05-18-2009, 01:30 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Top 10 Disappointing Technologies
PC Authority has a top 10 list of disappointing technologies. All were thought to radically change some aspect of the technological world and all have come up short, way short in some cases. There is a little something on the list for all of the Thoughts Media sites. Take a look - anything on here surprise you, or anything missing that should be there? The only surprise for me is #4 is not a bit higher on the list. 
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05-18-2009, 01:45 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 471
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I remember going to an arcade in the early 90s and playing a virtual reality game. It was very cool but I can see why it never took off - the price tag, the weight of the gear and the headaches it induced.
I'm still dreaming that one day I'll be able to relive the Red Dwarf episode Gunmen Of The Apocalypse. 
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05-18-2009, 03:33 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 127
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The fact Vista is number one invalidates this guy as being credible. He hopped on a bandwagon here. Windows 98 and ME had huge problems. Vista was just ahead of it's time. If you put Vista on a box ready for Vista it's a solid platform and as good as it gets. The fact people think Windows 7 is everything Vista wasn't further proves the point. The difference between 7 and Vista are so mall I don't even know I'd call it a service pack as much as just the natural evolution of the code base of Vista combined with user feedback.
Vista is tight. Windows 7 is just a tuned Vista. This guy completely invalidated himself by picking Vista as #1. He jumped on the bandwagon and lost credibility. I've been using it since SP1 on 3 machines "Built for Vista" and it's been brilliant. The UAC hardly even comes on at all anymore and when it does I'm cool with it. This is is someone's tool that just spewed what he thought would draw the most Google hits by article keywords. If you search rank on the 10 technologies he chose they are huge.
His list is the most SEO list I've seen and that's all I give him. That and oh yeah... he's a tool.
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05-18-2009, 04:16 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 86
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Quote:
Originally Posted by code-frog
Vista was just ahead of it's time.
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Yea, and Charles Manson was just "misunderstood".
To be fair I think that Vista has been somewhat unfairly denounced. Every version of Windows prior to it has been just as terrible. Only now are people beginning to catch on to the upgrade train scam Microsoft has been pulling for so long now.
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05-18-2009, 04:16 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 251
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Quote:
Originally Posted by code-frog
Windows 98 and ME had huge problems.
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Have to agree here. Windows ME was just god awful. While Vista certainly had it problems when it was introduced, it has overcome them.
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05-18-2009, 04:30 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 667
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What a totally weird list. They clearly didn't stop to consider what a technology is before writing this list. There are technologies that belong on a list like that, like virtual reality and voice recognition, but most of their items aren't technologies at all, but specific products. That's a very different thing.
Like listing the Apple Lisa. Yes, the product was a failure, but the technology it attempted to market was the graphical user interface. Yeah, like that never caught on! As all of us who follow tech things know, the first implementation of a new technology is not always successful. Sometimes it take several tries to get it right.
Or 10GB Ethernet. The technology is Ethernet and this just happens to be one speed variant of it. So innovation passed by this particular level of implementation and we'll be moving straight from 1GB to 100GB. In my book, that's not a technology failure, that's a technology success. The technology is progressing faster than the market.
The Itanium may be a failure as a product (though I'm just taking their word for it), but for the technology to be a failure, you have to say that 64-bit computing is a failure. That's the technology. The fact that Intel didn't build 32-bit compatibility into the chip was a marketing failure, but I seem to be hearing more and more about people running 64-bit versions of Windows now and that sounds to me like a technology that's just about to take off, not one that has failed.
In other places, they seem schizophrenic. Like with Ed's favorite whipping boy, Bluetooth, which at least is a technology. They list it as a failed technology, then end their discussion by telling us that their BT microphone is "incredibly useful and reliable". That's just bizarre. When I have something that is incredibly useful and reliable, I generally tend to think of the technology that drives it as successful.
The Vista problem was a failure in marketing, not a failure in technology. As code-frog pointed out, Windows 7 is just a refinement of all the same technologies and is getting great reviews.
Anyway, I guess it's food for thought, but I wish they had actually done the thing they said they would instead of just making it a list of 'ten things they wish were better.'
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05-18-2009, 04:53 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Oct 2008
Posts: 14
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Looks like this guy is an all-out apple and ipod fanboy!  Everything that he said about the Zune and windows was pretty denigrating!
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05-18-2009, 05:34 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
Originally Posted by code-frog
The fact Vista is number one invalidates this guy as being credible. He hopped on a bandwagon here. Windows 98 and ME had huge problems. Vista was just ahead of it's time. If you put Vista on a box ready for Vista it's a solid platform and as good as it gets. The fact people think Windows 7 is everything Vista wasn't further proves the point. The difference between 7 and Vista are so mall I don't even know I'd call it a service pack as much as just the natural evolution of the code base of Vista combined with user feedback.
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I agree with your technological assessment, but the fact is, Vista failed. It was not a viable upgrade for so many XP users. There was way too much hardware already out there that couldn't handle it, too many peripherals that had no Vista drivers and too much software that didn't work on it. It was great for new high powered machines with newer devices attached to it and software written after 2005 or 2006. Anything else and you were taking a big chance.
XP Virtual Mode in Win7 proves the point. Even Win7 cannot fix the ambitious changes in Vista, so for companies and Ultimate users, you can virtualize XP and run the app or hardware in there.
Should Vista be #1 on the list? Maybe not, but it absolutely belongs there. No one will be running Vista 2 years from now unless they are just technologically incompitent. Everyone will upgrade Vista to Win7 within 18 months of its release, or even sooner.
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05-18-2009, 07:22 PM
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Mystic
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,887
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But... Vista is no more a technology than is the Lisa.
Its a product built out of a collection technologies; Aero, WFC, WinFX, DX10, etc. Neither product belongs on a list of technologies.
Think of HDTVs; they are products built off a series of technologies; LCD displays, HDMI data transfer protocols, ATSC content broadcasting, QAM cable encoding...
You can say a specific HDTV model is a disappointment without indicting the various technologies that go into it; conversely, a successful product might include disappointing technologies along with successful ones.
As to Vista the product being a failute; doesn't that require a context? A failure at what? Blunting unfair TV commercials? Probably. Upgrading three year-old PCs? Maybe. At a minimum we would need to agree on what Vista was supposed to be and what it failed at. To say Vista failed to be a suitable replacement OS for XP hardware is hardly a damning statement you know; all Microsoft OSes are designed as OEM products first and upgrade paths second. And properly so.
At most, Vista PCs failed to ship with abundant, stable device drivers. And Vista PCs failed to ship to consumer without loads of performance-sapping crapware. And that is more an indictment of the PC vendors than Vista itself.
When installed on contemporary hardware in a clean state, Vista is both stable and fast. Hardly the disaster of biblical proportions that the TV ads pretend.
There are millions of us out here actually doing productive work on Vista machines with nary a gripe, you know.
Last edited by Felix Torres; 05-18-2009 at 07:27 PM..
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05-18-2009, 08:17 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 94
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Can't wait to see Zune break out of its isolation and onto XBox and Windows Mobile. It should help Zune gain some brand recognition and build on XBox's existing community.
I'd love to know how J.Allard currently views Zune's progress and it's uphill climb to gain marketshare. Is he still actively involved with Zune development? The biggest hinderence to Zune adoption isn't the technology..its actually very good. But its hard to convince consumers of anything when Zune hasn't reached parity. Content Store (movies, games) & portability (mobile phone) parity hasn't been achieved yet. And even when parity has been reached, is that enough to sway consumers to switch. Not without a major change to their advertising strategy and consistent message. In many ways the Zune team has their steepest climb ahead of them. Its doable.
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