There are many reasons why Apple products are among the best you can get out there whether what you are looking for is a mobile phone, or a laptop, fitness tracker, or whatever. This is because they have elegance, style, quality, and security. Because of this, the mention of failed products by apple will seem very distant to a lot of people.
Many people will agree that Steve Jobs was one of the most influential inventors ever, as such everything from him and his company should be silky smooth. Don’t count on it, the company has also made flawed products that were still expensive. Somehow, such products came with little or no buzz and left as silently as they came.
Here are some failed products by Apple:
1. Apple Pippin Game Console
It was in 1996 that Apple decided to try its hands on Game console. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a massive failure as it was already out of business by the next year. Before it folded, the Pippin was a great failure as it was only able to sell 42,000 units. In contrast, Nintendo’s N64 game console which was also launched in 1996 sold a minimum of 350,000 in its first three days.
Apart from the fact that it was very expensive, selling at $600 dollars, the control of the game was terrible and it had no storage for more games. Even though it had its good sides including connectivity, the games were very poor and that was the main thing that led to its fall.
2. ROKR
This was a collaboration between Motorola and Apple to help the company get into the mobile phone market. One of the main problems was that Apple tried to create in it a phone that could handle almost everything without taking the time in creating it.
To be fair, the phone was good as it was the first iTunes music phone. But then, there were many flaws such as allowing one to have only 100 songs no matter the size of your storage. More so, you can’t use it on any network provider apart from the predefined one it comes with it.
At least, it would later be the predecessor of the iPhone, so it may have won after all.
3. Lisa
This was one of the first projects of the late Steve Jobs who decided to name the computer after his daughter Lisa, who was born in 1983. That was the year the computer was created and it lasted until 1986.
The Apple Lisa was designed for businesses but even the fact that it was the first computer to have graphical user interface couldn’t help it sell to businesses apart from NASA which remained its single market. The Major problems with Lisa were that she was very boring to use, hard, and slow.
The worst part of this is that it came with a massive price tag of $10 thousand.
4. Apple 3
While this was not designed by Jobs, it still finds itself as one of the failed Apple products. Created to compete in the business market, the problem that the computer faced was multifaceted.
First of all, the design had nothing to write home about and the motherboard was quick to get hot. In defense of Dr. Wendell Sander who was the creator of the computer, it was Jobs that asked him to take out the cooling fan because it was too noisy.
The Apple 3 was the first computer from the company not to be designed by Steve Wozniak who had designed the company’s previous computers. It was started in 1978 and by the time it was completed, it was already finished as the first failure of Apple with a price tag of $6,500.
5. Apple Macintosh Portable
When the company set out to create this computer, the goal as suggested by the name was to give computer users something that was portable and great in performance.
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However, the 1989 computer just didn’t have portability to it, most especially with its weight measuring 15.8 pounds (7.2kg). What this means is that today you may need as much as 7 MacBook Air to have the weight of the Macintosh even when the emphasis was on portability. The laptop also had a price of $6500 which was way too much. By 1991 it was discontinued following its poor reception.
6. MobileMe
Before the iCloud, there was the Mobile Me. This was a straight failure from the start with a straight face. It was released at the same time with the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software, and the App Store.
The idea of the MobileMe as you have guessed was to provide a service that would allow you to store addresses, emails, documents, and other things online for an annual subscription fee of $99. Almost everything about it was flawed from charging people on trial to extended email outage and many more.
The embarrassment was so much that Jobs himself had to meet the team in charge, and he fired the engineer in charge of the project instantly.
7. Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
There was also Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh which stays up there with other failed products by Apple. It was introduced in 1997 and the very next year, it was heading out of the market. The irony was that the introduction of the 20th anniversary was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Apple which began in 1977.
Interestingly enough, it came with built-in TV and FM tuner which allows you to flip from one thing to the other and it was the among the first desktop computers to use the LCD screen. It was futuristic in look and idea, but it still failed to serve effectively, and that is not because of the massive $7,499 price tag it came with. Even when reality struck and the price was lowered to $2000, not many gave it a second glance forcing it to leave the stage.
The take home is that although the release of this coincided with April Fools Day, it was no joke at all.
8. Macintosh TV
Yes, we also have the Macintosh TV that we would have loved to see succeed. It came in 1993 with an intelligent idea of bringing together Television set and computer.
Apart from the fact that it was unable to appeal to the users, it could not be expanded and overall, it failed in many ways possible. It also came with a price tag of over $2000.
9. Ping
There was a social network named ping that was introduced by Apple in 2012. Not to be confused, it had nothing to do with pinging, if you know what I mean. The social network was designed with music in mind, but this time around it sought to integrate social media sites like Facebook and Twitter as well as iTunes.
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The platform was designed to allow people to follow artists who would share a little of their works before releasing and you could listen to music of friends and also share. Great idea? Well, it failed even though it was a free service. The failure was because there were many countries that could not access iTunes and it would be hard for it to compete with Facebook and Twitter. Hence it was out of the race by 2012.
