Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Welcome again,
Speaker 1: loyal listeners to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting next to me, laughing is head off at me,
Speaker 1: as usual, his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, So, uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about some flops. Yeah, and not earlier podcasts,
Speaker 1: oddly enough, not peda flops, not ter flops. No, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we We decided we wanted to look at some
Speaker 1: some famous in some cases infamous technological flops, stuff that
Speaker 1: just did not go as planned, didn't perform as well
Speaker 1: as it was supposed to, maybe you know, made a
Speaker 1: big splash and then immediately sank. Um. So we're we're
Speaker 1: focusing on the hardware side. I'm are in the future podcast.
Speaker 1: We will focus on software that totally flopped as well. Sure,
Speaker 1: went on, So do you want to start each shall I? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know you said you had yours divided up
Speaker 1: into category. Okay, I have handheld devices, game systems, computers. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding. I'm kidding about the potpourri's words. So U so,
Speaker 1: do you have a particular category you want to start
Speaker 1: with or should I just launch whatever you like? Because
Speaker 1: like I said, I mean, I've got I've only got
Speaker 1: a couple of handheld devices, but I have several game
Speaker 1: systems and computers that I can talk about. Well, my
Speaker 1: my all time favorite and the one that made me
Speaker 1: think of this is a game system related um. And
Speaker 1: some people consider it a success. I consider it a
Speaker 1: sort of a flop. And that would be the you
Speaker 1: knewer people were you know, if you're born after or
Speaker 1: just gonna get would um the at man um. I
Speaker 1: I had an attor growing up. My wife had, so
Speaker 1: she added that to my tech museum from the marriage.
Speaker 1: I consider it the the prize of my collection. Um
Speaker 1: kind of her dowry, Yes exactly, you know, forget the
Speaker 1: hope chest. And the problem is and and this is uh,
Speaker 1: from what I've I've read in the past, Umtory really
Speaker 1: pushed its engineers to come up with new stuff that
Speaker 1: it could patent, and uh, they came up with this joystick,
Speaker 1: which is an analog joystick exactly like well not exactly
Speaker 1: like but very similar to the ones you might see
Speaker 1: on modern controllers like I'm the Xbox three sixty or
Speaker 1: the PlayStation controllers that the little thumbsticks. But this is bigger,
Speaker 1: and it's a it's a lot bigger actually, UM and
Speaker 1: uh comes attached to a a numeric keypad. And the
Speaker 1: problem with this is a lot of the games at
Speaker 1: that point were very you know, up down, left right
Speaker 1: sort of games, and so this sixty degree controller made
Speaker 1: it a real pan and neck to play stuff like
Speaker 1: pac Man and anything you needed a firm straight up
Speaker 1: and down left right direction fire. I heard that it
Speaker 1: had a real hard time resentering. I also heard that
Speaker 1: they were fairly flimsy and could break at you know,
Speaker 1: a moment's notice. Some if you were a an energetic gamer,
Speaker 1: let's say, you could probably go through one and just
Speaker 1: a couple of gaming sessions. I actually sent back the
Speaker 1: one that had my my the one that came with
Speaker 1: my wife's system, had broken, and I sent it to
Speaker 1: this place in California called Best Electronics, which actually has
Speaker 1: a lot of the old Attari parts, and if you
Speaker 1: send in your controller, they will give you a discount
Speaker 1: on a remanufactured one. It has since broken too. I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised it was. It was not very hardy. There
Speaker 1: were some other problems with the attar besides the fact
Speaker 1: that it had allows the controller. So I'm glad you
Speaker 1: mentioned the controller because that was definitely on my list,
Speaker 1: but itself was on my list. The main reason was
Speaker 1: because it was not backwards compatible, not in the least.
