The Zune was great. This reads like someone who heard about these products third hand and then read a Wikipedia page. Big miss.
The Zune had a terrible name and terrible advertising. A good example of how being the best product is far less important than being the most memorable good enough product.
Also it was originally poop brown and you “squirted” songs at each other.
Was possibly the best iPod competitor, just the iPod and its ecosystem was really good.
The first zune was available in three colors. Black, brown, and white. Only the cool kids had the brown one.
My turd brown zune was awesome. The interface was light years ahead of iPod. I loved that thing until it died.
Some of the article is just clickbait driven nostalgia, to be honest, but nonetheless, I still have some thoughts about these.
- Google Glasses failed because the price was completely wrong, and the technology came way too early.
- No comment on the Newton. I’ve never looked into it.
- The real reason Vista failed is because it was mass-deployed on machines that were branded as Vista ready, while failing to meet minimum requirements. This is both Microsoft’s fault, and a fault of each vendor who did that.
- Zune was awesome, but good luck competing with Apple. They would sell you gold-plated flipflops if they could, and Microsoft’s leadership couldn’t convince you to buy anything with their best efforts.
- The Blackberry got what it deserved, for sure.
- I still don’t understand Ping
- The N-Gage was a great idea with horrible execution, especially considering where the speaker was, on both of these phones. I kinda wanted the QD but way better stuff came out shortly after. The spirit definitely lived on, with the one-off Sony Ericsson PSP phone
- The Nintendo VB is just something remarkably stupid
- The HP pad is yet another example of companies pushing out e-waste just to pretend they’re competitive with the market leader
- Note 7 is a prime example of pushing out hardware without looking at potential edge-cases with catastrophic issues, and hoping those would just never happen
Haha! The website is not even for techies, if you click on I DISABLED MY ADBLOCK without disabling it, the site lets you in lol
Let me save you a click
Google Glass: Early release, high cost, and privacy concerns led to its discontinuation. Apple Newton: Poor handwriting recognition and high price doomed this early PDA. Windows Vista: Incompatibility, high resource usage, and negative user reviews plagued its launch. Microsoft Zune: Attempted competition against the iPod, but failed to differentiate and had software issues. BlackBerry Storm: Departure from physical keyboards, coupled with a flawed touchscreen design. iTunes Ping: Apple's music-focused social network lacked meaningful engagement. Nokia N-Gage: Ambitious gaming phone with hardware problems and limited game library. Nintendo Virtual Boy: Stereoscopic 3D display caused discomfort, poor game library. HP TouchPad: Inadequate specs, high price, and lack of ecosystem compared to iPad. Galaxy Note 7: Battery issues causing explosions and recalls marred its reputation.Almost all of those things were tech that pushed the limits. They paid for it with poor sales or glitches, but thank God they took some chances instead of just upgrading the pixels on a camera year after year. I applaud these disasters.
‘of all time’ - hmmm the earliest item on the list is the newton from the 90s, but then everything else is firmly in the last 20 years.
It’s my fault. Nothing ever went wrong until after I was born <.<
I’m not sorry, of course. Being a millennial, ruining everything is basically written into my DNA.
The Virtual Boy was released in 1995.
Worst tech fail of all time:
Something went wrong. Please disable your blocker on XDA-Developers
It looks like your blocker is attempting to interfere with the intended operation of this site. Support our writers and our copyrighted content by allowing our site to function as we intended. Please disable your blocker and add us to your allowlist.
Frequently Asked Questions
I’m not using a blocker. Why am I seeing this message? You’re likely seeing this message because an app or extension on your computer is blocking ads. The app or extension may be a “privacy” or “malware” blocker, or a VPN.
I disabled my blocker. Why am I still seeing this message? It’s common to have two or more adblocking extensions running at the same time. See the question above.
I’m also recently getting this on Vivaldi Android. I bypass this on my phone by using Iceraven with uBlock Origin.
This is an article by a non techie person written for non techie readers … why is it posted here?
It’s just awful, too. Some of these things were flops but this is more like “top 10 tech fails that a casual millennial thought up real quick”.
I liked my N-Gage and it’s good to see that sidetalkin’ is still up.
While still early I’d like to submit every folding smartphone to date.
Meh, the z fold is a stupid waste, but I’m not sure it’s a complete fail.
The few times it wins it wins hard.
