They Can't All Be iPhones: 21 Times Apple Got It Very Wrong

It seems that Apple can do no wrong these days. Its latest M5-powered MacBook Pros are blisteringly fast, the iPhone 17e just nailed the midrange phone formula, and it put the Windows PC market on notice with its all-aluminum, $599 MacBook Neo.

But as longtime fans know, Apple most certainly can do wrong. The missteps tend to get lost to the sands of time. But we at PCMag have been around for 44 years, and we certainly remember them. So, in the spirit of having a little fun as Apple turns 50, let’s take a quick trip back and revisit some things that the company would probably prefer we didn’t revisit.

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Apple III (1980)

(Credit: Alexander Schaelss/CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Apple II helped launch the personal computer revolution, so it was only natural to immediately look forward to the next thing. The problem was letting the marketing department have more say than the designers and engineers. The result was the Apple III, the first Apple product Steve Wozniak didn't design. It was intended for small businesses, with its built-in 80-column card ideal for running spreadsheets. But at $5,000, it cost too much, and its Apple II compatibility was intentionally crippled to push developers to write software for the III. It also proved seriously unreliable, thanks to numerous manufacturing defects. The Apple II line lasted for 16 years. The Apple III? Gone in six months.

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Apple Lisa (1983)

(Credit: Timothy Colegrove/CC BY-SA 4.0/PCMag)

Without the Lisa, we wouldn't have had the Macintosh, so the Lisa deserves some credit by default. It was the first mass-market computer with a built-in graphical user interface (GUI), designed around document production workflow. Apple again targeted small businesses—IBM's new PC was stealing customers upgrading from their Apple IIs and VisiCalc. But the Lisa was wildly overpriced; it cost a stunning $10,000 in 1983 dollars. (Imagine a $33,200 price tag on a desktop computer today.) Worse, its shiny new Motorola 68000 CPU was constrained to a sluggish 5MHz, which wasn't enough for speedy performance with such a resource-intensive OS. Faster variants of the 68000—and Apple's graphical OS—were soon destined for better things.

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128K in the First Macintosh (1984)

(Credit: Apple/PCMag)

Normally, it would be wrong to say anything bad about the first Macintosh because of how dramatically successful the line was. But Apple did make a crucial error with the groundbreaking computer. Steve Jobs was famously opposed to putting “too much hardware in the machine," as he later complained about the Commodore Amiga's various coprocessors. That philosophy extended to the Mac's built-in memory. But customers soon discovered 128K was simply not enough to run much software, once the sprawling graphical OS was loaded. Apple relented and released a 512K version (later nicknamed the "Fat Mac") eight months later.

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Apple Macintosh Portable (1989)

(Credit: Benoit Prieur/CC0)

Apple reimagined laptop computers in 1991 with its sleek PowerBooks, featuring lightweight designs, inset keyboards with palm rests, and center-mounted trackballs. But before Apple sprinted, it stumbled with the Macintosh Portable, an ungainly, “luggable” style machine. It was a real Macintosh, with a cutting-edge active-matrix 9.8-inch LCD, a comfortable keyboard, and a trackball to replace the external mouse. But its large size, 16-pound (!) weight, non-backlit screen that was difficult to read without copious light, and massive $7,300 price tag resulted in few takers. Apple added a backlight in 1991 and dropped the price by $1,000 before killing the Portable off once the PowerBooks arrived.

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Apple Newton MessagePad (1993)

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The Newton was set to revolutionize computing, with its handheld form factor and stylus for writing directly on the screen. But it was a classic case of a product being ahead of its time. The poor handwriting recognition received widespread criticism (The Simpsons famously mocked it.) Palm later made this work more cheaply and reliably with its PalmPilot line. Despite many improvements to the Newton in the years that followed, Jobs believed that requiring a stylus was bad and canceled the product in 1998 after he returned to the company.

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Apple Macintosh TV (1993)

(Credit: Ben Boldt/Public Domain)

If a computer is good and a TV is good, wouldn’t the two put together be gooder? So goes the reasoning behind the Macintosh TV, an ill-conceived salvo in the short-lived “multimedia” era of computing that brought us CD-ROM drives and TV video cards. Inside the Macintosh TV were the guts of a Performa 520 computer, but with an RF input for a TV antenna or cable television feed. Unfortunately, you could do only one or the other with it—no watching TV in a window while using the Mac desktop. At least it was black instead of beige? Apple sold just 10,000 before binning it less than 18 months later.

