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What is Apple's worst product of all time?
- Thread starter iBookman
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Did it actually have flame or did it just melt? I was under the understanding that there was either no actual cases of fire in the US or there was as little as two incidences. I don't know why both of those possibilities stand out but they do.
thats a pretty good list. though i wouldnt have put the wallstreet in there.
most of apple's failures are marketing failures.
to me the products that bother me more are the products that do well but have one tiny flaw keeping them from being perfect. like the 12"pbook of today. great lil computer but horribly crippled. i think its a shining example of apple's problems. so much potencial, products that even flawed are still damn great (and blow away non-apple machines), but that seem to be purposely taken down a few notches. just kidna sad to see.
o and whoever was saying the cube wasn't expandable is in fantasy-land. people still use those things and have upgraded them beyond belief. dvd burners, dual ghz g4s, new graphics cards. there are many cubes out there nearly as good as modern powermacs because they have been upgraded.
Hey, my first laptop was a clamshell iBook, and though it had many problems, "overpriced" was not one of them. I shopped around a long time, comparing price and features on both PC and Mac laptops, and the iBook was (and really still is) one of the best deals on the market in terms of features for the price.
I'm in the "Performa" camp myself. Sculley [edit: actually, I suppose I mean Spindler here -- Sculley just kind of inherited this mess] almost killed the Mac by trying to compete in the "beige box" market, including Quadras nobody could afford and Performas, sold through Sears and the like, which did more harm than good to Apple's cause because the Apple computer people were most like to encounter was a cheap crippled POS.
Memory of the Performa is the main reason I cringe when people around these boards start yelling about how Apple should sell "budget" consumer machines to compete with PC-side junk machines like "eMachines."
I'm in the "Performa" camp myself. Sculley [edit: actually, I suppose I mean Spindler here -- Sculley just kind of inherited this mess] almost killed the Mac by trying to compete in the "beige box" market, including Quadras nobody could afford and Performas, sold through Sears and the like, which did more harm than good to Apple's cause because the Apple computer people were most like to encounter was a cheap crippled POS.
Memory of the Performa is the main reason I cringe when people around these boards start yelling about how Apple should sell "budget" consumer machines to compete with PC-side junk machines like "eMachines."
yeah i think the clamshell ibooks were great. i had one as a loaner for awhile. cute lil machines. first mac with wireless. not bad at all. they sound underpowered by today's standards but they were good lil machines in their day. just like the current ibooks. great value. good consumer laptop.
my first mac (not my first apple) was a performa. 33mhz. i liked it. but they weren't the best move for apple in marketing terms. that performa still works. gave it to a local school. and its still chugging along.
Gotta chime in here. I too have an eMate and it's one of the most reliable pieces of hardware I own. The newton OS is a thing of beauty and the machine itself is built like a tank. I can type my journal or just handwrite it and then play some Mahjong before bed. What could be better? Oh yeah, setting up one of my Mac pluses on my nightstand and playing a little "solitaire til dawn". I'm sure I stand alone, but I don't know of a bad Mac. I have founds some intrinsic value in every one that I have seen used or owned. (I happen to love the lcII and the pizza box form factor in general).
--dh
--dh
Of course it's true
July 1999 Apple iBook press release:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1999/jul/21wrapper.html
March 2001 article on how the emerging Wi-Fi PC hardware wasn't even compatible with the IEEE standard
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,4596,00.asp
Wake up Neo.. Matrix have you.. Knock knock
July 1999 Apple iBook press release:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1999/jul/21wrapper.html
March 2001 article on how the emerging Wi-Fi PC hardware wasn't even compatible with the IEEE standard
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,4596,00.asp
Wake up Neo.. Matrix have you.. Knock knock
The 5300 PowerBook series gets my vote by far!!!!
They were slow, big, heavy, and honestly, just kinda sucky....although, they were the first to have an HD that was a GIG in size....but still....horrible laptop!
I have some fond memories though because it was my first laptop EVER! that was cool......but I thought that it was a lot slower than all of my families older apple computers
btw --- I LOVE the puck mouse! I still use it to this day - especially for video editing!!!
and second....how can anyone think that the G4, especially with Altivec, is bad??? Sure we aren't as fast as some wintel comps......but I'm sick of this talk that the IBM G3 can blow the pants off of a Moto Altivec
believe me --- after editing on a PowerBook Alitvec G4, and then editing a similar movie on an iBook G3, I can tell you right now that I much PREFER THE G4 OVER THE G3 (or a Pentium 4 as well, for that matter)!
