The 50 Worst Fails In Tech History
By Damien Scott | Apr 29, 2011 | 10:00 am | Permalink
12. Sirius S50
Launch date: June 8, 1998
Fatal flaw(s): Limited storage, not truly portable, poorly designed interface
If you were a satellite radio junkie and wanted your fix while on the go, the Sirius S50 device built by Samsung was your best best. Unfortunately, best was a relative term. While you could record songs that you "Love" with the push of a button, the S50 only packed in 1 GB of storage. You're probably thinking, "So What? I'll just listen to it live." Nope, sorry. The only way to listen to live music or talk shows on the S50 is by connecting it to a car or home dock. To listen to content on the go, you had to record it. Which brings us back to our original problem of storage. Sirius said the RIAA sabotaged the S50 with its amendments to the Audio Home Recording Act and various lawsuits against Sirius and XM Radio. We don't deny that—those dudes are grimey—but that doesn't make the S50 any less of a failure.
Jester of the Apocalypse April 29th, 2011 at 03:55 PM
The good thing about AOL is that if I see that someone has an aol.com email address, I instantly know they don't know shit about computers . . .
otterpop78 April 30th, 2011 at 11:54 AM
lolmao. I got an email from a lady with a aol.com addy, and she was asking me to hook up her roku box. lmao, yea, aol.com= noobs, even if they are old school aolers.
Hypnotoad April 29th, 2011 at 04:05 PM
A little more research on some of these would have helped. Case in point: "Playstation EyeToy Have you ever seen anyone actually use one of these? We didn't think so. We're not sure how they managed pushing over 10 million of them. " They're now used for the Playstation Move motion controller, which is actually pretty popular. While initially a fail, its crawled back from the brink of oblivion. Doesn't deserve to be that high on the list.
WilliamRLBaker May 3rd, 2011 at 10:17 PM
your confusing the ps3 eyetoy with the ps2 eyetoy...
Gincairn May 4th, 2011 at 01:01 PM
The PS2 eyetoy was still marginally successful in the UK, but it was let down (as with the move) by lack of support from the developers, there just wasn't enough games released to justify its existence.
JJ May 6th, 2011 at 02:38 AM
Also, they make decent, but cheap, webcameras + overly sensitive microphones!
megatron April 29th, 2011 at 04:54 PM
It's nice to see a published work with so many spelling errors
Charles Manson April 29th, 2011 at 05:13 PM
Dear God! PLEASE stop forcing us to reload a page FIFTY times to see a stupid list!
lethargic April 29th, 2011 at 05:45 PM
Pains me to seen the Kin on here. I bought a KIN TWOm about a month ago and it's by far the best phone I've ever owned. The only thing the iphone has that this doesn't is apps. I can live without apps to save a few hundred dollars.
Ray April 29th, 2011 at 10:03 PM
What about Flooz? The original Iridium satellite service that failed?
Dave April 29th, 2011 at 10:30 PM
N64 came out before Pippen you jobber of a writer. Do research and a spell check before you publish articles.
Sapolsky May 4th, 2011 at 03:46 AM
Not to mention the Sega Genesis was not the other warring console at that year, but the Saturn.
Billy April 29th, 2011 at 11:03 PM
How does Laser Disc not make the list at all??? How does the Nintendo Glove not make the list??? How do zip drives not make the list??? How do you make a list??? I like question marks!!! ???
Erin April 30th, 2011 at 02:54 AM
Needs more F7.
homelesspete April 30th, 2011 at 08:39 AM
These lists are fail. I hate having to click next 50 times times to read your article. Put ten on a page so I can scroll down to see what I care to read.
tahrey May 4th, 2011 at 10:04 AM
Also having to hit "next 10 comments"... again, and again, and again (with them in old-to-new chronological order, too, so if you want to see the most recent replies you have to hit it the most times). Maybe this site has been optimised for people who are still using google's HTML-to-WAP translator on an old Motorola Timeport or something?
tahrey May 4th, 2011 at 10:10 AM
and, hell, that's not even working any more. i click it, and they don't load. the button merely disappears. but i've now got an extra status bar down the bottom of my screen. oh, and i've had to hit "temporarily allow all this page" about fifteen times in NoScript. Just how much goddamn javascript (buggy JS at that) does this site use for heaven's sake? screw it. first time here, off an external link. just wanted to read the rest of the reactions but even that doesn't work. can't be bothered any more. i think i'll flounce if it's all the same with you. won't be bookmarking.
tahrey May 4th, 2011 at 10:12 AM
ah! and another thing. all the formatting/spacing's been wiped from the comments. that's very poor form. just to give you an example, as I type this, each of these words has been typed on a new line with a blank line in- between them as whitespace. But I bet they'll all appear on the one line, possibly without even a normal space taking the place of the newline. Sort it out, Complex.
Anthony Luis Maldonado August 31st, 2011 at 03:56 PM
how bout put all 50 on 1 page so we dont have to hit next at all.