12 Worst Apple Products Ever
Not everything that Apple has created has been a success. Take a look at some of the worst Apple products ever | Gabrielle Lurie/AFP/Getty Images
Apple’s created plenty of great gadgets throughout its long history, from the widely successful Apple II and the original Macintosh to the iMac G3, iPod, iPhone, and MacBook Air. But for each of those great Apple products, there were just as many major flops. Lucy Hattersley reports for Macworld that “there are no shortage of Apple products that in retrospect didn’t meet the company’s high standards, whether technologically, artistically, or commercially.” Read on to check out 12 of the worst Apple products ever.
1. Apple III
While the Apple II was one of Apple’s biggest hits and put the company on the map, the Apple III was a big misstep when it launched in 1980. The machine was designed for business, since plenty of great enterprise software had been built for the Apple II. But every Apple III machine that was shipped had to be repaired.
That’s because Steve Jobs had insisted the machine have no fans or air vents in order to run quietly, and the engineering team made the case from aluminum but hadn’t correctly accounted for the logic board. With the logic board installed, the Apple III would overheat, which would cause the screen to show garbled text, the solder to melt to form connections between chips, and chips to melt out of their sockets.
Apple’s official fix was to lift the machine three inches in the air and drop it to slam the chips back into their sockets. As Macworld reports, Jobs said that Apple lost “infinite, incalculable amounts” of money on the Apple III — to the tune of $60 million.
2. Apple Lisa
Meg Garner reports for The Street that the Apple Lisa, launched in 1983, “might have had it all and then some, because it was the first personal computer to have a mouse and graphic user interface built in.” But the machine’s incredibly high price tag of $9,995 kept it from being a popular device. It’s estimated that only 11,000 units of the original Apple Lisa were sold before Apple pulled the original Lisa and the Lisa 2 from store shelves in 1986.
3. Macintosh Portable
The Macintosh Portable was Apple’s first attempt at making a portable computer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a success. The machine weighed 16 pounds and wouldn’t run without a charged battery. In addition, it sold for an astronomical $6,500 when it was released in 1989, which makes it a pretty good candidate for a list of the worst Apple products ever.
4. Macintosh TV
The Macintosh TV was a computer that Apple launched in 1993 with the purpose of bridging the gap between televisions and computers. Hattersley notes that there was little integration between the two functions, and users could switch between watching television or using the computer. But there was no way to “watch television inside a window so it was little different to using a computer with a television screen instead of a monitor.”
People had been connecting computers to television screens for years, but the Macintosh TV cost more than $2,000. It was equipped with a CD-ROM drive, but in the pre-DVD age, there was little digital video around to take advantage of it. Apple only produced 10,000 units of the Macintosh TV.
5. Newton MessagePad
The Newton MessagePad was Apple’s version of a personal digital assistant (PDA), one that chief executive John Sculley announced long before the device was ready to ship. It finally hit shelves in 1993, more than a year after Sculley announced Apple’s intention to create a PDA.
The Newton MessagePad was notoriously difficult to use and subject to processing failures. It cost $699 at the time of its release, and Apple projected that it would sell a million units. However, Apple sold only 50,000 units in the first three months of the device’s availability, and Jobs cut the gadget from Apple’s lineup when he returned in 1997.