The folks at PC World can’t seem to find enough words to describe their love and admiration of Apple’s shiny gadgets, recently naming it the top company in terms of product quality. The staff at CNN were decidedly less kind to the Cupertino trendsetters, declaring the iPhone 4 the “Tech Fail” of the year.
CNN describes the Apple drama of denials (“you’re holding it wrong”), misleading claims that reception issues were the fault of software (the graphics interface was drawing too few bars), and finally a degree of acceptance (users were granted free cases). Despite naming it the worst tech bungle of the year, CNN does soften the blow by concluding, “Months later, the problem is all but forgotten and the phones show no sign of dipping in popularity. So “fail,” in this case, is a pretty relative term.”
Other top “Tech Fail” picks include Microsoft Kin (#3), which featured abysmal sales and was killed soon after its launch. Google’s Nexus One also earned a spot on the list (#4), not because it was a bad product (“And here’s the thing — just about everyone who tried out the Nexus One liked it.”), but because Google messed up by selling it online only (“Apparently, folks like to get their hands on their gadgets before paying for them.”) 3D TVs also earned a fail for costing so much and for failing to fully deliver on their promise of theater-like 3D in 2010.
The bottom of the fail list is occupied by various online entities. Round off the list at #10 is Apple’s Ping social network, which most of us heard of briefly from its press conference — and then never thought of again. At #9 is the Digg relaunch, which saw the content sharing service making — and then pulling — a set of controversial interface changes. And at #8 is content farms — those pesky companies responsible for infomercials/paid articles on the “miracle weight loss product” or “3 secrets to turn women on”.
Bringing up the middle are Google Buzz (#6) and Facebook (#5) for failing to respect and protect user privacy. And Gawker earns the #7 spot for its recent loss of usernames and passwords to hackers, right after it went and mocked the hacker community.