The Hall of Shame: Apple’s Five Biggest (and Funniest) F-Ups

A Detailed, Factual, and Humorous Autopsy of the "Shity Stuff" Even Apple Couldn't Sell

In the public imagination, Apple Inc. exists as a $3 trillion fortress of brushed aluminum and hardened glass, a company that doesn't just release products but "bestows" them upon a grateful public. It operates less as a corporation and more as a secretive design cabal that occasionally releases a "magical," "insanely great" slab of the future.
But it wasn't always this way.

Before Apple became the definition of "cool," it was a struggling, chaotic company that launched some of the most spectacular, high-profile, and pants-on-head stupid duds in tech history. These failures are not just forgotten footnotes; they are glorious, expensive monuments to the same hubris and aesthetic-obsession that would later define its successes.

This is a tour of the wing of the Apple Museum they keep locked. Welcome to the hall of shame.
Apple's Hall of Shame: At a Glance
| Product | Launch Year | Original Price | Price (2024 Dollars) | Units Sold | The "Shity" Gimmick (And Why It Failed) |

|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple III | 1980 | $4,500 - $8,000 | ~$16,000 - $29,000+ | ~65,000 | "Percussive Maintenance": Steve Jobs's "no fan" design caused the chips to literally pop out. The official fix was to drop it. |

| Apple Newton | 1993 | $699 | ~$1,500 | ~50,000 (in 1st 4 mos) | "Eat up Martha": A "revolutionary" handwriting recognizer that couldn't recognize handwriting. Immortalized by The Simpsons. |

| Apple Pippin | 1996 | $599 | ~$1,170 | ~42,000 (Total) | "The $1,100 Paperweight": A game console that cost 2x its rivals (PS1, N64) and had only 18 games. |
|

 Macintosh TV | 1993 | $2,097 | ~$4,565 | ~10,000 (Total) | "The Anti-Convergence": A Mac/TV hybrid that could not show TV in a window while computing. It was one or the other. |
| 20th Anniv. Mac (TAM) | 1997 | $7,499 | ~$14,600 | ~11,600 | "Tuxedo Delivery": A $14,600 laptop in a fancy case. When Apple slashed the price, they had to give early buyers a free laptop as an apology. |

1. The Original Sin: The Apple III (And Its "Percussive Maintenance") (1980)
   In 1980, Apple was riding high on the monstrous success of the Apple II and was preparing for its IPO. The Apple III was meant to be its graduation to the big leagues—a "serious" business computer designed to conquer the corporate world and head off the rumored IBM PC.
   Unfortunately, it was also one of the first major projects where Steve Jobs’s aesthetic "ideology"  was allowed to physically destroy a product.
   The Hubris and The "Crap" Factor
   Jobs supervised the project with an iron fist, making two catastrophic demands. First, he provided dimensions that were too small for the components to fit. Second, he insisted the elegant, silent machine have no cooling fan and no air vents. Fans, he declared, were "too noisy and inelegant".
2. 
   The engineers, forced to cram all the components into this tiny, hermetically-sealed sarcophagus, had created a $4,500 personal oven.
   
3. The Apple III cooked itself. With no ventilation, the motherboard "quickly got too hot and warped". This thermal expansion caused the integrated circuit chips to literally "wander out of their sockets"  or "pop out of the machine". Users reported their screens turning to garbled data or their disks emerging from the drive "melted".
   This was a catastrophic failure on a biblical scale. The machine cost between $4,500 and $8,000, depending on the configuration. In today's money, that's a $29,000-plus paperweight.
5. 
   The Punchline (The "Fix" and The Nickname)
   The problem was so widespread that Apple's official customer service response became the stuff of legend. In a technical bulletin, Apple's official "fix" was to instruct customers to "lift the Apple III... three inches in the air and then drop it". Some sources recall the instruction being a full six inches.
   This "percussive maintenance," as it became known , was intended to reseat the "wandering" chips back into their sockets.
   The machine's software was called the "Sophisticated Operating System," or "SOS" for short. As the disaster unfolded and 14,000 units had to be recalled , the nickname quickly became a desperate "S.O.S." (Save Our Ship). This was Apple's original sin: the first, most literal example of its design hubris leading to a comically unprofessional end.
   2. The Prophetic Failure: The Apple Newton (And "Eat Up Martha") (1993)
   If the Apple III was an embarrassing secret, the Newton was a public execution. This was CEO John Sculley's "pet project," hyped for 14 months before its August 1993 launch. It was meant to be the future of personal computing.
   It was, for a time, the global punchline for "tech that doesn't work."
   The Vision vs. The "Crap" Factor
   The Newton MessagePad was, in concept, the iPhone. It was a handheld Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) that was "ahead of its time". But it was launched "far too early". Its defining feature—the one it bet the farm on—was its "revolutionary" handwriting recognition.
   
