Top 6 Biggest Tech failures of all time

Technology fails. Tech history is full of interesting products which failed to live up to the expectations of the customers. Interestingly these products were launched by biggies such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and others. It does not mean that big brands guarantee the success of a product. In the technology landscape, timing is also important. Companies which proved to be laggards in the fast changing tech world had to face failures. To remind you of some of the products which failed miserably, we have clubbed a few products which had come to the market with a bang.

Here are some of the biggest technology fails. Some of these products might even seem alien to today’s generation whereas some of them are pretty recent.

Apple Newton

Apple was trying long back to bring into the market innovative products. One of them was Apple Newton, which is also known as the precursor of the iPad. Apple Newton was a personal digital assistant (PDA) which was meant to do many things that today’s iPads and iPhones do. The Apple Newton had a calendar, a to-do list, calculator, currency converter, a time-zones map and an address book. Furthermore, the Apple Newton was capable of sending a fax. It used a stylus, instead of a keyboard. It was a product ahead of its times. But it had a few bad features such as its handwriting recognition software which malfunctioned regularly. In addition, the Newton suffered from problems such as battery life and poor screen resolution. The product was rejected by the market and walked into the sunset. However, the Newton inspired future operating systems especially for tablet computers.

Microsoft Windows Vista

Microsoft Windows was the biggest setbacks for Microsoft globally as it failed to stand the test of the market. It came to market when the world was expecting wonders from Microsoft as it was the only company that had an operating system for the personal computers. Apple iMac was limited to few users as it is still. Microsoft knew the snags in the OS even before the launch but it launched Windows Vista finally with a confusing array of six editions during the slow PC sales month of January. It created a lot of issues as the operating systems was potentially heavy. Windows users were surprised by the hardware requirements to support and run Vista PCs. It also suffered from numerous software incompatibilities and various performance issues.

MySpace

We all know Facebook as the biggest social network in the world. But until 2008, Facebook was the second largest player in the social networking market. The social networking market was ruled and led by MySpace. It was far ahead of Facebook in terms of users. MySpace grew to rapid publicity in 2005 when it beat Google as the most visited website in the US. But later in the last decade, a number of poor decisions, pathetic design and user-unfriendliness led to the demise of the social network at a time when the social networking market was at its best. It failed to stay in the market and attract a wider user demographic. Facebook took over and capitalized the markets in every region.

Orkut

Google was in the social networking business even before Facebook with its platform Orkut. It was famous and very popular among the youth. Google had put a lot to make the website user-friendly and put a lot to make it global platform where people could connect, share music, photos and videos. The website was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. But the website also closed down. On September 30, 2014, Google closed Orkut. Orkut was one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil in 2008. Orkut was very famous in India till even 2010 as many youngsters used it in India. But slowly Facebook did not leave any stone unturned to grab its place. Today, we only pay homage to the website.

Microsoft Zune

Microsoft Zune which was a media player like Apple’s iPod and iStore was launched to grab Apple’s growing influence with iPod. But the product did not succeed. It failed to create any market effect. As a result, the biggest software company had to call off the project midway declaring its closure prematurely in October 2011. In 2012, Microsoft completely scrapped the plans to discontinue all ‘Zune’ services. Zune was an embarrassment for the company after Vista’s failure. However, Zune Software is still there and can be used for Windows Phone 7 desktop sync, and is still available to download from the Windows Phone website for all Windows Phone 7 devices.

Google Glass

Google Glass is the recent tech failure that walked into the sunset with Google announcing the closure of the project as it failed to take off despite umpteenth attempts. While still there are hopes that the wearable device will become a commercial object, the product took unfortunately a lot of time to identify potential markets.

Google had developed it with the mission of producing a mass-market ubiquitous computer. Google Glass displayed information in a smartphone-like hands-free format. Google started selling it to the public on May 15, 2014, for $ 1500.

But Google was not impressed with the response for the product. This is the reason on January 15, 2015, Google announced that it would stop producing the Google Glass prototype. However it expressed commitment to the development of the product. But experts believe that the project has been scrapped and is not expected to make a comeback.