage, good performance).
If you want a full featured router then you have Airport Extreme (sucks).
IMHO Airport Extreme is the bad one not the Express!!!!
Agreed, Apple sent me a free Airport Extreme after an issue I had with an old Linksys. (They blamed my issues on a router, despite them telling me all my old stuff works). Took that POS and sold it, bought a MUCH, MUCH nicer newer Linksys.
The Airport Express is great. I actually get 100Mbit over my Wifi-network. Not many Wifi-routers will give you that. The Extreme has even better performance since it has Gbit-WAN.
I have tried and benchmarked many routers and nowadays I only recommend Airports to people. So far they have beaten the competition, by a lot.
Ok, its clear some people like the express. Guess I misjudged its popularity.
But still:
Uhm are you saying that other 80211 N routers don’t provide 100Mbit? That’s not my experience. They all seem to be pretty much the same. If you’re comparing it to a 80211 G or B device, then, yeah, they can’t go as fast.
I’m actually saying that the N-routers I have tried don’t give full 100Mbit. I have tried with my brothers Linksys router which I do believe only supports 2.5GHz but I got about 50Mbit against that one. A friend tried with one of those expensive D-Link routers that have two antennas and got between 50-60 Mbit.
I will admit I have only tried with Mac’s so it may perhaps work better with other wifi-cards?
I think I will save all the results I get with different routers in the future, but of all the ones I have tested so far, against my Mac, the Airports have been almost twice as fast.
I was surprised by iTunes, until I read the explanation and realized that I haven’t used it since about 2005.
I gave up on iPhoto because it, too, was a spinning beach ball factory. I once told a friend that Apple could fix iPhoto by applying some of its ideas in iTunes to iPhoot. Looks like they did the reverse.
I’ll second that. Hell, all of iLife seems to be unstable.
How in the world did the current exploding iPod miss this list? At least the Newton didn’t mame or mutilate. Perhaps after the ubiquitous and volatile iPod takes down a commercial flight it will not be so easily forgotten. The inevitable expose’ describing Apple trying to force the victim’s families to sign confidentiality agreements should be interesting, though.
Edited 2009-08-26 22:40 UTC
Oops! I blinked. Now it’s “exploding iPhones”, as well:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8223005.stm
Edited 2009-08-26 23:54 UTC
I love iTunes!
I would like it to be a tad faster to launch, but I can live with waiting 2 seconds (that’s on a 3yo iMac).
I find it easy to use, navigate etc… Not sure what the problem is. Maybe the Windows version sux, maybe that’s it…
Oh, I was a SoundJam fan back in the day, so I haven’t just started using this thing.
I would like to see iPhoto run up faster and work smoother though, and Expos~A(c) mode for Safari needs some work too, I’ve had Safari die quite a few times there (latest version).
I love the iPhone, but they may have not bothered with the camera, I hope they update that, if I don’t have a camera on me, and want to take a photo, I still think twice before using the iPhone (I have the 3G, not the 3GS, so maybe it’s improved a little, but from what I hear, it hasn’t).
Not sure how iTunes made the list.
Oh, the QuickTake wasn’t a bad product as such (well, OK, it was), but it was just ahead of it’s time, needed technology to catch up (a lot) – lol. I don’t think it should have been on the list.
The Pippin defn. should have. It was a terrible product. Kind of Apples way to try and sell a lot crap (even for it’s day) h/w that it couldn’t sell otherwise. Great idea, very very very poorly executed. It was basically an LC from memory…
Can we include products that didn’t quite make it like Copland. Again, a great idea, but it would have been poorly executed, though I loved the idea of OpenDoc!!!
The Windows version does, indeed, suck. My experience is the same, iTunes is actually quite nice on OS X even if it does take up more memory than is perhaps strictly necessary, but on Windows… it’s a bloated, slow memory hog that feels like it’s about to crash at any moment. Come to think of it, all of Apple’s Windows software is that way. Maybe they hope people will switch to Macs instead, or else don’t think spending developer resources on the Windows versions is very important. Either way, it is a rather strange decision on their part.
I hate iTunes!
It’s really one of the worst applications I have ever used. It’s so slow and amazingly even more slower when iPod is connected. It can’t auto add files to library, it can’t download cover art without registering, I can’t click right and just sync files I have to drag and drop. And saddest part, this shitty program ruins one of the best portable music player I ever had. But it’s not Apples fault, I mean I choose this path since otherway would be to suffer dreadful Creative players. I rather suffer that small time of first importing new music to iTunes and then syncing than having to use crappy music player all time.
Hey, the hockey puck mouse was the best single-button mouse I ever used. It had a comfortable weight behind it and was quite comfortable. People who complain about the length of the mouse cord must be blind – it was designed to plug into the USB hub on the keyboard, so the length was perfect.
Sure, I prefer to be able to use a scroll wheel and a second (and third) mouse button, but the hockey puck rocked.
I guess your mileage varied
I agree with the Wired article (how long since I last agreed with anything on Wired?). I _hated_ the hockey puck mouse. It was pretty (especially seeing the ball moving around) but oh the pain of using it!
Seriously? Had you used the previous Apple “teardrop”-style mice? They weren’t great, but they were a hell of a lot more comfortable to use than the iPuck.
OS 9..
:p
Let’s see…
1.the puck mouse (there were some claws like extenders we called the cat which you could attach to these)
2.MacOS 9 , man, that was a crappy one. I have started on 7 and from 7 till 9, MacOS seemed to spin downward. Luckily came OS X …
That’s about it
I think there is a fine line between a stupid product and a crap one; iTunes for example is the epitome of a crap product and I hope that with the announcement of a iPod refresh in September that we’ll see a Cocoa re-write of iTunes which will once and for all purge iTunes of its horridness. I have a 140-150GB music collection – and let me tell you, it isn’t a walk in the park when it comes to managing it with iTunes.
I’ve tried Songbird and it is a horrible player – so bad it actually made be go back to using iTunes.