TIME magazine Lists the Segway as "Top Ten worst Tech failures..."

[Kyle]

Time magazine lists the Segway as "One of the ten biggest Tech failures of the last decade"

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...898641,00.html

I think that finically, yes the Segway wasn't the best investment but in terms of engineering and pushing the limits on society it was one of the best Tech inventions of the past decade. What are your thoughts?

[MrForbes]

Their 50 Worst Cars list is also pretty far removed from reality

[Kyle]

Originally Posted by squirrel

Their 50 Worst Cars list is also pretty far removed from reality

Yea I noticed that also, I wonder if this is just one persons opinion or a poll with supported data that TIME put together.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by Kyle

Time magazine lists the Segway as "One of the ten biggest Tech failures of the last decade"

http://www.time.com/time/specials/pa...898641,00.html

I think that finically, yes the Segway wasn't the best investment but in terms of engineering and pushing the limits on society it was one of the best Tech inventions of the past decade. What are your thoughts?

I don't agree that the segway at all influenced or changed society, but I agree that from an engineering standpoint it was not a failure.

[Bongle]

I think the main problem with the Segway was that Dean (or his company) decided to hype it to an unnecessary degree, claiming that it would transform society and the way cities were designed. If it was just a quiet release of a device that was targeted at the places where it has a genuine niche (postal workers, cops, corporate campuses), then it would have been in all kinds of "top 10 really cool devices you've never heard of" lists.

Given that its been in steady production for nearly a decade, I can't imagine they're losing money on them. I'd put it in "the top 10 devices that are quietly doing better than TIME magazine thinks they are" list.

[Joe Matt]

Originally Posted by Bongle

I think the main problem with the Segway was that Dean (or his company) decided to hype it to an unnecessary degree, claiming that it would transform society and the way cities were designed. If it was just a quiet release of a device that was targeted at the places where it has a genuine niche (postal workers, cops, corporate campuses), then it would have been in all kinds of "top 10 really cool devices you've never heard of" lists.

Given that its been in steady production for nearly a decade, I can't imagine they're losing money on them. I'd put it in "the top 10 devices that are quietly doing better than TIME magazine thinks they are" list.

Segway LLC NEVER SAID ANYTHING pre-unvailing about the device. NOTHING. It was all 3rd parties like Jobs, Bezos, and other aformentioned parties. It was people running amuck looking for a quick sound bite and something to cover besides shark bites that summer...

[big1boom]

Well... seeing as the rest of the 10 biggest tech failures are
Windows Vista
Gateway
HD DVD
Vonage
YouTube
Sirius XM
Microsoft Zune
Palm
Iridium
Segway

Last I checked, Vista is commonplace, Gateway sells lots of computers (I have one), Vonage has enough money to advertise, YouTube is everywhere, Sirius XM is installed in cars, my roommate has a Zune, a few people have Palm's..

So I wouldn't really consider this list the be the most credible...

[IKE]

You Tube also made the list. 2 years earlier TIME had it listed as one of the most significant inventions ever and even gave the 2006 person of the year to "you"
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16...061225,00.html

Seems like Time could make it pretty high on a list of least accurate over-hyping magazines....

[Greg Peshek]

Originally Posted by big1boom

Well... seeing as the rest of the 10 biggest tech failures are
Windows Vista
Gateway
HD DVD
Vonage
YouTube
Sirius XM
Microsoft Zune
Palm
Iridium
Segway

Last I checked, Vista is commonplace, Gateway sells lots of computers (I have one), Vonage has enough money to advertise, YouTube is everywhere, Sirius XM is installed in cars, my roommate has a Zune, a few people have Palm's..

Not to try to be argumentative here, but as was pointed out earlier the common denominator here seems to be the overhyping of all these products. -Vista was supposed to be the next revolutionary operating system, when it was just a bloated XP.

-The Zune was going to beat out Apple and the iPod for the MP3 market.. it just ended up like most other non-brand name MP3 players.

-While Gateway does have a share of the computer market.. it's nowhere near the powers that Dell, HP (Compaq since they are one in the same), and Apple are in the market of personal computers.

-Youtube was great when it came out, there were unlimited possibilities, now what I think separated it from 2006 as a great invention to now is the buyout by Google. It was expected that Google with its infinite resources would revamp YouTube and make it amazing. Instead it just became bloated with ads for buying music on Yahoo and has remained much the same since the two kids from UIUC coded it.

