Tech Fails

[Quence]

Post anything related to technology failures.

In this edition, we have a selection of tech failures from the past few decades. My favourite is MSFT’s complete retardation with its Windows Phone whilst destroying Nokia at the same time. The giant Nintendo Virtual Boy is also guffaw-inducing….it looks like a torture device.

 

[User names must be unique]

The segway


Their marketing team was brilliant but the device itself was absolutely daft and a massive flop.

 

[Londo]

/thread

 

[Martys_not_smarty]

One looked like a faggot riding a segway but they had to go one better in any videos of the thing and have the faggots wear helmets making them special needs faggots.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

The segway

View attachment 7517719
Their marketing team was brilliant but the device itself was absolutely daft and a massive flop.

Segway is a classic case of creating a niche product, but trying to act as if it has any viability outside of that niche.

 

[CEO of Autism]

I don't know if OP's video talks about it because it won't let me watch without signing in, but Microsoft poured billions on trying to make this a thing:



And how could we forget about Juicero, the $400 Juice maker, subscription-based scam:

 

[Idiotron]

Nokia N-Gage
Remember that shit?
Before smartphones, this was a phone that was also a game console which was more powerful than the handhelds at the time.

Looks good enough and the idea of having a console/phone hybrid back in 2003 was revolutionary.
The issues were mainly in the overall design.
For example, if you wanted to switch to another game, you had to take off the cover and remove the battery because some genius thought it would be a good idea to put the game cart slot under the battery.
Imagine fucking with that shit on a bus.

They did make a better version but by then, the DS came out and it was all over.

 

[CEO of Autism]

The issues were mainly in the overall design.
For example, if you wanted to switch to another game, you had to take off the cover and remove the battery because some genius thought it would be a good idea to put the game cart slot under the battery.
Imagine fucking with that shit on a bus.

You forgot to mention that you had to hold it this way to talk:

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

You forgot to mention that you had to hold it this way to talk:

View attachment 7518273

Now that takes me back. I need to find that "Side Talkin" Bee Gees parody again.

 

[PovertySprocket]

PowerMac G5, thing was beat by AMD chips half it's price and the cooling system had defective seals so it would piss neon green coolant on your floor.

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Now that takes me back. I need to find that "Side Talkin" Bee Gees parody again.

Ever see the brilliant Zune parody site, MicrosoftShitbrick.com? Too bad it's gone now, it was brilliant.

 

[CEO of Autism]

Speaking of the Zune, I got reminded of this clusterfuck, the Pono:



Envisioned by Neil Young and bankrolled by suckers via Kickstarter, it promised 'high-resolution' audio using its own format (rebranded FLAC basically) to be served on its own music store. Overpriced as hell, retarded form factor, catering to a niche nobody cares for (did Neil Young know that people can use lossless hi def audio in mobiles?), and promptly shut down two years after release. It should work as a nice paperweight today.

 

[the rat]

by suckers via Kickstarter

So how did you get your hands on one?

 

[The Backwards Man]

PowerMac G5, thing was beat by AMD chips half it's price and the cooling system had defective seals so it would piss neon green coolant on your floor.

Sure they had a sky high failure rate but hey at least you can use the dead ones for good looking shelving supports

 

[Colon capital V]

Maybe not total failure, but was pretty much the death kneel for Xbox going forward.

 

[The Connected Nose]

And how could we forget about Juicero, the $400 Juice maker, subscription-based scam:

The sad thing is it didn't even make the juice. It just squeezed the pre-juiced contents out of the pouch. And AvE proved you could squeeze just as much out of the pouch by hand, making the device completely, utterly, obscenely useless.

Maybe not total failure, but was pretty much the death kneel for Xbox going forward.
View attachment 7519015

I've seen some pretty creative uses for the Kinect if you just plug it into a PC with the right software. One such use was 3D mapping caves underneath glaciers. The researcher was saying something along the lines of "It's not enough resolution to re-create the cave for a game, but more than adequate for tracking changes over time. And it's cheap."

 

[Lovely Kin]

The Pippin was pretty bad

 

[Nalgatoro 2.0]

Maybe not total failure, but was pretty much the death kneel for Xbox going forward.
View attachment 7519015

Funnily enough, today I grabbed my old Kinect and connected it to the PC and was able to easily make a 3D scan of my head just using the SDK example programs

 

[Dollar Store Sentai]

Nokia N-Gage
Remember that shit?
Before smartphones, this was a phone that was also a game console which was more powerful than the handhelds at the time.
View attachment 7518225
Looks good enough and the idea of having a console/phone hybrid back in 2003 was revolutionary.
The issues were mainly in the overall design.
For example, if you wanted to switch to another game, you had to take off the cover and remove the battery because some genius thought it would be a good idea to put the game cart slot under the battery.
Imagine fucking with that shit on a bus.

They did make a better version but by then, the DS came out and it was all over.

I had the QD (the redesigned) version of this. It was a great time filler playing low quality Tony Hawk, but ended up on a shelf fairly quickly later.

Google Glass, I think, could have probably come out today with little fanfare considering we've moved to filming every interaction on the street to get those social media updoots.

 

[MF-690T]

BlackBerry 10 is my favorite, probably. I think Windows Phone gets too much attention. In case you aren't aware it was the first mobile OS to primarily rely on gesture navigation, and it even had a full Android emulation subsystem built-in (I believe it relied on the Amazon app store, but you could install APK files as well).
Unfortunately BB10 phones can't be activated anymore and the VoLTE protocol they use apparently doesn't work with any US cell carrier these days. Shame.