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Apple Macintosh Clones (1995)

(Credit: Power Computing)

Apple decided that the only way it would truly gain market share against Intel PCs was to license Mac OS 7 to third-party manufacturers, much as Microsoft had been doing all along with DOS and Windows. The result was companies like Radius, Power Computing, and Umax Technologies selling personal computers that looked like tower PCs running Windows but were actually Mac-compatible. All this did was cannibalize sales of Apple's profitable Macs while making barely a dent in Intel and Microsoft’s market share. Jobs canned the whole project after he returned to Apple in 1997.

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Apple Pippin (1996)

(Credit: Evan Amos/Public Domain)

The ill-conceived Pippin game console is unique in this roundup for being a platform, not a product. It featured a 66MHz PowerPC 603 processor, a 4x CD-ROM drive, a 14.4 kbps modem, and a television video output. The result was a combined computer and game console design that Apple could license. Bandai sold one in the US and Japan. But the Pippin, at $599, was more expensive than the Sony PlayStation or Nintendo 64 and had almost no games to speak of. Released in 1996, it was already history before 1997 was done.

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Apple ‘Puck’ Mouse (1998)

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Ever since the first computer mouse was demonstrated in 1968, it’s been understood that you should be able to hold it easily. For some reason, Apple didn't always get this. The Bondi Blue iMac G3, unveiled in August 1998, is widely credited with beginning Apple's massive turnaround, with Jobs back at the helm. I suppose the iMac's "puck" mouse looked cool, just like the computer. But just about everything else with it was wrong: Its circular design was hard to hold, and you couldn't tell which direction it was oriented until you moved the cursor. Even the cable was too short. (Dishonorable mention goes to today's wireless Magic Mouse, which only charges upside down.)

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Apple Power Mac G4 Cube (2000)

(Credit: Apple)

I still remember being struck by the G4 Cube's design when it was first released. It looked like it belonged in a museum. (And that’s exactly where it is today—at the Museum of Modern Art, among others.) It had a suspended-in-glass appearance and ingenious passive cooling, although expansion was limited. But it also had a fatal cosmetic flaw: The clear plastic was prone to hairline cracks in manufacturing. Also, the Cube failed because it cost too much; comparable G4 towers with similar or better specs were hundreds of dollars less and offered plenty of room for expansion. Apple "suspended production" just under a year after its introduction.

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Motorola ROKR E1 (2005)

(Credit: Motorola)

Oh dear. There’s still really nothing I can write that will do this thing the injustice it deserves. The ROKR E1 was Apple's first attempt at an "iTunes phone," a device that mashed together its wildly successful iPod with a cell phone for voice calls. Apple partnered with Motorola, and the result was this ungainly candy bar handset, severely hampered by a glacial USB 1.0 interface and a maximum storage capacity of only 100 songs. Upon its introduction, the ROKR was instantly overshadowed by the sleek iPod nano and soon forgotten.

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Apple iPod Hi-Fi (2006)

(Credit: Apple)

Speaker docks were all the rage in 2006, as manufacturers like Bose, JBL, and Logitech scrambled to build as many as possible to meet the public's insatiable appetite for iPods and decor-friendly stereo systems. Apple jumped in with both feet with the iPod Hi-Fi, a terrific-sounding effort. But it was also overpriced, very large, and somehow still appeared fragile, thanks to the way the iPod sat atop it at a precarious-looking angle. Customers also disliked the near-useless remote control. Apple quietly discontinued it a year and a half later.

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Apple MobileMe (2008)

(Credit: Apple)

MobileMe was Apple’s first attempt at cloud-based storage and data synchronization between your computers and phone. The problem, aside from its $99-per-year cost, was that it was unreliable—not a desirable characteristic for something that handles your irreplaceable personal data. Jobs’s fury over this one was legendary; at one point in a postmortem meeting about MobileMe's release, he asked the team to explain what MobileMe was supposed to do. After receiving what he thought was a good answer, Jobs responded, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?” Apple eventually sunsetted MobileMe and replaced it with the much more successful (and reliable) iCloud.

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Apple iTunes Ping (2010)

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There was a time when even Apple tried to jump on the fast-growing social media craze. In 2010, it launched a music-focused service called iTunes Ping, built into the iTunes app, that let you follow artists, connect with your friends, and post about music. It wasn't necessarily a terrible idea, and some people actually liked it. But it was missing a lot of features, such as podcast and iOS integration. It also didn't connect to any other major social networks. Worst of all, Apple immediately faced massive issues with fake accounts and spam. The company canned Ping after two years amid disappointing consumer take-up.

