Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

What is Apple's worst product of all time?

Some machines mentioned here were fine for their time. The cube was good indeed I am waiting for a friend of mine to upgrade in next year or two so I can pick it up for cheap as a collectors item. I have personally used both a 6100/60 and 6100/66 dos and they worked ok.

The apple III was funny it made a audible sound depending on what it was processing and you could hear where a "visicalc"? spreadsheet was up to in its processing. But I wrote in cbasic in those days and had several strange bugs solely on apple III's

The hockey puck mouse... Uggh. I had used apples mice for years, well since 128k:) But the hockey puck lasted 48 hours before i went shopping for a replacement.

10.0.0 wasnt great but at least its software its not like you are stuck with it for years.

For the worst i would have to say LCII or performas. The LCII was a joke compared to the CI I had been using for a couple of years. Not that I was dumb enough to buy 1. Some of the performas were absolute junk. We had a client with 20 6xxx models and kept getting tiny corruptions caused by network traffic. We pointed our finger at other people problems around the world with same model. Client and apple denied any problem until 1 day they tried to get a 5 player Marathon game going, Didnt matter which of the 20 they used a 5th machine would cause game to drop:) Apple replaced all 20.
 
Originally posted by vniow
Nobody here disses my clamshell and gets away with it.
attachment.php
Click to expand...

Damn right!! Clamshell Power!!

http://www.homepage.mac.com/ibook238/clamshell_power.html

Hee Hee Hee...
 
OK, a few things.

First, the hockey puck mouse is definitely NOT the worst Apple product ever. Get a grip, people. It's not like it killed you or anything to use it! I actually liked it, because it wasn't one of those oversized mice like the stupid Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer (ick!). If you think this is the worst Apple product ever, then you've gone too far into your drug stash. Period. End of story. I don't want to hear any more complaints about the puck mouse, or I will personally come over to your house and replace all the mice in your house with puck mice. Don't force me to do that.

(EDIT: WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Please be careful and do not slip into the sarchasm! :rolleyes: )


The same goes for Mac OS X 10.0. Yes, it was a lame excuse for a final product. But it was the first version of our now beloved Mac OS X, and it, once and for all, killed the Classic Mac OS' cooperative multitasking and non-protected memory. I kept using Mac OS 9 until Mac OS X 10.1 came out, but Mac OS X was not the worst Apple product ever, either.

One thing that you have to understand about Mac OS X 10.0 is that Apple had to get a product out. The Copland/Rhapsody/Mac OS X had been going on for almost a decade, and Apple had originally planned to have Mac OS X in late 1999. Letting it slip a year and a half does not inspire confidence in your customers and developers. Apple had no choice but to ship Mac OS X 10.0 when it was shipped, with all of the bugs and sluggishness. If Apple hadn't, they'd be stuck in the neverending "we're releasing it soon, but let us fix it" cycle forever, and Panther would not be coming out anytime soon. I cannot stress enough how IMPORTANT it was for Apple to forcibly boot Mac OS X 10.0 out the "released" door, no matter how unready it was.


Lastly, THE CUBE WAS NOT THE WORST APPLE PRODUCT EVER, EITHER. Sheesh, whoever said this is totally out of their mind. It was a design marvel, because of its compact design, and it's aesthetic beauty (and by the way, the cube is referring to the part of the computer that doesn't include the plastic housing). It's target market didn't exist, though, because it was overpriced, and you had to buy a separate monitor with it. That didn't stop me from buying one, though. ;)

And for those of you that think otherwise, the Cube HAS been officially updated by Apple. It's called the G4 iMac. I mean look: it has the same compact design, it has a same "prosumer" price, and has the same non-expandability. The only difference is that the monitor and power supply are integrated, to make it even more compact than the cube ever was. The only reason the G4 iMac has succeeded where the G4 Cube failed is that they successfully targeted the "prosumer" market correctly. The cube cost around $3000 for monitor plus computer when it first came out. You could get a PowerMac G4 for the same price. The flat-panel iMac, however, is priced at $1799 for monitor AND computer, for which you CANNOT get a PowerMac. That small difference is of tantamount importance. The G4 iMac is basically the updated G4 Cube, even though the similarities in appearance aren't that striking.


So what's my vote for the worst Apple product ever?

I think I'd have to vote for the Power Macintosh 5000 series. The 5200 LC was especially painful. While they seemed like nice products since they were all-in-one, and came with a CD-ROM drive and floppy drive built in, I had to personally fix so many of those freakin' things at the school that I worked. The most common problem was Ethernet cards being shot. I had bunches of problems with the monitors, and Mac OS 8.1 was the latest system we could reliably run on them, since Mac OS 8.5 and later would run doggedly slow. I swear, I had to repair more of those damn things than any other computer.

