Did you rush out to the stores to buy the latest and greatest? We chart the 10 biggest early adopter products that fizzled and made us wish we could forget the money we paid for them. Okay, some weren't too bad and worked pretty well - but for most, these technologies will be remembered for their lack of popularity and compatibility.
10) HD DVD
Released:
2006
Promoted as:
Toshiba (along with NEC, Sanyo and Microsoft) positioned HD DVD as the next big leap in high-def home movie presentation.
What actually happened:
The demise of HD DVD reminds us all that competing formats and technologies are neither good for a company's bottom line or the customers' overall satisfaction. Confusion over the competing Blu-Ray format started to bite into Toshiba's profits, but it wasn't until the big Hollywood studios pulled the plug on the format that the party was finally over for HD DVD in 2008.
How early adopters got burnt
If you were one of the millions who purchased a HD DVD player at the end of last year or bought a Toshiba laptop with an in-built HD DVD, you'd probably be a little jaded with the whole format war. Many people ended up purchasing hundreds of movie discs for use on expensive players, anticipating a long and eventual future.
Considering the format is now dead and buried, HD DVD early adopters may either have to buy Blu-Ray or go back to regular DVD and wait for the storm to pass.
Succeeded by:
Blu-Ray, in a big victory for Sony and the movie studios.
Runner-Up:
Two way tie - Betamax (1975) and Laserdisc (1978). Funnily enough, both formats were technically superior to the populous VHS launched in 1976, but couldn't quite catch on beyond the niche, enthusiast market.
9) Motorola ROKR E1
Released:
2005
Promoted as:
"The first mobile phone with iTunes". Designed to make listening to MP3s more convenient - and cheaper than purchasing an iPod. Long before the iPhone was ever released, witness the early convergence of phone and MP3.
What actually happened:
The ROKR E1 suffered from a laggy iTunes software, making it very difficult to transfer songs across from the computer to the phone (with only USB 1.0 support). Furthermore, tensions between Apple and Motorola soured when Apple released the iPod Nano, undercutting Motorola's target market for the phone the same year the ROKR was launched. Sales were very poor for Motorola.
How early adopters got burnt:
Buggy firmware only allowed 100 songs to be loaded at any one moment, making it not much of iPod alternative. Being iTunes, the software was a massive system hog for this unattractively designed phone. If you had dropped $449 when this came out in 2005, you'd had been wishing you spent the same money on a 30GB iPod and cheapie phone bundle.
Successor:
ROCKR2. Motorola were so bummed with the whole fiasco that they dumped iTunes from the ROKR brand altogether.
Runner up:
Apple Pippin. Buoyed by the Apple vibe of the ROCKR, we couldn't resist mentioning that once upon a time Apple weren't the cool and stylish outfit they are today.
The Pippin was a lousy attempt at a gaming console, with even fewer games than the Nintendo Virtual Boy. The web-connected Pippin ran on a under-powered Power PC processor, the Mac OS (for games?) and a slow 14.4bps modem.
8) Windows Millennium Edition (ME)
Released:
2000
Promoted as:
Microsoft's flagship product and answer to Windows 98, targeting home uses with a hybrid 16/32bit interface.
What actually happened:
Regularly cited as the worst Microsoft product ever (yes, hated even more than Vista). To their credit, Microsoft introduced a number of handy tools and programs in Windows ME, including system restore and movie player.
How early adopters got burnt:
Windows ME regularly crashed, froze and failed to support numerous hardware devices. To make matters worse, the credited system restore function even managed to restore malware and viruses, while being notoriously difficult to restore when problems forced users to start all over again.
Early adopters were probably cursing the day they ever switched from Windows 98.
Succeeded by:
Windows ME was actually followed by Windows 2000, not long after ME was admitted by Microsoft to be a resounding failure.
Runner up:
Microsoft Bob: Later became known as Windows 95, but not before this stupendously stupid program made a joke out of Microsoft.
7) UMD movies for the PSP
Released:
2005
Promoted as:
A portable format to rival DVD and squint-worthy iPhone videos.
