Vista makes list of ‘top 10 terrible tech products’
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Nov 27, 2007 at 11:11am
Windows Vista has made the “Top 10 terrible tech products” list from Crave magazine. It placed number 10 on the list. Here’s what Crave has to say about Vista:
“Any operating system that provokes a campaign for its predecessor’s reintroduction deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that quietly has a downgrade-to- previous-edition option introduced for PC makers deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Any operating system that takes six years of development but is instantly hated by hordes of PC professionals and enthusiasts deserves to be classed as terrible technology. Windows Vista conforms to all of the above. Its incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list.”
However, Apple also made the list, with its puck mouse placing number six. Here’s what Crave had to say about this item: “Apple shipped the hockey puck-shaped mouse with the iMac G3 in 1998. What in Jobs’ name was this supposed to bring the user? This obscenely unusable excuse for a human interface device was one of Apple’s most abject creations. It had a single button that was difficult to find without looking and made the experience of ‘mousing’ totally rubbish—you didn’t know which way it was pointing. In all fairness, it did have one redeeming innovation—the puck was the first mouse to use the USB standard as its method of connectivity. The puck mouse was discontinued around 2000. Good riddance ‘n’ that.”
Other items making the “Top 10 terrible tech products” list were:
° The Sinclair C6, a battery and pedal-powered, three-wheeler electric vehicle that was released in January 1985 and was a commercial flop
° Barcode Battler, a gaming device released in 1991 that “had extremely basic graphics and audio, and was a bloody nightmare to play.”
° The Squircle, an MPE player with “with zero megabytes of internal memory and lump-of-dirt design.”
° Gizmondo (20065), a handheld games console that looked “like a black version of Shrek’s head” and had “rubbish games.”
° Tamagotchi (1996), a successful, but “extremely irritating” in which “you looked after a tiny pixellated cretin who, after eating a variety of oversized meals, left piles of dung in one corner of his screen, each as large as the creature it came from.”
° Jaguar (1993), Atari’s game console that was a “complete flop.”
° Amstrad e-m@iler Telephone, which let you send email without a PC, but which was a “pain in the asterisk to use and it looked revolting.”
° Sony rootkit CDs, an audio CD “CD that installs hidden software on your PC, without your consent, that compromises your computer’s security to the point that hackers could use it for malicious purposes.” Crave dubs it “the worst product anyone has ever released in the history of the music industry.”
Sunder Says:
I second the Jaguar comment. It was ahead of it’s time but was poorly marketed and Atari did a horrible job getting developers on board.
Posted on November 27, 2007
Michael Linehan Says:
It’s very noticeable that most of the top 10 and little “odds and ends” - trivia such as a mouse and a particular player. As supposedly the next operating system for most of the world’s computers, Vista is in a class by itself and should be given the #1 position for being so awful while simultaneously being (unfortunately) so critically important.
Posted on November 27, 2007
Bob Franklin Says:
I am an illustrator and the hockey puck mouse is the most exacting mouse I’ve ever used.. I have to clean it frequently, but I love em. I use regular optical mice from MS and apple, but for graphics a roller ball type mouse is the only thing that’s any good. See there’s always a foot that some shoe will fit.
Send me yours
Posted on November 27, 2007
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
whiskerbiskit Says:
Jaguar was awesome. Way ahead of it’s time and the competition. In fact, many people still sell and play them to this day. It was Atari’s boneheaded marketing of the Jaguar that was terrible.
Posted on November 27, 2007