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.
My son is still enjoying his Hi-Fi that I bought for him at half price when they were discontinued.
They were great at THAT price.
I still plan on getting a Cube to use in the guest room for light use and music streaming.
I have 2 Lacie 1TB hard-drives and an old EyeTV 200 daisy-chained with FireWire.
I also hook it to my HD-DVR to import movies.
I also have a hockey puck that is a back up for my back up mouse.
If I saw a Pippin cheap, I would buy it just to see how bad it was.
I have no clue who Steve Jobs is….
The hockey puck mouse was a design defect. The cube proved that you could design a functional and beautiful desktop machine. Tim Cook stepped up to the plate when Steve was ill and did a fabulous job. He gives me the confidence that Apple will survive if Steve gets hit by a bus or decide to retire at some point.
They shouldn’t call it “failures” but “less successful’. I mean, it is not like Windows Vista that you inst Billions on it, or the Zune or the “Kin” phone that they were pull out of the market faster that than introduce them.
I liked The Hockey Puck Mouse, firewire is great for external HD (faster than USB), scanners, and cameras.
The sooner people realize that you just can’t please everybody no matter what, and that it’s human nature to have an opinion, the happier people will be. Including this article on MDN is a far cry from helping MDN be a neutral site… But its a start. Buzz from different opinions is good. I still find, though, there’s far too much speculation on this site rather than sticking to the data. Apple needs to be secretive not only for SEC and competition reasons, but also timing of when to spin the stock price. I could be wrong in all of this but it’s just my opinion.
The Cube was only a failure in sales, due to its high price and the fact that the Powermac G4 was more expandable at a lower price. The machine was still an engineering marvel and a design triumph for Apple, and the lessons learned from its creation more than paid for the energy that went into it, and more than made up for its lack of sales.
I forgot to add that I own two Cubes, one as a parts machine (on display on my bookshelf); the other as an otherwise silent music server. Every so often I’ll switch the monitor over and play around with it, even if Leopard runs a bit slow on it (LeopardAssist is your friend)…
Wow, no love for the iPod HiFi. Well I love mine and I thought I was an excellent bit of kit!
I still have my hockey puck and use it occasionally just for old time’s sake – had no probs at all with it.
The iPod Hi-Fi was a bit crap, and even managed to look like a cheap knockoff of a bit of furniture I designed waaay back in the 1970s for goodness sake!
Mind you, even the gorgeous B&W Zeppelin doesn’t do it for me as any all-in-one lacks the wide-open sound stage of true stereo.
In that respect I prefer my good old Soundsticks, which sound better and better as the years roll by…
I use FW 800 exclusively for file transfer. No USB comes close. Working PS files from an external hard drive, even FW 400 is faster than USB 800. USB speed varies and hits their advertised number rarely.
I have a hard time looking for a g cube to buy as a keepsake
FireWire is by far the oddest choice for inclusion in this list. FireWire was very successful when it came to providing a very fast protocol for the iPod when it first came out. The difference between FireWire 400 and USB 1.1 was dramatic (400mbs versus 12mbs) and was much less processor intensive and better in pretty much every conceivable way.
But specs aside, FireWire *enabled* the iPod to be a much better product. FireWire was also adopted by video manufacturers and enabled quick and easy importing tied to Apple’s video software (from iMovie to Final Cut Express/Pro). And this happened to coincide with the introduction of digital video. For a long time in the new era of digital video, FireWire was a MUST have. It wasn’t until disk/flash recording took off that FireWire became a “nice to have” feature.
And FireWire also enabled many other things for a few years that no other protocol at the time was capable of…fast connectivity to external devices such as CD/DVD burners, hard drives, etc… and the ability to boot externally as well as boot in target mode.
I can’t imagine what the Mac platform, iPod, or digital video would’ve been like without FireWire.
Sure, the sun is setting on the protocol. USB 2.0 is good enough for many applications and for most people. Much less video capturing is being done. And more importantly, newer technology like Light Peak will be coming out soon, but FireWire is one of those things that belong more on a list of “what saved Apple” than this list of failures.
I have to disagree on the HiFi. I have one and it is one of my prized possessions. It sounds awesome and looks great too. I’d be very sad if anything ever happened to it.
The iPod HiFi doesn’t belong on this list either.
I could see it on a “least successful” list. Apple didn’t spend a lot of time, money or resources developing or promoting it. My guess is that it turned a small profit for the company.
More importantly is that it raised the bar for what the iPod could be docked to. People noticed. Other products were introduced. Competition quickly took off. There are now tons of options in this area where at the time there wasn’t much.
It did its job. It worked. And people who bought it were pleased.
@The Mac That Roared
English is my second language, how many langages to you speak?
It’s a sign of Apple’s great success that this moron could only come up with six and had to include “iPod Hi-Fi” on the list. Might as well include “iPod Socks” too. And “The Hockey Puck Mouse” was a part of the original iMac, which saved Apple and was a great success, not a separate product.
Also, “Steve Jobs’ irreplaceability” is not even a product (or an “event”). Why not also include “John Sculley’s mismanagement” or something about the other unremembered CEOs before the return of Steve Jobs?
What about the Taligent failure? Apple III? Lisa? He couldn’t even come up with a decent Top Ten list…
Here goes MY list:
– Apple III
– John Sculley
– Microsoft and the original Mac
– Taligent
– Copland
– Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh
I guess that’s about it. A mouse can’t be a “great” failure, give me a break. It’s replaceable and it doesn’t make a huge impact.
Firewire?!?!? Firewire?!?!?!
Firewire is the very arterial conduit via which I earn my ridiculous government salary…and by ridiculous I mean: that which is held up to ridicule..and by held up I don’t mean like at gun-point…and by gun point I don’t mean like that little nobule by which one lines up their target..and by target I dont mean like Walmart’s retarded cousin..not that I have anything against retarded cousins..as a matter of fact….
FireWire is far from a failure. USB is the failure, but the market when with anyway. Let hope Lightpeak doesn’t suffer the same fate.
I have a G4 cube that never worked as advertised. Constant shutting down and restarting by itself. Nobody could ever fix it for me.
Love the design, too bad it didn’t work as a computer. –
@Jon000 How much you want for that?
OMG the guy didn’t even mention the Performa. It wasn’t Steve Job’s fault but it was awful. No criticism of Apple is complete without it.
This thread’s probably exhausted now, but for what it’s worth, my Hi-Fi kicks butt. Got it for a little over $220 on an open box return. Even with the latest slim, trim offerings from the likes of Logitech and iHome, the Hi-Fi pumps out more powerful sound and range than anything else nearly 4 years after its introduction. I only wish it came in black. White looks a bit odd on the bookshelf.
Am surprised no one has mentioned the Newton. I still have mine and it wasn’t suffering from “the jaggies,” I’d still be using it today. My one regret about the iPad is that it doesn’t suffer a stylus or handwriting input gladly.
Meant to type: if it wasn’t suffering from “the jaggies”, I would be using it today….
Does anyone remembers “Newton”