7 Steve Jobs Products That Failed

The Apple I was a garage concoction and in its wooden case with its wood-burned lettering, it looked it. Despite its shop-project-only-a-sixth-grader's-parent-could-love appearance, it was a runaway success and those splintery edges eventually evolved into the smooth ones of today's Apple products.

Steve Jobs' tenure at Apple has encountered its own rough patches. Only rare mettle can withstand the pressure of expulsion from one's own company followed by absorption back in, and then recognize the right time to leave.

Jobs oversaw the development of groundbreaking products that define how society acts and interacts (or, for those perhaps a little too involved with their iPhones, don't). In the course of a day, Apple products are never far from sight—or maybe your own pocket—informing and directing actions, sending and receiving communications. Innovation reaches far but is personal and Jobs knows it. Before he shared stage space with the iPad, when its purpose and its name were all a matter of speculation, Jobs knew the answer to those mysteries and that what he would reveal would be "the most important thing" he's ever done.

But, like they say, you can't win them all. There have been more than a few Apple (and Apple-acquired) products that fell flat. The infamous Newton is among them. It was a pet project of former Apple CEO John Sculley, who was largely responsible for engineering Jobs' departure. When Jobs returned he eventually axed the Newton.

Not that Jobs' product instinct was always infallible. Here are some of the losses that did happen under Jobs' watch.

1. Apple Lisa

If the name Apple Lisa is what made Lisa Simpson such a big "Mapple" fan, she might want to reconsider. Legend has it that Apple buried the evidence, er, excess inventory, of one of their biggest failures in a landfill in Logan, Utah. While the GUI-based system was considered a technical achievement, it was a sales failure. At an asking price of $10,000 in 1983, it cost the equivalent of over $22,000 today. Small change compared with what it cost Apple: $50 million in hardware and $100 million in development, selling just 10,000 units.

2. NeXT

After being let go from the company he helped found, Steve Jobs made his next move. Taking to Redwood City, California, Jobs created yet another computer company, NeXT. NeXT produced a PC OS and two generations of workstations, each of them an inky black contrast to the Snow White design scheme he chose for Apple. As a company NeXT saw little success and was ultimately eaten up by Apple as a prelude to Jobs’ return. The NeXT platform may be better known for what was done with it than for what it actually did: in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee used one to create the first web browser and web server.

3. Apple III

The Apple III teaches us a valuable lesson: don’t send a marketer to do an engineer’s job. The Apple III was a 1980 Apple creation whose direction came from the marketing department, said company co-founder Steve Wozniak, and that’s where he places the blame. The original run was so unstable that it was pulled and rereleased almost a year later.

4. Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh

It’s rude to be mean to someone on their birthday. Maybe that’s why when Apple unveiled a computer to celebrate its 20th, the applause was polite. The Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh arrived more than fashionably late to its own party—a year after its April 1996 fête. It did show up well-dressed, though, sporting a green-and-gold case, a leather keyboard wrist rest, and Bose speakers. It also had concierge delivery and setup built into its $7,500 price. Not many of the 12,000 produced units sold, with the last of the batch going for just below $2,000 each.

5. ROKR

If your friend showed you a phone that looked like a late nineties Nokia but played songs from their iTunes library, would you accuse them of the world’s most useless hack? Actually, they might just have held onto their Motorola ROKR a little too long. The ROKR, a Motorola series of phones that could play music purchased from iTunes, came out in 2005. With a capacity of just 100 songs and a super slow transfer time, the ROKR’s party ended quickly. Should we also mention that since the Google/Motorola deal, frequent patent adversaries Google and Apple both own ROKR-related patents? Awkward.

6. Power Mac G4 Cube

A piece of antique porcelain retains value when it shows signs of crazing. Those fine, veiny cracks can even serve to authenticate it. But on a brand-new stunner like the 2000 Power Mac G4 Cube, the effect was off-putting. Miniscule cracks in its surface notwithstanding, its $1,600 price tag turned the arriviste into a has-been within a year.

7. MobileMe

If you think that iCloud didn’t have any accomplices when it killed MobileMe, then you didn’t ask Steve Jobs where he was at the time. MobileMe was designed to enable the remote access and management of email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files. After the product’s buggy launch, Jobs gathered the responsible team in an auditorium and shortly after they walked out, someone new headed them. An eyewitness recounted Jobs’ reprimand to Fortune, including the stinging: "You've tarnished Apple's reputation…You should hate each other for having let each other down."