Counterclockwise: Apple products that failed, but whose legacy lives on

23 April 2017
The 90s were a troubled time for the company and it launched many - any - products to stay afloat.

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  • Nope.
  • qbr
  • 24 May 2017

Anonymous, 24 Apr 2017Nice article - tho not sure powerful is the right word abou... moreThey didn't. They just did ARMv6 for the Newton. ARM existed before that, just not that version. Intel had their StrongARM 101 and 110 series that also pushed the boundries of where ARM would go, and knocked the clock rates into the hundreds of MHz.

    • .
    • .alpha
    • ytx
    • 24 Apr 2017

    Yeah, tons of people don't know Apple co-founded ARM and went around shouting Snapdragon being superior to A-series SoCs

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      • Anonymous
      • 3I{
      • 24 Apr 2017

      Nice article - tho not sure powerful is the right word about Apple instead of wealthy. Did not know that the ARM chip started out for the Newton. Today ARM is owned by Softbank - a japanese company. But the margins are perhaps too small for Intel.

        Grenouille, 24 Apr 2017"Never heard of Acorn? It designed the processor for the su... moreAh, you are correct, sir! Acorn built the computer, but did not design the CPU.

          • ?
          • Anonymous
          • 3Ya
          • 24 Apr 2017

          Anonymous, 24 Apr 2017Few m9re years from now and apple will be a toys company li... moreDear fellow Anonymous ... life is so rich, why waste it on hating a company? no company worth of loving or hating.

          Sincerely yours,
          a guy who love tech but never loved tech companies.

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            • Anonymous
            • 0cJ
            • 24 Apr 2017

            A lot of silly comments....

            Apple has done great things. It still makes very good stuff. I actually like and use both iOS and Android, although Android is my daily phone. But I think OS X is far better in terms of usability than Windows (yes, I use both, but much prefer Apple's OS).

            Apple has failures and it has not had a big hit under Cook, but it still makes good products.

              • G
              • Grenouille
              • gLN
              • 24 Apr 2017

              "Never heard of Acorn? It designed the processor for the successful BBC Micro".
              That would be the 6502 processor.
              Which Acorn most certainly did not design.

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                • Anonymous
                • AIA
                • 24 Apr 2017

                Few m9re years from now and apple will be a toys company like toysrus

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                  • Anonymous
                  • AIA
                  • 24 Apr 2017

                  Apple has always tried too hard and has always failed. Its fate is sealed and the funeral is soon

                    • S
                    • Savor
                    • Rbq
                    • 24 Apr 2017

                    I believe Steve Jobs was still a great CEO. Apple was alot better and more focused when he was still alive. The Tim Cook era is as bad as Gil Amelio's.

                    For a guy like me who can't stand Apple as a company, I do know alot about their history and do like certain products from them like MacBooks. I watch documentaries and read books about Apple and SJ. I also know Samsung's history. It is pretty pathetic before 2004.

                    G4 Icons episode about the Apple ][ which you can catch on YouTube was made around 2003-2006 years before iPhone was released. I love how enthusiastic The Woz speaks. He also uses Android as seen with a pic at the Googleplex holding a Galaxy Nexus. He is a fat goober but a sweet man and idol among real nerds.

                    Steve Jobs would still be living in his parents' garage without the brilliance of The Woz. Apple ][ is what really got it going for Apple from garage to offices. Then Macintosh flopped and Jobs got ousted for it and for being a horrible boss. Jobs gets a lot of credit for many of Apple products when fans should be thanking Wozniak, Ive, and Forstall for Apple's current success.

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                      • Anonymous
                      • 6jq
                      • 24 Apr 2017

                      Savor, 24 Apr 2017Steve Jobs can pretend the Macintosh was revolutionary for ... moreTablets sell far more than desktop computers and more than laptops and will do so for the foreseeable future. What are you talking about? The iPad was a mighty golden goose that if Jobs was still alive would probably turned it into a golden bull.

                      iphones , similar story. Took an initially tiny market (smartphones) and made his company to be the richest in the history of companies out of it. That's some legendarmes foresight.

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                        • Anonymous
                        • 6jq
                        • 24 Apr 2017

                        Savor, 24 Apr 2017Steve Jobs can pretend the Macintosh was revolutionary for ... moreWoz was an engineer type buffoon. Just listen to the man speaking (to this day) he is the rainman, a kid that forgot to grow up. Enough with this engineer's worshipping. Being a good enineer hardly needs any creativity or vision, the only hard part is to be socially inept enough to only care for one thing (eventually becoming good at).

                        What Jobs (or artists, or scientists) did was much harder. To differentiate between a socially good idea from a bad one and then push the sh*t out of it. That's some generational talent right there. It's hard to be a good engineer (make stuff happen), far harder to understand what the people want before even asking for it.

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                          • Anonymous
                          • XNk
                          • 24 Apr 2017

                          One common thing among all Apple products: they are all overpriced.

                            iPhone 5C was a huge flop. Supposedly a "budget" iPhone, but its high price in the end turned to be more of a unnecessary rival to the regular 5S..

                            Apple never says their products are a flop. To proud to admit anything like that.

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                              • Mailman
                              • jdg
                              • 24 Apr 2017

                              Looks like Apple were playing with overpriced products since beginning and hoping some of them will be successful.

                                Apple?
                                Is that something edible?

                                  • S
                                  • Savor
                                  • Ibx
                                  • 24 Apr 2017

                                  Steve Jobs can pretend the Macintosh was revolutionary for the PC industry but the Apple ][ was more successful for them up until 1990. Forget the 1984 commercial or how cool it looked. The first Mac flopped in sales. That's one of the reasons why Jobs got fired from his own company he helped founded.

                                  If Jobs never rode the coattails of The Woz's genius early on, he wouldn't be a billionaire by age 30. Jobs didn't know how to write code. He was basically a tech nerd poseur. Then he found a way to cater to these same yuppie poseurs with design.

                                  The current Apple is from of an evolution from NeXT. Another failed company from Steve Jobs. He did have the foresight to buy Pixar from George Lucas and sell it to Disney a decade later. It was with Toy Story, then iMac (Think Different ads), and then iPod with iTunes finally being compatible to Windows that got the ball rolling for Apple again.

                                  Now it is all iPhone all the time. Even iPad is fading away since tablets was just another added accessory than necessity. Now we live in an era where design matters more than performance. I remember a time when I didn't care what my Nintendo or PlayStation looked like. I didn't care if my first cell phone looked like a tiny cordless phone.

                                  Now we live in a shallow era where design is all that matters. Apple is nothing more than an iPhone company. And the more people buy apps and use their services and proprietary stuff, the more the Apple cancer spreads and these same lemmings are now saying they can't leave iOS because they invested so much in their ecosystem. Yeah, you are now stuck.

                                    • ?
                                    • Anonymous
                                    • PTc
                                    • 24 Apr 2017

                                    Anonymous, 23 Apr 2017Most of the kiddies reading this article don't even know Ap... moreSomeone that actually knows something for once. Everyone harps on about Jobs when Wozniak was the pioneering genius behind apple.

                                      Overpriced stuff since inception.

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                                        • Anonymous
                                        • Fv4
                                        • 24 Apr 2017

                                        AnonD-483897, 23 Apr 2017Yup. Nowadays Apple is only known for iPhone.maybe you're right, but they are still the biggest company in the world so i dont think they care