Speaker 1: You couldn't play at games on the R which was
Speaker 1: a very common gripe at the time and had a
Speaker 1: bunch of games. Yeah, and the worst part was was
Speaker 1: that they started to re release the games in formats,
Speaker 1: so you would have to buy the same game to
Speaker 1: play it on your new system. So you have to
Speaker 1: have two copies of the same game just to be
Speaker 1: able to play it. So if you are a current
Speaker 1: console owner and wonder about backward compatibility and why they
Speaker 1: bother doing that, that's why, because people will gripe now, yeah,
Speaker 1: as anyone who's owned any of the Nintendo machines leading
Speaker 1: up to the WEI could argue, because of course that's
Speaker 1: the same problem is that they would they off Nintendo
Speaker 1: would often ignore backwards compatibility, and um, and I mean
Speaker 1: that was one of the things about PS two that
Speaker 1: people loved was the fact that you could still play
Speaker 1: the PlayStation one games on the PS two, most of
Speaker 1: them anyway. And same thing with the Xbox three sixty.
Speaker 1: You could play most of the Xbox games on it,
Speaker 1: so you know, you didn't feel like you had to
Speaker 1: keep an old machine around just to be able to
Speaker 1: play some of your favorite games. You could. You could
Speaker 1: actually get rid of it, play the stuff on the
Speaker 1: new machine so much now and and so on it went.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, a Torii had a giant
Speaker 1: lead in the home with sort of began squandering it
Speaker 1: because on my list or also the Attry Links and Jaguar,
Speaker 1: and they got increasingly hard to use and people stopped
Speaker 1: developing for them. Yeah, you've got smaller and smaller libraries
Speaker 1: of games. The games that did come out were pretty lame,
Speaker 1: and so ATRII, you know, eventually was no longer a
Speaker 1: player in the video game console war. I probably probably
Speaker 1: shouldn't have mentioned the Links in a way because the
Speaker 1: Links actually, from what I understand, was a pretty good
Speaker 1: gaming system, but at that point they had already squandered
Speaker 1: their developers, right. Yeah, that was the problem was that,
Speaker 1: you know, it was a good device without good content.
Speaker 1: That's the problem. And because they were going up against
Speaker 1: the first Game Boy at that point, and endo because
Speaker 1: some of these flops are are flops, not because the
Speaker 1: hardware that itself was was faulty, but just because of
Speaker 1: bad timing or other consequences. Um, all right, well, let
Speaker 1: me let me throw another game system at an infamous
Speaker 1: game system flop. Nintendo Virtual Boy. Oh boy, did you
Speaker 1: ever actually try one of these? No, I'd seen them
Speaker 1: and they looked kind of it looked kind of flimsy,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to mess with it, okay, because
Speaker 1: they didn't want to try it out in the store
Speaker 1: and have a break. Right, Yeah, you don't want to
Speaker 1: end up buying a multihull system that has only fourteen
Speaker 1: games in the United States. So the Nintendo Virtual Boy,
Speaker 1: if you don't remember this or have you never seen one,
Speaker 1: you wonder what we're talking about. It looked like a visor.
Speaker 1: Um it was. It was this system. It was a
Speaker 1: virtual health advisor. Yeah. The the system was was like
Speaker 1: a you know, think of like an electronic binoculars really,
Speaker 1: um on a little tripod and you would put your
Speaker 1: face up to it and you'd look through the lenses
Speaker 1: and it was all in red and black. Those were
Speaker 1: the only two colors that could display, and it would
Speaker 1: because you're looking at it through binocular vision, you would
Speaker 1: given the feeling of depth. So it created a three
Speaker 1: D effect, although I have to say, from my own
Speaker 1: personal experience, it was not an overwhelmingly convincing three D effect.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but Nintendo started to build in
Speaker 1: elements in the games that would require you to take
Speaker 1: breaks after you played it for a while, because users
Speaker 1: were reporting problems with headaches, and I strain after using
Speaker 1: it for more than, you know, fifteen minutes at a time.