What actually happened:
Launched with the arrival of the PSP in 2005, UMD initially started as a hot prospect. Dual layer UMDs could hold up to 1.8Gb data and play decent 16:9 widescreen movies. In its heady days, the format was supported by most of the major movie studios and just over 100 films and TV shows were eventually released.
However, as sales dropped and customers showed little interest in the niche format, the UMD (Universal Media Disc) was dropped altogether by the movie studios in 2006, only a year after its much heralded release. Sony then decided to put its efforts into releasing films onto memory stick (which didn't last long) and discontinued the UMD idea altogether.
How early adopters got burnt:
Some people actually bought a PSP not to play games, but to watch movies. As strange as that may sound - the PSP promised to be a kick-ass personal movie player...for about two whole minutes until reality kicked in.
Hardly any decent titles were produced (considering 50 million PSPs have been sold), movie studios deserted the format in droves and there are talks that the next PSP will be not even feature a UMD drive, further rendering the format useless.
Furthermore, UMD movies were much more expensive than regular DVDs, hard to source at most local retailers and prone to case breakage during normal use - a conceit that Sony often denied. No doubt, if you had rushed out to buy a PSP to use as a personal DVD player, you better get used to ripping films to costly memory sticks.
Succeeded by:
Sony Memory stick. These days, most people save on the price of memory sticks by purchasing a memory stick convertor for use with MicroSD cards which cost less than half of the Sony memory format.
Runner-up:
Sony MiniDisc. While it never took off in the USA or Australia, it was quite popular in Europe and Japan. Still, the audio format won plenty of fans for its high quality audio, though it was eventually overshadowed by MP3 and flash memory.
MiniDisc was expensive, and pre-recorded albums were virtually impossible to come across, making CD the obvious standard. In 2005, Sony killed off the product line altogether, though niche minidisc products are still stocked by smaller retailers online.
6) Iomega Zip disk
Released:
1994
Promoted as:
A giant leap forward in data storage. Before Zip disks entered the scene, most people considered 3.5" disks the only economic way to backup data for portable use, but Iomega supposedly offered a smart and secure portable solution starting with 100MB disk sizes - huge for its day.
What actually happened:
Three words eventually brought Iomega to its knees: Click of death. Zip disks were prone to misaligned heads, other worldly magnetic forces and dust build-up that caused them to fail regularly.
The Zip disk would check for data by swinging a mechanical head arm back and forth, producing the audible clicks; when this happened, you knew the Zip disk was a goner. That eventually motivated more than a few people to swear off Zip drives and their cost prohibitive spawn forever.
How early adopters got burnt:
Iomega denied the whole click of death business and blamed customers for their own poor use. By 1998, a massive class action lawsuit was brought forward by thousands of angry Zip disk customers and in 2001, Iomega settled by offering customers a rebate towards future products - hardly a valued concession for an obsolete technology.
By 2001, the cheap cost of CD-Rs and USB drives (Zip disks/drives cost hundreds of dollars, while CD-Rs were retailing for less than a few bucks) helped motivate the world to turn its back on this costly chapter in data portability.
Succeeded by:
Blank CD-Rs and cheap USB sticks.
Runner up:
DDA4ME: DRM-protected music alternative based around a USB drive; it hasn't taken off since its December 2008 launch and is extremely hard to locate in record stores. Anyway, who buys music on USB? Haven't they heard of the internet? Fail, move along.
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| DDA4ME - Not for me, thanks |
- Contiuned on next page: the top 5 worst early adopter products -
The top 5 early adopter products that fizzled:
5) Atari Jaguar
Released:
1993
Promoted as:
Five processors, 3 chips and 64 bits of gaming power. How could it go possibly go wrong? Released around the same time as the Sega Genesis (Megadrive) and SNES, Atari had put $3million into marketing the Jaguar, thereby banking everything on its success.
