Six great Apple failures

“Time for a change of pace while we all reflect on Apple’s introduction of a US-only 6-month trial of 99-cent TV show rentals from Disney and ABC alongside new model iPod touch and glimmerings at the Apple TV tomorrow,” Jonny Evans writes for Computerworld. “Here, just for my many Apple-hating readers, taken from the annals of Apple’s great history are six products or events some say the company should never have been part of.”

Evans’ six great Apple failures:

• The Hockey Puck Mouse
• The G4 Cube
• iPod Hi-Fi
• FireWire
• Apple Pippin
• Steve Jobs’ irreplaceability

Full article, with Evans’ reasoning behind each of his choices, here.

MacDailyNews Take: The Hockey Puck Mouse certainly was a design failure. We’ll go along with the iPod Hi-Fi and Pippin, too. But, FireWire is “a failure” that “the company should never have been part of?” Puleeze. And, the G4 Cube likely helped Apple learn important design lessons that were later put to use in a variety of very successful products, including the Mac mini, MacBook Air, iPods, and iOS devices. We don’t consider the G4 Cube as a “failure” in anything but unit sales (and this was mainly due to its price). The machine worked as advertised and, because of its stunning design, it also turned a lot of eyeballs Apple’s way at a time when not so many were looking at Apple at all. And nobody is irreplaceable. When Jobs is no longer Apple CEO, things will change, but that doesn’t mean that Apple won’t be able continue to lead the tech world (especially since most of the tech world seems rabidly intent on copying whatever Apple does). It certainly helps ease our minds that Apple now has extremely competent people like Tim Cook in place and ready to go.