Speaker 1: And I don't know about you, but when I'm gaming,
Speaker 1: it's usually longer than fifteen minutes. Um. In fact, as
Speaker 1: a as a kid, I was one of those kids
Speaker 1: who would brack up the you know, three or four
Speaker 1: hours of serious gaming all in a row, um, depending
Speaker 1: on what the system was and what the games were.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that would have been pretty irritating. Now. I
Speaker 1: only tried it out in stores, and I think, um,
Speaker 1: there's one kid in my neighborhood who had one, and
Speaker 1: before we ostracized him for his choice and video gaming. Um.
Speaker 1: I played it a couple of times at this house,
Speaker 1: but then of course we ended up, you know, ostracizing him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we we we kind of banished him from the neighborhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we do not speak of him. I I have what
Speaker 1: I call Jonathan rolls his eyes at me moment. But
Speaker 1: he may he may actually, uh, he may actually enjoy
Speaker 1: the fact that I'm doing this. A long time ago,
Speaker 1: the Commodore company had something that they purchased from somebody
Speaker 1: else called the Amiga. I made a series of fairly
Speaker 1: successful computers, but what they also made was a console
Speaker 1: called the Amiga c D thirty two. It was the
Speaker 1: first thirty two bit console game system available in Canada
Speaker 1: and Europe, and actually, uh Amiga was actually known for
Speaker 1: its games. In fact, when I had my Amigas and
Speaker 1: they were my only computers, people used to laugh at
Speaker 1: me because they said, oh, well, I've got a PC
Speaker 1: or I've got a Mac and you've got a game machine. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that's really funny now when people buy five
Speaker 1: thousand dollar PCs to play games on. But um, the
Speaker 1: c D thirty two was going to capitalize on that
Speaker 1: because it was a console that you could hook up.
Speaker 1: It actually had ports for keyboard and mouse. Unfortunately, Commodore
Speaker 1: didn't manage things very well, and they never even got
Speaker 1: to introduce it in the United States before it folded,
Speaker 1: so it just sort of, uh, you know, it went away.
Speaker 1: It was the game that that almost was. There were
Speaker 1: some titles that I played that were available for the
Speaker 1: c D thirty two that I played on the Amiga
Speaker 1: that we're pretty cool. But you know, again, it didn't
Speaker 1: matter that the uh just Hardna, it wasn't okay, it
Speaker 1: was just sort of I mean, first thirty two bit system.
Speaker 1: All right, I got another one for you, okay, Nakia Engage. Ah, yes,
Speaker 1: this is sort of a handheld gadget slash games system. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So uh, and there's another one that I can add
Speaker 1: in there too afterwards. No, no, no, the Engage two
Speaker 1: was an improvement over the Engage and still was a flop.
Speaker 1: But so then the original Knockia Engage. First of all, uh,
Speaker 1: it looked pretty weird. Um. If you wanted to use
Speaker 1: it as a phone, because it didn't have phone capabilities,
Speaker 1: you had to hold it um in a really weird
Speaker 1: sideways uh fashion, and you didn't hold it flat side
Speaker 1: to your ear, you held it edge to your ears.
Speaker 1: So people said it looked like you were holding a
Speaker 1: taco to your face. Um, had Mexican food for lunch.
Speaker 1: So uh, but yeah, it's an awkward design and uh
Speaker 1: and the other the awkward in more ways than one.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to switch the games out of the
Speaker 1: original Knockia, you had to remove the battery to do it.
Speaker 1: You had to take the battery out, take out the cartridge,
Speaker 1: put a new cartridge, and put the battery in and
Speaker 1: start playing. So yeah, bad design. And um, it didn't
Speaker 1: get a whole lot of support. Not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of games came out for it. So although it hung
Speaker 1: around for a couple of years, um, it just it
Speaker 1: never really got a big market share. There's still some
Speaker 1: elements of the Knockia Engage out there now. Knakia still
Speaker 1: has the gaming platform um for the for its phones.
