PCWorld.com listed it’s “Top 25 Losers” (ouch!) ever. To wit:
- America Online (1989-2006)
- RealNetworks RealPlayer (1999)
- Syncronys SoftRAM (1995)
- Microsoft Windows Millennium (2000)
- Sony BMG Music CDs (2005)
- Disney The Lion King CD-ROM (1994)
- Microsoft Bob (1995)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001)
- Pressplay and Musicnet (2002)
- dBASE IV (1988)
- Priceline Groceries and Gas (2000)
- PointCast (1996)
- IBM PCjr. (1984)
- Gateway 2000 10th Anniversary PC (1995)
- Iomega Zip Drive (1998)
- Comet Cursor (1997)
- Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)
- IBM Deskstar 75GXP (2000)
- OQO Model 1 (2004)
- CueCat (2000)
- Eyetop Wearable DVD Player (2004)
- Apple Pippin @World (1996)
- Free PCs (1999)
- DigiScents iSmell (2001)
- Sharp RD3D Notebook (2004)
Of the three MS products I’ve only encountered Windows ME and IE 6.0, the other one being MS Bob, which I didn’t even know went to market.
Sony BMG CDs have to be on top of the list, IMO, because of their malicious intent. The others could well have been mere mistakes. But those CDs were designed specifically to be sneaky, and should be considered worst.
I had one of those Iomega Zip drives back in the late 90’s, but fortunately not a faulty one. I was very aware that there were though, as it was a very popular topic back then. Zip drives were pretty popular, I think BIOS settings until today still allowed for Zip drive compatibility.
I’m a little surprised that Pointcast was in that list, as I (oops) used to put that in the free CD we gave away to customers way back in my ISP days. I thought it was really cool, and kind of a precursor to Web 2.0. Albeit data was going only one direction, it agreggated news, but unfortunately, used push as its method, and in dialup times was a big bandwidth hog.
I expected Realplayer to be there, but was sort of surprised at dbase IV. I’m so glad I didn’t use that back then, although I vaguely remember using some version of it, probably an earlier one. Finally, there’s the Motorola ROKR E1 I reviewed last year, which I thought was bad, but not so much to end up in the worst ever list. However, if they considered it’s cost and the undeserved hype I guess it should.
I’m wondering whether the Sony Bean should be in there too, or end up in it someday, along with many of Sony’s latest attempts at music players. With the way they kept insisting on the ATRAC3 standard I wouldn’t be surprised.
Thanks a lot to Danny Escasa of Freesoftwaremagazine.com for the heads up!
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