What actually happened:
Put simply, the Jaguar was the console that sunk Atari. Sensing an opportunity in the market, Atari cancelled their 32bit 'Panther ' and pushed ahead with releasing the Jaguar to stores in 1993. Thanks to a number of well documented hardware bugs, including problems with the system's memory controller, very few games were actually released; but mainly because nobody bought the damn thing and because game developers weren't going to risk going belly-up with a non-rating console.
Atari CEO Samuel Trammel famously admitted that the Sony Playstation was more powerful than the Jaguar, one of those special CEO moments reserved for the Darwin awards. Even the 64bit system, which the Jaguar supposedly ran on, was accused by critics for being misleading. It technically ran on two separate 32bit chips - each running parallel.
Atari almost released a VR headset in a last ditch effort to save face, but it was too late - the company was effectively pronounced dead in the water because of plummeting sales. In 1995, the Sony Playstation was released, effectively killing off any last hopes of an Atari revival.
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| Is this the worst controller ever? |
In 1996, the Jaguar was done for and so was Atari; they were taken over by hard drive manufacturer, JD Storage the same year.
How early adopters got burnt:
Ouch. If you had paid $250 for a fifth generation console and it only played a handful of mediocre games, you'd of wished you had followed the kid next door's advice and purchased a Sega or a Super Nintendo.
Matters weren't made any better by a complex 15 button controller that had game players envying the simplicity of the Super NES gamepad. When the PSP rolled around, it was an entire game changer and the Jaguar was a distant memory for gamers.
The entire brand was laid to rest just 3 years after the console release, making this a spectacular miss and a real waste of money for the people who rushed out to buy one in the early days of 93.
Successor:
Sony Playstation. Need we say more?
Runner-up:
Nintendo Virtual Boy. Arguably a bigger flop than the Jaguar, Nintendo were lucky that this epic failure didn't plunge them into bankruptcy. Only 14 games were ever produced and the VR headset encouraged motion sickness and eyestrain.
And, because of a shortage of decent priced blue and red LEDs in the mid 90s, the games were strictly red and black. Could you imagine anything worse? Strangely enough, nobody cares about virtual reality 14 years later. Not surprising really.
4) Gizmondo
Released:
2005
Promoted as:
A 'revolutionary' handheld gaming device featuring GPS technology, Nvidia 3D graphics, Bluetooth, SMS and JPG camera.
What actually happened:
The events surrounding Gizmondo would make for a very entertaining film. The rise and fall this company is spectacular: convicted drug trafficker Gizmondo executive Stefan Eriksson became known famously for smashing rare, expensive Ferraris and courting exotic supermodels.
Ericksson's criminal ties and involvement in the company overshadowed the poorly received handset that critics panned upon release. Poorly marketed, hardly advertised and with dwindling sales, manufacturer Tiger Telematics were forced into receivership after just one year of release.
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| All the attractive ladies in the world wasn't going to help this failed handheld |
How early adopters got burnt:
We have to admit that back in 2005, the lure of GPS, Bluetooth and 3D graphics on a handheld sounded pretty sweet. But for customers who paid the $400 asking price, many of them would of been pretty annoyed to learn that the device would only ever play a total of 8 (yes, 8!) games.
Succeeded by:
Gizmondo 2. No we're not kidding - they're still trying to release a sequel to the world's worst selling handheld. After missing its 2008 release schedule, the device is now aiming for 2009, but we doubt this will pull a phoenix and rise from the ashes.
Runner up:
Gameboy Micro. The inability to play original GameBoy games (and Gameboy colour catridges) on the GB Micro made this a big no-no in Donkey Kong land and a handheld fizzler for Nintendo.
3) IBM PCjr
Released:
1984
Promoted as:
IBM's 'Green Dragon' (as it was internally known) came in two distinct models, a US$699, 64k model and a more expensive US$1299 model packed with 128K of RAM. It also featured a speedy 4.77Mhz 8088 Intel CPU. Ahh, those were the days.
What actually happened:
A massive failure, that's what. Compatibility issues with IBM PC software titles rocked the PCjr, a function it was supposed to serve without question. Due to memory problems, and non-standard expansion ports, the IBM branded PC shared little relation to other IBM computers : most customers bought the PCjr under this proviso and were ultimately mislead.