-Segway, same thing that was mentioned earlier, great expectations and hype and didn't necessarily live up to all of those things.

I'm not saying any of these are bad inventions, I'm just saying the general link between all of these is that they were expected to do great things and none of them have. None of these are complete failures, but flops from what they were expected to be.. yes.

-Greg

[Jared Russell]

These lists exist only to provoke thought (slash outrage) in the reader.

In that sense, this is a successful list. In most others, it is not.

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Greg Peshek

Not to try to be argumentative here, but as was pointed out earlier the common denominator here seems to be the overhyping of all these products. -Vista was supposed to be the next revolutionary operating system, when it was just a bloated XP.

-The Zune was going to beat out Apple and the iPod for the MP3 market.. it just ended up like most other non-brand name MP3 players.

-While Gateway does have a share of the computer market.. it's nowhere near the powers that Dell, HP (Compaq since they are one in the same), and Apple are in the market of personal computers.

-Youtube was great when it came out, there were unlimited personalities, now what I think separated it from 2006 as a great invention to now is the buyout by Google. It was expected that Google with its infinite resources would revamp YouTube and make it amazing. Instead it just became bloated with ads for buying music on Yahoo and has remained much the same since the two kids from UIUC coded it.

-Segway, same thing that was mentioned earlier, great expectations and hype and didn't necessarily live up to all of those things.

I'm not saying any of these are bad inventions, I'm just saying the general link between all of these is that they were expected to do great things and none of them have. None of these are complete failures, but flops from what they were expected to be.. yes.

-Greg

I think Greg is onto what the list really shows. A failure is not something that doesnt work, merely something that doesnt live up to expectations. Let us look at Vista, it was supposed to be revolutionary, it was supposed to make the computer a lean, mean, number crunching machine. Lets face it, the whole launch was bungled, 5 years in development, how many different editions? What were the system requirements? Is my computer Vista ready? Vista compatible? Will my peripherals work? Is Vista a good OS? I would say so. I would also consider it a failure, it was not that revolutionary, nor was it particularly lean, or fast. Baring that, it generated more negative press for Microsoft than it did positive press. Vista was not widely adopted and as such it is a failure, it should have revolutionized computing but it failed.

The Segway could have revolutionized personal transport but it failed. So I would chalk it up as a failure, not from an engineering perspective but instead from a cultural perspective.

[Chris is me]

The title implies that the Segway was somehow a poor quality product, and it's far from that. It's a well built machine by anyone's standard.

Now whether or not it lived up to the media hype, or whether or not it was marketable to a wide enough audience, or if they could make it affordable, that's different. It's not at the right price point for that, yet. The stupid thing about all of these cool little technological innovations is that they cost a lot of money :/

Considering how "meh" the rest of their lists are (YouTube is a failure? I mean the Zune certainly was, but YouTube?), I agree with Jared that it's likely just to get publicity and generate emotion. Which it certainly has!

[Ian Curtis]

Originally Posted by Joe Matt

Segway LLC NEVER SAID ANYTHING pre-unvailing about the device. NOTHING. It was all 3rd parties like Jobs, Bezos, and other aformentioned parties. It was people running amuck looking for a quick sound bite and something to cover besides shark bites that summer...

I'm pretty sure I remember an interview with Dean Kamen on a morning primetime show prior to the Segway release talking about how revolutionary "it" was.

[Chris Hibner]

Has anyone actually read the part of the article that explains why they are considered failures? Judging from the responses here, I would say the answer is "no".

YouTube is a great example. I saw it on the list and said, "this idiot doesn't know what he's talking about - YouTube is HUGE!"

Then I read the reason WHY it is considered a failure: it is losing $470 million dollars PER YEAR!! Google paid $1.65 Billion (with a B) for it, and it has no real chance of ever making back that money. YouTube needs to TRIPLE it's income, just to cover operating costs! I don't know about you, but that sounds to me like it's failing. It may be awesome, but it can't bleed cash like that and be called a success.

[hillale]

At one point in time, this list would have included the Edsel. It seems to be a list of technologies that are floundering on a different front than that of development, be it sales or advertising.