Speaker 1: You can use the Knockia Engage platform on your phone. Um,
Speaker 1: you're not actually using the the engage device itself. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that was another flop. The other one I was gonna mention,
Speaker 1: of course, was the Gizmondo. Yes, which never was. This
Speaker 1: was this was a handheld device, had had lots of
Speaker 1: cool features in it, you know, a camera, GPS receiver. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was like four dollars for a little handheld device,
Speaker 1: and from what I understand, it would drain the batteries
Speaker 1: so quickly that there was really no way you can
Speaker 1: have a satisfying gaming experience on it in the first place.
Speaker 1: So another technology flop, and that, you know, the company
Speaker 1: turned out to be sort of Yeah, the there are
Speaker 1: a lot of interesting, interesting, controversial things about that company
Speaker 1: and its founder. Um should read up on that. It's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really can't go into it because that's not really
Speaker 1: about the flops. I mean, that's more. We should do
Speaker 1: technology controversies at some point. That would be a fun one. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm done with game systems, by the way, I am too. Actually, well,
Speaker 1: there was the c d I. Yeah, we could talk
Speaker 1: about other ones like the c d I, the three
Speaker 1: D O. Yeah, I mean there are plenty of other
Speaker 1: ones that that flopped. Well, the cd I was sort
Speaker 1: of cross platform, you know, because it had one DVD
Speaker 1: player and other stuff in it. Just that it was
Speaker 1: kind of expensive and nobody wanted to buy it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's one of those that just never really found a
Speaker 1: place either. Um. Okay, well, how about I go with
Speaker 1: handheld devices? So we can go ahead and put up
Speaker 1: the flameproof shielding around the podcast. Hold on one second
Speaker 1: while I flip a switch. All right, there we go,
Speaker 1: there we go. Here we go. The Apple Newton. Don't
Speaker 1: hit me, not in the face. Um the Apple Newton. Okay,
Speaker 1: I know it has its uh devotees, but uh Apple
Speaker 1: Newton was spanned. What a what a mess that was,
Speaker 1: especially the original Apple Newton that came out. It just
Speaker 1: even some of the designers who worked on the Apple
Speaker 1: Newton say that it was rushed to market and that
Speaker 1: it was not ready when it hit the store shelves.
Speaker 1: That never happens with technology, right. I read a report
Speaker 1: from one I wish I had written down the fellow's name,
Speaker 1: but I read a report from one of the founders
Speaker 1: are one of the people who designed the Newton. Um.
Speaker 1: He actually left the project before it it finally went
Speaker 1: to the stores. But he specifically said that that Apple
Speaker 1: should not the Apple marketing crew should not say that
Speaker 1: the Apple Newton could recognize your handwriting, because he felt
Speaker 1: that that capability was not fully implemented and that it
Speaker 1: presented an incorrect picture. And not only did they use it,
Speaker 1: but they've used it in the largest font and put
Speaker 1: it on the front page of the marketing materials. So
Speaker 1: the Apple Newton, in case you don't know what it is,
Speaker 1: it was sort of a PDA and it was as
Speaker 1: a pd A it that you could use to to
Speaker 1: take notes. You you had a little stylist that you
Speaker 1: could write on your your the screen, and it was
Speaker 1: supposed to have handwriting recognition as well as all these
Speaker 1: other capabilities. That was just one thing that it could do,
Speaker 1: but that was what was really known for doing poorly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. The the handwriting recognition sort of gets a
Speaker 1: bad rap for an otherwise pretty decent little machine. And
Speaker 1: for those of you who don't know what a p
Speaker 1: d A is, For some of our younger listeners, it's
Speaker 1: a smartphone without the phone or the camera. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the GPS system. It's it's the way that you can
