Apple's Greatest Misses

I'm not an Apple basher, or Apple fanboy. While Apple did a lot of good innovation, these are the other side of the story.

I'm not an Apple basher, or Apple fanboy. The former looks only at the worst, the latter at only the best. I prefer to admit both. This article isn't into their many revolutions and successes, just a few highlights of technologies or ideas they went *splat*. Not to bash my Fruity friends in Cupertino, but any mistake is useful if you learn from it.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2017-05-20

Hardware[edit | edit source]

1980 Apple ///
1983 Lisa
1985 Macintosh Office - this was AppleTalk + Server + LW. Making the Mac more like Lisa, or the Xerox stuff they'd seen at PARC. While the Laserwriter started the Desktop publishing craze, much of the file sharing and networking stuff failed to materialized (as imagined). It would have been years ahead of Microsoft Office, if it had.
1989 Macintosh Portable - at 17lbs and lead-acid batteries the name was an oxymoron. Still, while it didn't sell well, it was sort of a "how not to" for future luggables.
1993 Newton / MessagePad - I had the “100” and the “2100”, they were way ahead of their time
Macintosh Color Classic (1993)... just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Macintosh TV (1993)… you've never heard of this?
LC 500 (1993) … ugliest Macintosh ever. In fact, I'm going to put the whole Macintosh Performa line in this one. The idea was to offer more consumer Macs, by letting every retail place design their own feature SKU (with what came bundled with it). It confused the shit out of consumers, along with intentionally crippled machines to prevent cannibalization with higher end Macs, made this a flop of an idea.
1994 QuickTake
Pippin (1995) -- it could have been great, it wasn't.
1997 eMate 300 - it's not THAT bad.
Twentieth Anniversary Mac (1997) - this one is debatable. It was a neat halo product, that few could afford, or would want to buy.
USB “Puck” Mouse (1998), came along with the iMac -- horrible ergonomics, everyone hated them
iBook (1999) first gen design fail.
Power Mac G4 Cube (2000) - "a Mac mini at 3x the price"
eMac (2002) - mediocre execution on a not horrible idea
ROKR (2005), with Motorola
Aperture (2005) … half-assed, and then half-hearted; big win for Lightroom
Apple TV (2006) … at least the first generation
Bluetooth Headset (2007) … I have one of these

Software[edit | edit source]

1984 MacBasic - killed the baby before it got to breathe -- this pushed Microsoft into re-investing into their somewhat ignored languages.
AppleLink -- like proprietary AOL.
Clascal / ObjectPascal
1987 Hypercard - A hypertext scripting engine (forerunner of the Internet) years before Tim Berne's Lee ripped off the idea and made the world-wide-web. And the inspiration for MSFT to create VisualBASIC. So close, and yet just a footnote in History.
A/UX - Apple's UNIX
Bedrock -- Cross Platform App development
AOCE - Apple's Open Collaboration Environment: intra-office email and file sharing. IT was a proprietary internet
1994 eWorld Apple's higher priced AOL, right as the world was shifting to the Internet.
eWorld means should also be on there.
1996 Copland - failure to launch. So close -- the idea was a preemptive replacement for OS 7, but Apple execs couldn't give up on 100% backwards compatibility. That requirement doomed this OS effort. So they bought NeXT which went for Rhapsody and 0% compatibility instead (with a "BlueBox" VM that could run all your old apps, poorly). That almost killed Apple. They compromised in 2001 and came out with OS X and Carbon (90% compatibility, with minor rewrites), and viola. They saved Apple. Of course they could have done the same thing in 1996 without buying NeXT, and been to market years earlier, but don't tell anyone.
2008 MobileMe - Apple tried to evolve iTools (2000) -> .Mac (2002) -> MobileMe (2008) -> iCloud. They all sort of missed on the price/value returns. MobileMe was the biggest dog of them all. Apple's Brown Zune of mobility.
2010 Ping - Apple's social networking for music. It didn't quite achieve lift-off. Apple's Orcut / Google+
2011 Final Cut Pro X - Premiere Pro thanks Apple profusely for this product. Shame too, it isn't a horrible product, if you want to re-learn how to do everything in the video world. Most people didn't.
iTunes -- barely usable garbage in 2001 (but free and integrated functionality enough to hit MVP), then got worse every subsequent release and feature. No coherent design, philosophy other than to stick in whatever bad idea some exec had for the next big thing -- and that usually flopped.

More[edit | edit source]

Enterprise anything ** Mac Workgroup Server 500/700
Clones
XSAN
Taligent (Amber)
OpenDoc
AIM
NeXT Cube, NeXTSTEP, WebObjects (never achieved goals).