They were slow, big, heavy, and honestly, just kinda sucky....although, they were the first to have an HD that was a GIG in size....but still....horrible laptop!
I have some fond memories though because it was my first laptop EVER! that was cool......but I thought that it was a lot slower than all of my families older apple computers
btw --- I LOVE the puck mouse! I still use it to this day - especially for video editing!!!
and second....how can anyone think that the G4, especially with Altivec, is bad??? Sure we aren't as fast as some wintel comps......but I'm sick of this talk that the IBM G3 can blow the pants off of a Moto Altivec
believe me --- after editing on a PowerBook Alitvec G4, and then editing a similar movie on an iBook G3, I can tell you right now that I much PREFER THE G4 OVER THE G3 (or a Pentium 4 as well, for that matter)!
Since this is a thread about the worst apple PRODUCT ever, not just computers. you all forgot the product that makes all the things above look amazing.
The Pippin@World has to be apples biggest failure product ever!
aethier
The Pippin@World has to be apples biggest failure product ever!
aethier
Wow I feel old
Its amazing to see all the comments on Apple products from the past 5 years as being the worst.
Apple started officially in 1976 (Apple Computer, Inc.). The WORST product of all time has to be the Apple III. Problem solving tips FROM APPLE included picking the entire unit up off the desk a few inches and letting it drop to reseat the daughter card that came loose during shipping. Plus Apple skimped on the electrical contacts on said card and didn't use non-corroding gold. So after a while the contacts on the daughter card got gunked up making it fail, pretty much guranteed. Steve Jobs had a hand in all that, IIRC.
The PowerBook 5300 was a red herring as NO shipped units EVER had the spontaneous combustion problem that TWO models did on the Apple campus (due to the batteries made by some company other than Apple BTW). I bought one of these things and it never had any of the problems claimed by the overly vocal minority of whiners who had the expected one out of ten thousand funky models. Apple has never shipped anything that has been absolutely problem free its entire product lifespan.
The second and third worst product happens to come from the Amelio era of Apple.
The G3 AIO for education (the iMolar, iTooth) precursor to the iMac that Jobs and Co. came up with is #2. It was a good concept horribly executed. It really looked like a giant tooth. Ugh. Thanks Amelio!
Then there is the little know Power Mac 4400. This model was a real stinker. It was targeted at business with a bundled copy of MS Office and a slimmed down desktop form factor (a shorter Beige G3 desktop shape). An independent Mac shop had stacks and stacks of these things for sale, they easily outnumbered any other used model 10:1. I guess business didn't want an underpowered overpriced "business" Mac. Brilliant move Amelio.
Maybe the Macintosh Portable and Lisa should be near the top. Yet another example of "What were they THINKING?"
Two Apple museum sites aren't working so I can't get more descriptive of these models. Look for yourself as they were real turkeys.
Its amazing to see all the comments on Apple products from the past 5 years as being the worst.
Apple started officially in 1976 (Apple Computer, Inc.). The WORST product of all time has to be the Apple III. Problem solving tips FROM APPLE included picking the entire unit up off the desk a few inches and letting it drop to reseat the daughter card that came loose during shipping. Plus Apple skimped on the electrical contacts on said card and didn't use non-corroding gold. So after a while the contacts on the daughter card got gunked up making it fail, pretty much guranteed. Steve Jobs had a hand in all that, IIRC.
The PowerBook 5300 was a red herring as NO shipped units EVER had the spontaneous combustion problem that TWO models did on the Apple campus (due to the batteries made by some company other than Apple BTW). I bought one of these things and it never had any of the problems claimed by the overly vocal minority of whiners who had the expected one out of ten thousand funky models. Apple has never shipped anything that has been absolutely problem free its entire product lifespan.
The second and third worst product happens to come from the Amelio era of Apple.
The G3 AIO for education (the iMolar, iTooth) precursor to the iMac that Jobs and Co. came up with is #2. It was a good concept horribly executed. It really looked like a giant tooth. Ugh. Thanks Amelio!