6. 
   And it was unusable. The software was "frustratingly slow and inaccurate". This single flaw torpedoed the entire platform. The $699 launch price ($1,050 in 2010 dollars)  for the original, and up to $1,000 for later models , was for a bulky 1.4-pound device  whose main feature didn't function.
   The Punchline That Defined a Legacy
   The Newton became synonymous with failure, mocked by comedians  and, most famously, in a 1995 episode of The Simpsons called "Lisa On Ice".
   In the iconic gag, school bully Dolph attempts to write a memo on his Newton: "Beat up Martin." The device's dysfunctional software translates it to "Eat up Martha". The "unlucky tablet" is then hurled at Martin's head.
   This joke became the product's legacy. It was the "first autocorrect fail" , and it did more than just mock a product—it created a cultural scar that haunted Apple for two decades.
   When Apple engineers were developing the original iPhone, they were "haunted" and "traumatized" by that specific gag. According to former iOS engineering director Nitin Ganatra, the phrase "Here comes the Eat Up Marthas" became internal Apple shorthand for the terror of "we cannot screw up text input".
   The failure of the stylus-based Newton, immortalized by The Simpsons, is the ghost that ensured the success of the multi-touch iPhone keyboard. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he killed the Newton in 1998. The decision was a perfect trifecta: it cut an unprofitable line, killed the "pet project" of his "old adversary Sculley" , and eliminated a product philosophy (the stylus) that he personally "disliked".
   3. The Console War Casualty: The Apple Pippin (The $1,100 Mistake) (1996)
   In the mid-90s, the console wars were raging between Sega, Nintendo, and newcomer Sony. Apple, in its infinite pre-Jobs-return wisdom, decided it also wanted in. The result was the Pippin, a 1996 joint venture with toymaker Bandai.
   It stands as one of the worst-selling consoles of all time, a case study in arrogance.
   The "Identity Crisis" and The "Crap" Factor
   The Pippin's core problem was that Apple didn't understand the market. Apple designed it as a "multimedia appliance"—a hybrid "game console, a Web-browsing network computer, and a multimedia player".
   As PCWorld noted when naming it one of the "25 Worst Tech Products of All Time," it "did all of those tasks poorly".
   Its true failure, however, was financial. The Pippin launched at $599. That 1996 price tag is equivalent to $978 in 2018 dollars  and over $1,100 today.
   This is the killer: the Pippin cost double the Sony PlayStation ($299)  and three times the Nintendo 64.
   For this king's ransom, what did you get? A pathetic library of "only 18 games". One of its "rare gems" was a Mac port of Marathon that was "frustrating" to play.
   The Punchline
   Gamers, who are notoriously price- and content-sensitive, rejected it completely. Bandai had dreamed of selling 500,000 units a year ; instead, the Pippin sold a microscopic 42,000 units total in its entire lifespan. It sold worse than Nintendo's infamous headache-inducing Virtual Boy.
   Apple tried to sell a high-margin computer to a low-margin console audience. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, he "pulled the plug" immediately. The Pippin remains a chilling historical analog for any high-priced Apple "everything machine" launched into a new market—a ghost that very much haunts the $3,500 Vision Pro.
   4. The Worst of Both Worlds: The Macintosh TV (The 40-Pound "Road Apple") (1993)
   Launched in October 1993, the Macintosh TV was Apple's first attempt at "convergence". It was a Mac and a television in one box.
   It was also the first, and only, black desktop Mac shipped in North America , which was its only good feature. The rest was a masterclass in failure, earning it the infamous "Road Apple" label from critics.
   The "Convergence" That Wasn't
   The entire point of a Mac/TV hybrid would be to, say, watch TV in a small window while you work. The Macintosh TV could not do this.
   This was its fatal, comical flaw: You could either watch TV, or you could use your Mac, but not both. It was a "jack of all trades but master of none". When you switched to the TV environment, the "MacOS basically disappeared".
   For this, Apple charged $2,097 ($4,565 in 2024 dollars).
   Even More "Crap": The Crippled Guts
   As an insult to injury, the computer part of the $4,565 Mac TV was worse than cheaper Macs.