Visionary SNAFUs[edit | edit source]

Steve Jobs thought Apple and IBM would emerge as the only computer suppliers
2003 Steve said music subscription services were "bankrupt"
Steve said people wouldn't want movies via iTunes
People wouldn't watch movies on iPod's...
Nobody wants a tablet
Antennagate
Mocked Phablets
 Maps
10" iPad was minimum size... then the mini.
Steve's resistance to Games on Mac choked it's opportunity. He didn't want it as a toy, but toys sell
Servers, Enterprise and Pro's were often snubbed
Lack of unity between iOS and Mac OS
Refusal to put touch on Mac (or an iOS emulator on a Mac)

Bendgate[edit | edit source]

Apple released the iPhone 6 and 6+, and if you sat on them, they could bend. That's a high cost loss, though in many cases the phones were still usable. The problem was both blown out of proportion (it wasn't easy to do), and valid (it shouldn't be that easy to bend, anyways). So it was a PR fiasco, even though the 6's were still the best phones one the market at the time, and some other phones were equally or nearly as fragile. It was a huge, brief, brouhaha, that died away as quickly as the next generation came out (with some improvements to stiffness).

App Store[edit | edit source]

Apple got a class action lawsuit filed against it (2011), which accused the company of operating an illegal monopoly by nature of their ecosystem not allowing iPhone users to download and install mobile apps outside of the Apple App Store, thus reducing consumer choice. The case was dismissed in 2013, then appealed and heard in 2017 to the 9th Circuit (allowing it to move forward), which lead to Apple appealing to the Supreme Court to allow for it to review the rulings (writ of certiorari), with the obvious goal of allowing the first dismissal to stand.

Apple's position is that it doesn't set prices for paid apps, and that charging a 30 percent commission on the distribution of paid apps and in-app purchases does not violate antitrust laws in the United States. They're probably correct that from the letter of the law, they're fine. From the spirit of the law, not so much.^[1]

My problem is that from a legal position, I think Apple is right.... from a moral one, they are way wrong. They might not be a monopoly because there are competitors mobile phones (like Android), where you can build/install many apps, and Apple isn't even the biggest player (the definition of a monopoly) -- but Apple has put barriers to entry and barriers to competition in their ecosystem. If you're a porn App, political app (that's not left leaning), have adult content, you are trying to compete in a category that is saturated, you want to create an app to sell/distribute other apps (compete with the App Store), or you're just doing something they don't like -- Apple can and does reject people and eliminates all paths to market for those App developers.

If Apple offered a bypass (a way that users could install apps without App approval), then I have no problem with the App Store's T&C's. But since they obstruct all other ways of installing anything on our phones, without their permission (and their cut), Apple is being anti-competitive in spirit, even if it isn't by law. But judges jobs are to adjudicate on the law as written from the bench, not legislate from it (or imagine what the law should have said). So even though I think the iOS ecosystem would be better if Apple was forced to allow users to OPTIONALLY install 3rd party Apps, without their App Store, I don't think the judges should be able to rule on what Apple should do. Which leaves me conflicted with, I hope they lose for the ecosystem's sake.... and I hope they win, or it shows that this court is willing to do legal gymnastics to stick their fingers in things that are the responsibility of legislators, not judges.

Details[edit | edit source]

Steve was ruining Apple in 1985 and would have destroyed it, if he wasn't kicked out. It was Gassee's OpenMac (the SE and Mac II) that saved the company. If instead of cramming the one small Mac down people's throats he'd made an effort to turn the Lisa into a MacPro (instead of trying destroy everything that wasn't his), if he'd allowed the Mac to be more Open (instead of closed system), and allowed/supported more Games, it would have been a different story.

If Apple hadn't of bought NeXT (both the smartest and dumbest thing they ever did without him), NeXT would have been dead within a few years, or they could have picked them up cheeper. So luck more than skill saved NeXT there. (There were many other paths to success or doom for Apple at that time, so their path isn't as clear).

The MacMini was something Apple resisted for way too long. Their entire server strategies. The iPod was a side project not Steve's great idea. In some ways the iPhone proves the Newton was right (and sooner). I still think the divergence of iOS from MacOS is a problem. IBooks and iAds aren't raging successes. (I'm not against them -- but the margins and cost structure haven't achieved goals and a missing opportunities). And then there's AppleTV -- if Apple could make the deals to displace cable, the world would be a better place. (Of course I don't think that's because Apple doesn't want to do it -- but it's sort of evidence that what they did wrt inflexibility in the music industry came to haunt them later: in the long run, it's best to make win-win deals, instead of win-lose).

And I could go on, and on. (And all of those are nuanced). There are many paths to success. Some assume because they succeeded that they did things right. But it's more they didn't do things wrong enough that they failed. There are ALWAYS ways they could have executed better, or blew opportunities and made bad choices. To think otherwise is arrogance. Of course the other side often made more bad choices, or had other issues, or they would have won. But there's always a skill, effort, and luck factors. But not considering your mistakes is missing the opportunity to learn from them, and do better next time.