Then there is the little know Power Mac 4400. This model was a real stinker. It was targeted at business with a bundled copy of MS Office and a slimmed down desktop form factor (a shorter Beige G3 desktop shape). An independent Mac shop had stacks and stacks of these things for sale, they easily outnumbered any other used model 10:1. I guess business didn't want an underpowered overpriced "business" Mac. Brilliant move Amelio.
Maybe the Macintosh Portable and Lisa should be near the top. Yet another example of "What were they THINKING?"
Two Apple museum sites aren't working so I can't get more descriptive of these models. Look for yourself as they were real turkeys.
Well whatever
The 6300 series lacked a DMA chipset so that any I/O activity totally locked up the CPU i.e. Modem or networking.
This was a really bad design flaw, but it wasn't a totally worthless machine like some of the other Apple products that preceeded it. It was just slower than it should have been.
As far anyone who claims their "friends" 5300 battery flamed on I highly doubt it. Apple caught this problem very early and recalled the laptops to replace the original (LiOn?) battery with a heavier NiMH version and tweak the power manager to charge them properly.
I orderd a 5300cs right when they came out and was backordered immediately due to the recall. My packaged arrived direct from Apple's US facility and had stickers on it indicated it had been rerouted.
The 6300 series lacked a DMA chipset so that any I/O activity totally locked up the CPU i.e. Modem or networking.
This was a really bad design flaw, but it wasn't a totally worthless machine like some of the other Apple products that preceeded it. It was just slower than it should have been.
As far anyone who claims their "friends" 5300 battery flamed on I highly doubt it. Apple caught this problem very early and recalled the laptops to replace the original (LiOn?) battery with a heavier NiMH version and tweak the power manager to charge them properly.
I orderd a 5300cs right when they came out and was backordered immediately due to the recall. My packaged arrived direct from Apple's US facility and had stickers on it indicated it had been rerouted.
Definitely the PowerMac 4400.
160 MHz, no L2 Cache (available on 200 MHz model), ugly PC-like case, way ower-powered fan (extremely noisy), terrible internal speaker.
I still have one running. Darn, it's soooo slow!
160 MHz, no L2 Cache (available on 200 MHz model), ugly PC-like case, way ower-powered fan (extremely noisy), terrible internal speaker.
I still have one running. Darn, it's soooo slow!
I have had a Performa 5200CD for years. It's great. The best Mac ever. It had EVERYTHING you could need. Show me an iMac with TV-tuner, eh?
Why didn't you ever add the L2 cache or a L2 cache upgrade?
On many machines with the L2 cache slot the L2 cache was an option on the entry level machine, and after all these years the chance to buy a L2 upgrade for next to nothing has probably come and gone dozens of times.
eMate...
I'll recant my comment about the emate. It's a product that, to me, seems to have come and gone when no one was looking. I only vaguely remember reading about and never actually saw one.
That being said, I have to say ditto on the hockey puck mouse. That thing was just horrible.
I'll recant my comment about the emate. It's a product that, to me, seems to have come and gone when no one was looking. I only vaguely remember reading about and never actually saw one.
That being said, I have to say ditto on the hockey puck mouse. That thing was just horrible.
Because at the time I felt the PM 4400 was becoming too slow I was already thinking of buying an iMac (and I did).
And the L2 Cache upgrade was extremly expensive at that time.
And today the PowerMac 4400 is only being used as typewriter. Hence, I am not going to spend any money on it.
what he said is that his pb was starting to overheat and then the computer locked up...the batery made a noise and then there was a spark. teh place where the battery was started to melt and it had a small flame.
G4 didn't introduce vector processor unit (in fact MMX, etc. had existed before AltiVec.).But, I'll jump in the subject, my opinion:
Power Mac G4 Cube is both the worst and best product of all time.
* Great computer.
* Horrible marketing/prices/etc.
Coincidentally, I just fixed a G4 Cube today for a neighbor. Disk Warrior for Mac OS 9 rescued it. The owner (my neighbor) still loves the unique design, although he says he sometimes has trouble grabbing CD-ROMs out of the toaster-like drive. He's had the cube for a couple of years with no complaints before today, so he wouldn't consider it suitable for this "worst product" list.