Not every product can be a runaway success like the iPad or the MacBook Air. Apple seems invincible these days, but every true Mac addict remembers The Dark Times, when some real duds came out of Cupertino. Luckily, Apple used the lessons learned to make some of the great products lined up in pretty rows at an Apple Store near you. 

Today we'll look at their blunders in the Mac space...

The Power Mac G4 Cube

Twelve years later, the Cube abides, dude.

Widely considered Apple’s first misstep since the return of Steve Jobs, the Cube may never live down its status as a poster child for great design at the expense of utility. But hey, how many computers are still talked about more than a decade after their release?

Unveiled in 2000 at Macworld Expo, the Cube was praised for packing a speedy (for the day) Mac into a gorgeous 8-inch cube suspended in glassy acrylic. Add the Cube’s silent convection cooling, lack of physical buttons, and external Harman Kardon speakers, and you had the new millennium’s most stylish computer. But it wasn’t destined to be a Mac for the masses. Compared to the budget-friendly iMac and more easily expandable Power Macs, the Cube occupied a no-man’s land between Apple’s consumer and professional offerings. A starting price of $1,799, plus the extra cost of a display, didn’t help them fly off store shelves, either. (Neither did bad press about occasional cracks in the acrylic case.) Improved specs couldn’t significantly budge sales, and in 2001 Apple put out an unusually cheeky press release announcing that the Cube was being put “on ice,” possibly to return in the future. It didn’t.

Or did it? After canceling the Cube, Apple delivered ingenious designs in crowd-pleasing packages, due in no small part to lessons learned from their most infamous Platonic solid. The lamp-like look of 2002’s iMac G4 might have been inspired by a sunflower, but its compact size, built-in LCD display, and $1,299 price tag likely grew from a desire not to repeat the Cube’s failure to connect with customers. The same goes for the original Mac mini. Released in 2005 with a G4 processor and slot-loading optical drive (sound familiar?), this cut-down Cube was just the thing to let PC switchers with their own keyboard, mouse, and monitor get in on the Mac experience for only $499.

Justin Long may have traded his last jibe with John Hodgman (that we’re aware of, anyway) but the mini lives on, and so does the svelte, silent computing aesthetic Apple promised with the Cube over a decade ago. In fact, the ideal Steve Jobs had in mind back in 2000 has never been more popular, thanks to smash-hits like the MacBook Air and the growing family of iOS devices.

The Apple USB Mouse

This mouse didn’t quite roar, but later mice soared.

Infamous for its small size and smaller button, the mouse that came with 1998’s original iMac (aka “the hockey puck”) was less than a hit with users. Apple bounced back in 2000 with the Pro Mouse, whose traditional capsule-shaped surface was one giant clicker. Further refinement led to 2005’s 360-degree scrolling Mighty Mouse and 2009’s Multi-Touch Magic Mouse, Cupertino’s most flexible rodent yet. Today its strongest competition may be 2010’s Magic Trackpad, the latest pinchable product of Apple thinking differently about how you interact with your Mac.

The Macintosh Portable

The MacBook Air’s great-great-great-grandpa.

Apple’s first 16-pound “laptop” had a lot going for it: a modular keyboard, a full complement of ports, and the biggest tech bragging rights of 1989. But the price—$6,500—and battery and screen technology just weren’t there yet. While the Portable stayed on store shelves, Apple kept moving. Only two years later, the company released the PowerBook 100, at a whopping 10 pounds lighter than its big brother. Cupertino continued to write the book on mobile computing, from the iBook to the MacBook Air, delivering decades of diminishing weight and giant leaps in storage and power.

The Performa Line

Like Tribbles, Performas looked cute but multiplied like crazy.

Aimed at a consumer market increasingly drawn to Windows, Apple’s Performa line dropped in 1992, offering last-year’s professional Macs at lower prices. Performas were packed with educational and productivity software, but the sheer number of models (some differentiated only by hard drive size) confused potential PC converts. No one complained when the line was canceled in 1997, and since then Cupertino has focused on selling a much narrower range of products. By offering only a few desktop and portable machines, Apple helps customers looking for a new Mac shop, and breathe, just a little easier.