Speaker 1: keep your your calendar and contexts and things like that
Speaker 1: all at hand without actually being able to make any
Speaker 1: phone calls. And the Newton technology actually moved into something
Speaker 1: else called the eMate, which was supposed to be for
Speaker 1: educational purposes but sort of a clamshell device and had
Speaker 1: a little keyboard in it. A lot of people thought
Speaker 1: it was kind of neat, but Apple killed it. That
Speaker 1: was right at the point where Steve Jobs came back
Speaker 1: to the company and he pretty much said, yeah, no
Speaker 1: more Newton or EMI, right, mat Um, And the Newton
Speaker 1: was UM. Well, first of all, it was small, but
Speaker 1: not small enough. It was still a pretty bulky device.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about handheld devices, and the most expensive
Speaker 1: model costs a thousand dollars. That's a lot of money
Speaker 1: for a p d AH it is, especially one that
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily recognize your handwriting. Yeah, I've got one other
Speaker 1: handheld device I can talk about very briefly before we
Speaker 1: move on to one of yours, if you like, or
Speaker 1: if you have one you want to throw in. I've
Speaker 1: got a I've got a handheld device, and I had
Speaker 1: another gadget that's not really um handheld device. I have
Speaker 1: the que Cat that cue cat. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: That's not ringing any bells. Oh, Jonathan, I think that's
Speaker 1: good for you, because the que Cat was advice UM
Speaker 1: that actually Wired was going to try out this partnership,
Speaker 1: but it seriously, you need to be sitting down for this.
Speaker 1: It was a cat shaped barcode reader USB barcode reader.
Speaker 1: Why because there was. It was a marketing device. You
Speaker 1: would get a que cat and then they would send
Speaker 1: a magazine to you, like Wired, and you would scan
Speaker 1: the barcode. So if you were interested in something on
Speaker 1: page seventeen and then had a barcode for the que cat,
Speaker 1: you could read it. However, it also became known that
Speaker 1: they each device had a number that was identifiable, so
Speaker 1: it basically had cookies built into it, if you will,
Speaker 1: and so they could figure out what you were interested in,
Speaker 1: what you weren't interested in, and now wouldn't have personally
Speaker 1: identifiable information, but they would know that, you know, whatever
Speaker 1: your user number was, you know it was interested in
Speaker 1: these kinds of technologies. Are number three really likes ladies underwear? Exactly? Um? However,
Speaker 1: hackers started using them for different things. They found ways
Speaker 1: to use them for other stuff like, uh, scan barcodes
Speaker 1: to add things to your database. You could create your
Speaker 1: own home library. And that made the que cat people
Speaker 1: really upset, and they threatened to sue those hackers if
Speaker 1: they could ever find them. Um. Nonetheless, the que cat
Speaker 1: sort of evaporated and never came back. Um. And yes,
Speaker 1: it is cat shaped. It looks like a reclining cat. Well,
Speaker 1: let me hit you with this hang held device really quickly. Um,
Speaker 1: hopefully not literally. No, no, no, I don't own one,
Speaker 1: so I couldn't. Um, but there are lots and lots
Speaker 1: of cell phones that have come out that have we
Speaker 1: could call a flop, okay, lots of phones that just
Speaker 1: didn't work out, and um, I mean there are hundreds
Speaker 1: of them. So I'm just choose. I just chose one
Speaker 1: out of all the different designs, and I chose it
Speaker 1: for one specific reason. I wonder if I'm right, but
Speaker 1: let me see, I doubt it. The Semens Celebrity X one.
Speaker 1: Is that what you were thinking? Yeah, because it was
Speaker 1: an oval shaped cell phone that looked like a Star
Speaker 1: Trek communicator device and this thing just, um, you know,
Speaker 1: it just didn't do well. It was a little oval device,
Speaker 1: and I mean I had a big monochromatic screen and
Speaker 1: um and a weird keyboard that was our keypad. I
Speaker 1: guess I should say a weird keypad that was shaped
Speaker 1: oddly because it was at the other end of the oval.
