For a niche company that’s endured a pretty steady stream of criticism for more than three decades, Apple's track record is surprisingly strong. Even before the iPod transformed from an overpriced toy into the must-have gadget of the decade, Apple turned as many heads with its misses as its hits, crafting well conceived and constructed products that were sometimes overpriced, often overhyped and usually just plain ahead of their time. But, of course, nobody’s perfect:

 

 

10. Mac mini: You’d think the PowerMac G4 Cube would be high on anyone’s list of Apple’s flops, and it most certainly would have made this one --- if not for its successor. When ThinkSecret revealed Apple’s plans to unveil a slim, $499 Mac at the Mac Expo in 2005, the tech world was buzzing. Never had a Mac been priced so affordably, and not since the ill-fated Cube had a headless-ish computer from Cupertino fit so comfortable on a desktop. It seemed that Apple had learned from its mistakes, but once the budget Mac landed, Steve never got it quite right. For one, Apple refused to include a keyboard or a mouse; for another, it was never marketed properly and languished for months between updates. Mac mini should have leveraged the success of the iPod and made deep inroads into Microsoft’s market share, but Apple continues to saddle the mini with underperforming parts and processors as it waits for the ax to fall.

 

 

9. iPod Hi-Fi: The worst product to come out of the most disappointing Apple event in 10 years was an expensive, underperforming, heavyweight sound system that quickly became lost in a crowded field of similar offerings. Clocking in at nearly 17 pounds, iPod Hi-Fi was little more than a pretty shelf unit with a precarious iPod dock. It was discontinued last September after just 18 months on the market.

 

 

8. Pippin: In 1996, Apple stumbled into the video game market with a console platform that suffered from poor marketing, clunky equipment and lack of support. Contrary to belief, Apple didn’t actually make the hardware for the doomed Pippen @World (it’s official name); it merely licensed the technology and the software (based on Mac OS 7) to Bandai (and in Europe, Katz Media Productions), which did little to set the device apart from its cheaper, more powerful competitors. With a $599 price tag, 66MHz processor, 14.4k modem and modest library, Pippen was easy prey for Sega, PlayStation and Nintendo, and bowed out of the game after selling just 40,000 units.

 

 

7. QuickTake: At the Tokyo Mac Expo in 1994, Apple (in conjunction with Kodak) launched its first digital camera, weighing about a pound and running on three AA batteries. Shutterbugs were able to snap up to 32 pictures at a time before they needed to connect the camera to a Mac (or a PC using the following year’s model) via a serial cable. It was hailed for its simplicity and design, but at $749 could not compete with similarly priced offerings from the likes of Canon, Kodak and Nokia. It stayed on shelves for three years and two revisions (the latter being made by Fuji), but floundered and was eventually killed by Steve Jobs in 1997.

 

 

6. eWorld: Back when Safari was just a glimpse in Jobs’ eye, Apple developed an “online town square” called eWorld, which comprised “an electronic neighborhood of buildings, each representing a specific area of interest.” With a welcoming interface and focus on community, eWorld was an ambitious project that attempted to add some ingenuity and vibrance into competing services from America Online and Prodigy, but was ultimately doomed by poor marketing and pricing. eWorld couldn’t keep up with AOL’s growth and closed its doors on March 31, 1996, less than two years after opening its eDoors.

 

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5. Puck mouse: Anyone who rushed to the stores in 1998 to purchase a Bondi Blue G3 iMac was at the very forefront of a revolution that brought the personal computer from the floor to the desktop, and changed the way we stored files, surfed the Internet, listened to music, pointed and clicked. The iMac was the first computer to ship without a floppy drive and was ahead of the USB curve, shipping a matching USB keyboard and odd-looking mouse in every package. Apple lore has it that the mouse was designed by Jobs himself, who wanted a pointing device that would fit comfortably in his hand while he sat on top of his desk, and he promised the puck-shaped clicker would be “the coolest ... most wonderful mouse you’ve ever used.” Most users, however, used different adjectives to describe the mouse, most of which cannot be printed here.

 

 

4. Copland: The worst case of vaporware in Apple’s history officially kicked off in March 1994 alongside the original Power Mac, the first Cupertino computer to use a PowerPC processor. Intended as a dramatic rethinking of the System 7, Copland was originally slated to ship in beta form in late 1995, and as a full release in mid-1996, then fall, then January 1997, and finally, “sometime.” Pieces of Copland would eventually find their way into System 7.6 and OS 8, but Apple failed to deliver the operating system’s revolutionary features in any cohesive package; instead, NeXT and its fledgling OS was acquired from Steve Jobs, and the rest is Cocoa history. In the end, Copland was just too far ahead of its time --- so far, in fact, that many of its ambitions have become some of OS X’s greatest innovations.

 

 

3. Newton: While Copland’s failures were, for the most part, hidden deep inside Apple’s laboratories, Newton was the rare Apple product that crumbled under the weight of public scrutiny. Announced in May 1992 with great fanfare, the world’s first PDA hit the ground running, but had slowed to a crawl by the time it finally landed in stores some 15 months after its auspicious unveiling --- and it didn’t help that the handheld’s handwriting recognition immediately became the butt of jokes by Gary Trudeau and Matt Groening. Of course, Newton got better with subsequent revisions, but the world around it never quite caught up to its genius, and various models sat on shelves for several years before the project was ultimately killed in February 1998 by, you guessed it, Steve Jobs.

 

 

2. Macintosh Office: Hot on the heels of its wildly successful 1984 Super Bowl commercial for the Macintosh, Apple tapped Ridley Scott’s brother, Tony, to direct a follow-up TV spot to air during the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XX. Titled “Lemmings,” the 60-second ad depicted a mindless line of blindfolded businessmen walking toward (and off) a cliff in rhythm to an erie rendition of “Heigh-Ho.” Somehow, this was supposed to sell viewers on the idea of The Macintosh Office as a solution to their day-to-day business needs. Needless to say, the ad generated more disgust than interest, and Apple learned a valuable lesson: Don’t kill PC users in your ads. Plus, Macintosh Office struggled to impress without a bona fide file server, which didn’t arrive until 1987.

 

 

1. PowerPC: In 1994, everything changed for Apple. Despite Newton’s initial stumble, the company was still enjoying tremendous success as an industry leader and innovator, running neck and neck with Microsoft ahead of the blockbuster release of Windows 95. But instead of turning a corner, a decision to team with rival IBM and Motorola to create a new computing platform set the company back 10 years and eroded virtually every bit of success it had built over the previous 18 years. PowerPC was quickly eclipsed by Intel’s Pentium offerings (despite the latter’s weaker performance) and Apple’s Mac platform gradually lost market share, despite Jobs’ undying efforts to prove the megahertz myth. Apple finally abandoned the rebel chip in 2005 after the G5 stumbled out of the gate, and by late 2006, all new Macs were shipping with Intel processors.