LICENSE TO FAIL
THE CONSUMER TECHNOLOGY field is, without a doubt, an absolute hotbed of technological innovation. Over the last few decades, we’ve seen computing make incredible strides in processing power, graphical capability, and data storage. There have been inspired new moves, like the introduction of simultaneous multi-threading and hyperthreading to double the available threads of CPUs, as well as improvements to software, hardware, and network infrastructure that have made things like 4K video streaming a reality. It wouldn’t be an overly bold claim to say that the PC hardware industry and community are in the best place they’ve ever been (any global pandemics notwithstanding, of course).
However, it hasn’t always been happy faces and full coffers in the computing industry. There have been mistakes, bad judgements, humiliating missteps: Some tragic, some hilarious. It’s not uncommon for a brand to release a product or service they firmly believe is going to be the Next Big Thing, then throw all of their marketing resources behind it only for it to fall flat on its face, selling like a Boyz II Men Christmas album in early April.
The past two decades have brought us some incredible innovations, but plenty of flops as well—and they are what we’re going to focus on today, in pursuit of comedy and perhaps a few cautionary tales.
20 Windows Millennium Edition
It seems fitting to start with Microsoft’s turn-of-the-century blunder, Windows Me. That’s “Millennium Edition”, in theory. In practice, it was dubbed the “Mistake Edition,” with a cavalcade of issues plaguing it after release. Sometimes it would refuse to function with existing software; sometimes it would refuse to start up at all. Microsoft scrambled to fix the stability issues and numerous glitches, releasing patch after patch, but the