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, I mean it was one of those
Speaker 1: things where I'm sure they thought it was a good
Speaker 1: idea at the time, but I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: anyone who bought one at all. Right, what which phone
Speaker 1: did you think I was gonna say, I thought you
Speaker 1: were going to talk about motor Motorola's Rocker. That's also
Speaker 1: another good one. Yeah, that's because they basically was you know,
Speaker 1: they're big MP three player slash phone combination, the one
Speaker 1: that if you were to play an MP three it
Speaker 1: stopped almost everything else on the phone. And there was
Speaker 1: very little storage on board. So so not only does
Speaker 1: it well, it doesn't hold very much. It's very sad
Speaker 1: because it was nice looking. Yeah, oh no, it was
Speaker 1: pretty I have a piece of technology that's not handheld,
Speaker 1: nor is it a computer, So I guess maybe it's
Speaker 1: our segue device. And that's Audrey. Okay. Um actually worked
Speaker 1: for a company that that was very interested in the
Speaker 1: Audrey at the time, and it was a an internet appliance.
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the fridges that have internet access,
Speaker 1: although those are kind of flops too, or the coffee
Speaker 1: mate yea with internet access, right, but um no, this
Speaker 1: was a It was a very sleek device that that
Speaker 1: three Calm made and very cool look and had a
Speaker 1: little screen and it was basically so that you would
Speaker 1: have an Internet appliance in the kitchen so that you could,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe while dinners cooking, you can check your
Speaker 1: email or you know, look up a recipe online, or
Speaker 1: you know, do something for the It's sort of a
Speaker 1: p D A light because it had a stylist that
Speaker 1: you could use to use the screen. Pretty neat looking.
Speaker 1: Hackers love it. They could, they could get into it
Speaker 1: and mess with it. The thing is, it didn't sell
Speaker 1: very well, and three Calm had to change direction, so
Speaker 1: you know, it was really on sale only for about
Speaker 1: a year, year and a half thousand time frames, so
Speaker 1: kind of neat, but you know, and maybe now would
Speaker 1: actually succeed a little better than it would have back then,
Speaker 1: because now that we have more of an emphasis on
Speaker 1: cloud computing where you don't even need a very strong,
Speaker 1: you know, computing device or to access some really really
Speaker 1: cool features, maybe today it would do better than it
Speaker 1: did back then. But you see that with a lot
Speaker 1: of the there were a lot of devices that were
Speaker 1: meant to access the Internet and that's all they really
Speaker 1: were supposed to do, and there were these thin client devices.
Speaker 1: But the problem was back then there weren't the web
Speaker 1: services that you needed to make that a useful device.
Speaker 1: You didn't have the Google Docs where you could create
Speaker 1: a document and save it to a cloud storage system. Um,
Speaker 1: you would needed a hard drive and most of these
Speaker 1: devices didn't have any kind of real storage space on them.
Speaker 1: So you know, back then not so much today. Who's
Speaker 1: to say it might actually work? So? Uh, you have computers? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a whole bunch of them. I can talk
Speaker 1: about them real quick. Okay, So here's the first one.
Speaker 1: A couple three. So the Apple three is supposed to
Speaker 1: be to follow up to the Apple to the most
Speaker 1: expensive model. Are the most expensive version of the Apple
Speaker 1: three was a seventy dollars when it came out. That's
Speaker 1: um pretty expensive in the mid eighties. Uh so actually
Speaker 1: early eighties. And um so it had a proprietary floppy
Speaker 1: disk format, which made it incompatible with earlier UM Apple computers.