The Power Macintosh 5400 and 5500s were a bit better, and much faster, but they didn't improve much in reliability.

Uck, please don't make me touch another of those things again! *cries*
 
Originally posted by simX
I think I'd have to vote for the Power Macintosh 5000 series.
Click to expand...

-simX

Thank you for your contibution.

However, I need to ask you to watch yourself with the rest of your post. Telling others that their opinions are invalid simply because they do not agree with yours is way out of line. First off, arguing opinions is a useless affair as we all have them, and are entitled to them. You do not have the right, nor the means to negate that.

To then complicate your error in judgment with derogatories like "Get a grip, people.", "you've gone too far into your drug stash", etc. only hurts your cause because that allows those you are preaching to to formulate negative opinions of you - and disregard your opinions just as you have other's opinions.

You may be insulting, by proxy, those you are talking to.

Get off your horse, stop, listen, and be constructive.
 
Originally posted by patrick0brien
-simX

Thank you for your contibution.

However, I need to ask you to watch yourself with the rest of your post. Telling others that their opinions are invalid simply because they do not agree with yours is way out of line. First off, arguing opinions is a useless affair as we all have them, and are entitled to them. You do not have the right, nor the means to negate that.

To then complicate your error in judgment with derogatories like "Get a grip, people.", "you've gone too far into your drug stash", etc. only hurts your cause because that allows those you are preaching to to formulate negative opinions of you - and disregard your opinions just as you have other's opinions.

You may be insulting, by proxy, those you are talking to.

Get off your horse, stop, listen, and be constructive.
Click to expand...

Geez, I thought my statements were out there enough that the smell of sarcasm would be caught. I guess I just created a sarchasm instead... :rolleyes:

Plus, it's not like I was saying, "No you're wrong!" and leaving it at that... I explained why.
 
Another vote for hockey puck mouse. Horrible ergonomics.
I can't comment on anything too long ago because I'm too young to remember, but in terms of software, the vote goes to either AppleWorks or iChat. AppleWorks sucks and although it was meant to be, there is no way that will replace MS Office anytime soon. The only MS product I have on my computer is Office just because there aren't any good alternatives to it. As for iChat, I just dislike the interface. I'm sure many other feel differently, and I know its the best for A/V messaging, but for simple text IMing, Adium is such a better alternative.
 
Judo said:
The hockey puck mouse!
Click to expand...

No way, I loved the hockey puck mouse and currently still use it even with my new macs. I vote for the keyboard that shipped w/ the hockey puck mouse. The iMac and Powermac G3 keyboard was awful, it was practically a notebook keyboard----far worse than the innocent hockey puck ;) Although, it did have that cool Power On button ;)
 
I'd have to go with the LC II as Apple's worst product ever. It was basically a LC with a 25 MHz '030 processor instead of a 16 MHz '020. Due to the fact that it was still running on a 16-bit bus, speed improvements were barely noticeable. The LC III was much better.

The PowerBook 5300 is also near the top of my list.
 
aethier said:
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
Click to expand...

I agree... it's Apple's Microsoft Bob (google it, if you dare).

Runner up: iMac puck mouse.
 
It's really weird finding you quoting something today (06-01-2004) that I posted over a year ago (05-18-2003). I didn't even remember tracking down that eWorld village picture. But bits in cyberspace live a long shelf life!
 
Eworld was just bad timing as it was overtaken by the internet, a couple of years early it would have been brilliant a year or two later and they wouldnt have bothered starting it.

But any modern apple software product where all you have to complain about it disliking the interface is a far cry from such horrors as open transport 1.0 which only seemed to work when the wind was blowing from the right direction.
 
a bad mouse as their worst product?!?!?

well, if that's the worst they've done then i would have to say they haven't made so many bad products after all

oh, I'm still using my hockey puck after 4 years - I even have other mice just sitting around unused cuz they aren't so much better really
 
MacBandit said:
I had absolutely no problem with the puck mouse and I used one for 4 years. In my oppionion it's the best mouse you can get if you want one that moves very very freely on any surface and is very light. It is also very easy to pick and click while holding it without having to put it down.
Click to expand...

I know this isn't a thread to get defensive on, but I agree with you. As someone who suffers from RSI in my wrist, it's one of the most comfortable for me - as it's flat (no bending up of the wrist) small (can be held/moved by just the fingers, instead of the entire hand), with a wide button (so finger placement is very natural).
 
I vote for the powerbook 5300 series. they were the first powerbooks with ppc cpus. almost all of them got cracks in the cases and few of them even caught on fire.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back