Microsoft, Apple and IBM Top Computing Flops List
Miguel Carrasco’s got a pretty good list of the top ten computer flops of all time. True to the history of the industry, every spot is either claimed by Microsoft, Apple or IBM, or is a flop because it got killed by one of those three. The Xerox Alto is a flop because it should have been the Mac, The NeXT box is because it should have OS X, and CP/M is because it should have been MS-DOS. Microsoft’s big flop on the list (besides BOB, which is a silly target after all these years) is Windows ME:
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition was touted as the first operating system to support Universal Plug and Play. Unfortunately, this operating systems was quite possibly less compatible with hardware, than its predecessor, Windows 98. It was also notoriously difficult to re-install, which was terrible since this operating system needed to be re-installed almost weekly. Hardcore users claimed that Windows ME was more stable than 98, or 98SE, and the instabilities came from users installing bad drivers that were not approved and certified. Nevertheless, most users of Windows were beginners, and thus the perception that Windows ME actually stood for “Microsoft Experiment”, “Moron Edition”, “Mistake Edition”, and “Memory Eater”.
(via Neowin)
Meh, I don’t know how ME was such a flop, people in the know knew it was just a placeholder operating system until Microsoft could make a consumer operating system based on the Windows NT kernel.
ME was just thrown out there relatively quickly once Microsoft decided that Windows 2000 wasn’t going to be that unifying OS.
Comment by Stu | October 22, 2006