Speaker 1: So once again we're compatibility compatibility issues. Um, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of hardware problems. I read one place where supposedly,
Speaker 1: and I was not able to verify this, so this
Speaker 1: is under the rumor. And but uh supposedly one technician
Speaker 1: suggested that if you're your hardware wasn't working properly, what
Speaker 1: you needed to do was lift the computer a couple
Speaker 1: of inches and drop it, Yeah, so that it would
Speaker 1: reset the chips. That's not good tech support if you
Speaker 1: have to drop your device so that it were I mean,
Speaker 1: that's essentially kick it. That's the FONDSS version of tech
Speaker 1: support percussive maintenance, right. So, Um, anyway, Apple had to
Speaker 1: recall thousands of these machines shortly after putting them up
Speaker 1: for sale, and uh, you know, I think it was
Speaker 1: like fourteen thou units they had to recall. It was
Speaker 1: it was a horrible, horrible image problem for Apple. Um.
Speaker 1: And it just was a complete flop. Yeah, And uh,
Speaker 1: I bet I know another one on your list, the
Speaker 1: immediate predecessor to the Mac, which was actually developed at
Speaker 1: the same time as the Mac, but a total flop
Speaker 1: Lisa Lisa, most of which are in landfills. Now I
Speaker 1: did not choose the Lisa, but I figured that once
Speaker 1: you started talking about that, that that had to be what
Speaker 1: you were And it was a very similar situation. The
Speaker 1: Apple way way expensive uh similar technology to the Mac
Speaker 1: because it was developed by an entirely different group at
Speaker 1: Apple at the same time, and uh, you know, it
Speaker 1: was so extremely expensive that they kind of just let
Speaker 1: it go all right. So, um, do you remember E machines? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had any machine? Did you ever have any machine? Okay,
Speaker 1: so E machines these are IBM. These were IBM compatible computers,
Speaker 1: UM that uh and still are still are. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: the early early E machines that came out, uh, there
Speaker 1: were problems with them. One of the problems was that
Speaker 1: they were super cheap. I mean, that was the really
Speaker 1: the benefit thing about the machine. Yeah. And you could
Speaker 1: even sign up for a service contract where you get
Speaker 1: a free computer in return for this service that you
Speaker 1: had purchased. I imagine, if I remember correctly, you had
Speaker 1: to sign up for internet service for several years. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like two years, um, and ended up being
Speaker 1: but it still ended up being a fairly cheap computer
Speaker 1: by today's standards. Anyways, we're talking about like seven bucks.
Speaker 1: But you're since you would have had to have purchase
Speaker 1: service somehow otherwise, I mean, you know, it looked like
Speaker 1: a deal. The problem was that a lot of the
Speaker 1: machines UM had faulty hardware. The early ones, early ones
Speaker 1: had things like bad power supplies. There the noisy fans.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the modems wouldn't work. Sometimes it was impossible to
Speaker 1: get hold of tech support. Um, so they were cheap
Speaker 1: but not reliable, the early ones. Anyway, at this point,
Speaker 1: I haven't used any machine in years, so I have
Speaker 1: no idea what the quality is now, but back then
Speaker 1: not so good. On a similar note, the Dell Dimension
Speaker 1: hundred so that came out in two thousand three, also
Speaker 1: had problems with power supply failures. So the real problem
Speaker 1: with this was not that only that you would have
Speaker 1: a power supply failure, but that Dell had misidentified the
Speaker 1: problem and thought it was a motherboard problem. So their
Speaker 1: solutions did not fix the problem for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and for a while the company was adamant in denying
Speaker 1: that there were any power supply issues. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of where Dell fell from grace for a while.
Speaker 1: So they've had to you know, that's where the dude,
Speaker 1: dude don't get a Dell. That's where the little phrase
Speaker 1: came from out of that after their dude get a
Speaker 1: Dull commercials. So yeah, um, okay, how about the Packard
Speaker 1: Bell PCs, all of them, lots of them. One out
Speaker 1: of six Packard Bell PCs returned to the store by users. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, Packard Bell still exists, and I know that
Speaker 1: they had bad problems in the nineties. Yes, I haven't
Speaker 1: heard how they're doing now. The nineties are really the
Speaker 1: era I'm looking at, because one of the issues was
Speaker 1: that they were accused many times of selling used parts
Speaker 1: and claiming they were new. They would get old computers,
Speaker 1: they would cannibalize the parts, they put them into a
Speaker 1: new computer, send it back out, And you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to do that. You're not supposed to claim it's new anyway,
Speaker 1: because that's false advertising. Really, you're saying you get an
Speaker 1: old new computer and you're actually getting a refurbished one. Really.
