Insanely Bad! 10 Apple Duds of the Decade
Apple Computer and Apple Inc have had an amazing decade, revolutionizing industries as diverse as music, movies, telecoms and software with its iPod/iTunes/iPhone products and ruling the OS Wars with its much-copied Mac OS X.
Thu, December 24, 2009
PC Advisor (UK) — Apple Computer and Apple Inc (AAPL) have had an amazing decade, revolutionizing industries as diverse as music, movies, telecoms and software with its iPod/iTunes/iPhone products and ruling the OS Wars with its much-copied Mac OS X.
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Apple CEO Steve Jobs won PC Advisor's Person Of The Decade. Fortune magazine named him CEO Of The Decade.
PC Advisor's Product Of The Decade: Apple iPod
PC Advisor's Company Of The Decade: Google
PC Advisor's Person Of The Decade: Steve Jobs
Could the man do no wrong?
Oh, yes he could do wrong. Very wrong.
Here's our list of ten products - in no particular order of badness - that Apple and Steve Jobs probably wish had never seen the light of day.
Power Mac G4 Cube - Too cool for tool
Following the success of its funny-looking bubble-shaped iMac what did Apple do next? Come out with something even wackier?
A completely spherical ComputerBall that you could roll between workgroups? Something that looked like a fish?
No, it waited till 2002's crazy anglepoise iMac for its next doolally design. Did it go mad on the colours and unveil something truly hideous? No, you're thinking of 2001's Flower Power iMac.
What Apple did was quite the opposite of the cute, friendly iMac. It designed the über-cool Power Mac G4 Cube, distilling all the power of the old tower-based Power Mac into a clear, eight-inch perspex cube.
Where the iMacs were fat, fun and colourful the G4 Cube was sleek and neutral - surely this was a real Steve Jobs product, whereas the iMac had been designed prior to his triumphant return to Apple.
It looked so good that it was immediately installed in New York's Museum Of Modern Art.
While undoubtedly a remarkable feat of engineering, the G4 Cube didn't last long - production was suspended less than a year after launch (August 2000). Instead of being embraced for saving desk space the Cube was avoided because it was so small and too cool for its own good. And bloody expensive.
Apple was criticised for leaving too much out - PCI expansion, internal audio input and output - but maybe it was just too radical for a beige-bound industry still reeling from the chubby iMac.
Nice try, but hardly a roaring success.
iPod v2 - Button it
The original 5GB iPod (October 2001) is a design classic, and most of its later versions - all the way to today's iPod classic - enhanced its minimalist beauty. But Apple had a very early blip with version 2 (released April 2003). Unlike with the G4 Cube, which had Steve Jobs' hands all over it, this product upgrade looked like it slipped right past his office while he was out for a veggie burger.