How early adopters got burnt:
Picture this: You just paid US$1299 for a computer that had very few software titles and was severely hampered by a cheap looking 64 key chiclet keyboard that made normal typing almost impossible.
To make matters even crazier, the keyboard was controlled by an old school wireless protocol (line of sight), so it would only work under optimum circumstances. Useless expansion ports made life equally tough. But it could have been worse; you might of purchased the Apple III the same year and wasted another US$7000 on a another stinker.
Succeeded by:
IBM PS/1 in 1990. Although, it can be argued that the popularity of the Commodore 64 dealt the real death blow to the IBM jr in the mid 1980's.
Runner up:
NeXT computer. After Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985, he created the NeXT computer with a goal to make it his new baby. With over US$250 million in development costs, the expensive UNIX powered machine (US$6000) failed to work with any software titles and was a huge financial disaster for the short lived company - although Tim Berners- Lee somehow managed to design the World Wide Web using it.
2) Sinclair C5 electric vehicle
Released:
1985
Promoted as:
A sexy alternative to petrol guzzlers. Inventor-genius Clive Sinclair had already achieved a level of success with the pocket calculator and digital watch (not to mention his early pioneering work in the computer business with the Sinclair PC).
With the C5, Sinclair envisioned a utopian people mover that required few age limits (over 14), no licence or registration to drive. Best of all, it was electric and operated by a simple push button starter. This was the future of driving according to this famous ad.
What actually happened:
Due to its unusual size and design profile, the C5 was derided and made fun of, becoming a financial disaster for its inventor. The company quickly went bankrupt less than 10 months after its launch in 1985.
More so, the roofless pod design of the C5 made it a poor choice for regular use in the UK, famous for its inclement weather. Cold weather severely undercut the battery life, long hills hurt the motor and because of the C5's low size - traffic visibility was determined to be a constant threat.
Urban legends hounded the design of the motor; many believed it was made from a washing machine motor, because of its association with Italian manufacturer, Polymotor.
How early adopters got burnt:
Apart from the listed design and motor faults, we imagine that regular service and spare parts would have been a little tricky to access when the company was as good as dead in the same year it was launched. Less than 17000 were ultimately sold, before the plug was pulled.
Succeeded by:
The EV1 (by General Motors). That electric vehicle didn't get too far either, come to think of it.
Runner -up:
DeLorean DMC -12. We're proud as punch to drop a Back to the Future reference in our feature, but just a little misty-eyed to see this work of automobile art relegated to a footnote in scrap heap history.
After being cleared of federal drug trafficking by the FBI, founder John DeLorean eventually saw his Northern Ireland based business sucked into a financial black hole. Less than 9000 were ever produced.
The only way to get one today is through collectors and occasionally on eBay. Although it's too bad if you dropped US$29,000 big ones back in the early 80's - we doubt the service warranty would get you far.
1) Apple III
Released:
1984
Promoted as:
Apple's finest creation since the Apple II computer.
What actually happened:
The Apple III was littered with hardware bugs - namely overheating issues and crammed components. Lacking a cooling fan, memory chips would randomly pop out and motherboards would warp.
The price of the machine was incredibly expensive and it was a total financial disaster for Apple. Over 14000 were eventually replaced by Apple.
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| PB's offered more junk than a scrapyard |
How early adopters got burnt:
Think about it: You paid almost US$8000 for a computer in 1984 (almost a year's wage for some people then), for a machine that overheated and broke down regularly. To make matters worse, software for the machine were strictly limited to just a few titles. This was not the sexy iPod era of Apple. This was the 'Oh my god, I can't believe I just wasted money on an Apple' era. Things were going so well for Steve Jobs and then he had to do this.... No wonder the following year in 1985; although his NeXT PC was just as badly recieved and a bigger disaster.
Succeeded by:
Apple III Plus. We're not sure the naming of this was a good idea, considering what came before it.
Runner up:
Packard Bell PC's. Known to have more faults than an Indian tech support line, the PB machines were famous for being seriously junky.