Speaker 1: Um So that was one of the big problems now
Speaker 1: these days, not necessarily the case, but that did plague
Speaker 1: them for quite some time. Yeah. I would just on
Speaker 1: a note, I would recommend checking out any computer you're
Speaker 1: seriously considering purchasing, uh, just to see because anybody can
Speaker 1: make a dud. Well and and I mean I I
Speaker 1: remember when I was looking at Gateway computers, I had
Speaker 1: a friend of mine cautioned me against it because he said, well,
Speaker 1: the reason why Gateway computers are so inexpensive would be
Speaker 1: because they get there. You know what they get their
Speaker 1: various parts from whatever the cheapest vendor is at the time.
Speaker 1: But the problem is that you can't always guarantee that
Speaker 1: the parts from one vendor are going to be compatible
Speaker 1: with the other parts you have that make up the
Speaker 1: whole of your computer. Now again, or your mileage may vary.
Speaker 1: You might end up with a computer that works perfectly fine,
Speaker 1: but you might not. Um, we need to. We probably
Speaker 1: need to tail this off. However, I do have a
Speaker 1: couple more that I'll run through quickly, UM, and I'm
Speaker 1: glad we didn't. We went into some PCs because I
Speaker 1: was going to bring up the twentieth Anniversary Mac, which
Speaker 1: was a beautiful black plastic machine that was that looked
Speaker 1: a li'll like the iMac because it was vertical, But
Speaker 1: because it was vertical and they didn't have the same
Speaker 1: CD technology, they had to put in a CD drive
Speaker 1: that was slower than the others. Um, then you might
Speaker 1: find in another computer and it was underpowered and overpriced
Speaker 1: and basically didn't take off. I also want to mention
Speaker 1: the PC JR from IBM actual chickolate keyboard and the
Speaker 1: PS one. Both of those were problematic, and then a
Speaker 1: couple of other off the Beaten path ones, the B Box,
Speaker 1: which was a really neat machine from Apple alum Jean
Speaker 1: Luis gass Um, had dual processors in it and its
Speaker 1: own operating system, which a lot of people thought would
Speaker 1: get bought by Apple, except they bought another computer, the
Speaker 1: app and my List the next because they also got
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs in that bargain and incorporated next step o
Speaker 1: s into the Apple New mac os, and uh, the
Speaker 1: b went away. So but both of thes ended up.
Speaker 1: You know, they could have been their own thing, but
Speaker 1: you know, not so much. And that's that's all the
Speaker 1: computers I had. That's I'm done, all right, I am,
Speaker 1: I am tapped out of flops. You know, before you
Speaker 1: send us email, and you might choose to do that
Speaker 1: at at tech stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: But before you do that, tb rate us for our
Speaker 1: choices or mention something. We didn't keep in mind that
Speaker 1: these are our opinions. So you know, we wanted to
Speaker 1: throw out something that we thought were sort of floppy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when we're saying flops were not even necessarily saying that,
Speaker 1: we're talking about bad hardware or some of these cases,
Speaker 1: the hardware wasn't bad at all. It's just that didn't succeed,
Speaker 1: and some were financial successes. But we're kind of if
Speaker 1: you on the technology side, so you know, feel free
Speaker 1: to point out, but keep in mind just our two cents, right,
Speaker 1: or maybe five adjusted for inflation. Now, if you want
Speaker 1: to read more about these kind of devices, well, we
Speaker 1: have articles in the Electronics and Computers channels that will
Speaker 1: cover just about everything we've talked about, from p pas
Speaker 1: to computers to everything in between. You can find that
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this and thousands
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