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Antennagate (2010)

(Credit: Apple)

The iPhone 4 was an awesome phone by almost any measure, with a beautiful industrial design, all hard edges and cold ice, and a groundbreaking “Retina” screen that made text look ultra-sharp. But lurking inside was a hidden pitfall—if you held the phone a certain way, with your finger placed over the concealed antenna just so, you wouldn’t get much reception. Jobs famously responded to the rising kerfuffle by saying, “You’re holding it wrong,” which did nothing to quell customer complaints. Apple redeemed itself with the slightly taller iPhone 5, which added just enough room for a redesigned antenna system that eliminated the issue.

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Apple Maps (2012)

(Apple)

Apple wanted to replace Google Maps as the default on iPhones, and it finally had its chance in 2012. Apple Maps looked nice, with a clear, attractive interface and nifty Flyover views. But looks don't count for much if it doesn't work. It was often wrong, with errors in the names and locations of points of interest. You know you have a problem when your app thinks London is in Canada, a farm is an airport, and jumping off a bridge is a good idea. (OK, fine, the last one was while it was still in beta.) Today, it should be noted, Apple Maps is much better, especially when used with CarPlay.

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Bendgate (2014)

(Credit: Apple)

The iPhone 6 was a powerful, well-designed smartphone when Apple released it in 2014. Unfortunately, you could also bend it. The iPhone 6, especially the 6 Plus, had an aluminum enclosure that proved weaker than it looked. Just putting the 6 Plus in your pants pocket and sitting was enough to bend the device, which could cause the touch screen to stop responding. Court documents from the resulting class-action lawsuit revealed Apple's internal tests found the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus were significantly more likely to bend than the iPhone 5S.

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Free U2 Album (2014)

(Credit: Getty Images/Justin Sullivan)

At the same launch event for the iPhone 6, Apple announced that U2's brand new album, Songs of Innocence, would be exclusively available on iTunes as a freebie. But it turned out you had no choice: Apple automatically inserted the album into everyone’s iTunes accounts, without consent—meaning that it downloaded en masse onto everyone’s Macs, iPhones, and iPads, taking up space they needed for other things and disturbing carefully curated music libraries. Many people also dislike U2, and the backlash was swift and severe; you know it’s bad when we had to publish a how-to story specifically on removing the album from your account. Eventually, Apple relented and released a tool to help with the process. U2 frontman Bono took the blame for the disaster years later.

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Butterfly Keyboard (2015)

(Credit: PCMag)

In the relentless pursuit of thinness, Apple went just a bit too far here. Beginning with the 2015 MacBook, Apple began "upgrading" its proven scissor-switch key mechanisms to a new butterfly design that was thinner and prevented backlight bleed. Unfortunately, the typing experience was terrible with such shallow key travel. Worse, the keys tended to fail whenever debris became lodged under them. After several years and countless consumer complaints, Apple began footing the cost of repairs and eventually distributed refunds to all affected customers.

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Apple AirPower (2019)

(Credit: Apple)

It’s rare that Apple pulls a product literally right before it’s released, but that’s exactly what it did with AirPower, the company’s attempt at crushing the third-party wireless charging market. Billed as a way to simultaneously charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods, AirPower was supposed to arrive before the end of 2018. But the year came and went without a word before Apple canceled it entirely. "After much effort, we've concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards and we have cancelled the project," an Apple executive told us in March 2019. "We apologize to those customers who were looking forward to this launch." And that was that.

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Apple Vision Pro (2024)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Perhaps it's still too early in the Vision Pro’s cycle to determine whether it’s truly a failure. But, heck, I'll make the call now. The Vision Pro is an incredible technological advance in VR and AR; there's no denying it. But I’m still surprised Apple released something that so clearly resembles a prototype, with that distinctly un-Apple external battery pack, and a sky-high price to boot. And it's heavy enough to become uncomfortable to wear after just an hour or two. A faster M5-powered version hasn't moved the needle much, and now the company is reportedly slashing its 2026 production plans.

Fortunately, there’s still time for Apple to redeem itself with this one. Check back in with us for Apple’s 60th anniversary in 2036, and we’ll let you know how it all went.

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