   It ran a 32MHz processor, but Apple intentionally saddled it with a slower 16MHz system bus (compared to the 25MHz bus on its "beige cousin," the LC 520). This engineering choice made the Mac TV 15% slower than the cheaper models it was based on. Furthermore, its RAM was capped at a pathetic 8MB, while the standard LC 520 could handle 32MB.
   This 40.5-pound  beast was a worse computer and a less functional TV than just buying both. Apple sold a grand total of 10,000 units before killing it.
   5. The Velvet-Lined Coffin: The 20th Anniversary Mac (TAM) (1997)
   The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM) is the ultimate artifact of Apple's 1997 "dark time," just before Jobs returned. It is perhaps the most out-of-touch, overpriced, and comically luxurious vanity project in the company's history.
   The Peak of 1997 Hubris
   Released in March 1997, the TAM was not a computer; it was a "statement". Its price was $7,499.
   In 2024 dollars, that is $14,600.
   For $14,600, you didn't just get a computer. You got an experience. The TAM was delivered to your home by a concierge, a "tech-in-a-tux"  who would set it up for you. One (admittedly apocryphal) story suggests the original price was even higher, but you could get a discount by opting out of the "limousine and tuxedo delivery man".
   The "Crap" Factor (All Sizzle, No Steak)
   The product itself was a fraud. For $14,600, you were buying... a laptop.
   It was built with "off the shelf"  PowerBook laptop components, including its 12.1-inch LCD screen  and a modest 250MHz 603e processor. It was, as critics noted, "overpriced, underpowered". The real "features" were its leather-bound wrist-rests  and a custom Bose sound system with a massive external subwoofer.
   The Punchline (The Apology Laptop)
   Steve Jobs returned, took one look at this "statement computer," and "hated it". He saw it as the ultimate symbol of a company with no focus.
   He immediately slashed the price to liquidate the 11,600 units  Apple had built, with the price plummeting from $7,499 to $1,995.
   This, naturally, outraged the tiny handful of "early adopters" who had just spent $7,500. Apple's solution was unprecedented. In a move that is unthinkable today, Apple soothed the original buyers by GIVING THEM A FREE APPLE LAPTOP as an apology. They had to give away a whole new product just to compensate for the embarrassment of the TAM's price.
   Honorable Mention: The Ghost of AirPower (2017–2019)
   Lest you think this hubris is all ancient history, we conclude with the ghost of AirPower.
   At its iPhone X event in September 2017, Apple gave a "sneak peek" of a product that would change wireless charging forever: a mat that could charge your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods at the same time, anywhere on its surface.
   Phil Schiller boldly stated this was "not possible with current standards". He was right. It wasn't.
   A Failure of Physics
   Apple's "reality distortion field" had finally met its match: the laws of thermodynamics.
   To achieve the "no sweet spot" promise, the mat was engineered with a complex, overlapping array of 21 to 24 power coils. The result was a catastrophic design flaw: the mat produced "far too much heat" , "overloading the onboard silicon"  and creating massive interference. It was, in short, a fire hazard that didn't work.
   After promising a 2018 release , Apple went radio silent for 18 months. Then, on March 29, 2019, it did the unthinkable: it canceled a publicly announced product, admitting it could not meet its "high standards".
   Apple's engineers, like the engineers on the Newton, eventually solved the problem. The failure of the complex, 24-coil AirPower led directly to the success of the simple, elegant MagSafe. MagSafe solves the exact same problem (the "sweet spot") not with impossible-to-manage overlapping coils, but with a simple, practical magnet.
   Conclusion: Failure is a Feature, Not a Bug
   The thread connecting the 1980 Apple III to the 2019 AirPower is hubris.
   It is the hubris to believe design is more important than airflow (Apple III). The hubris to ship a core feature that doesn't work (Newton). The hubris to believe your brand alone is worth triple the price (Pippin). The hubris to believe a tuxedo can sell a $14,600 laptop (TAM). And the hubris to announce a product before you've checked with the laws of physics (AirPower).
   These failures aren't just funny; they're necessary. They are the crucibles that forged the successes. The Newton's failure led to the iPhone's keyboard. The TAM's failure led to Jobs's new focus on the affordable iMac. The AirPower's failure led to the practical MagSafe.
   Apple isn't great despite its "shity stuff"; it's great because of it.