Ten… top tech cock-ups of 2012 The past year provided us with some wonderful tales of innovation and expertise, but we all like to see a car crash as much as success story, right? So here's a roundup of the most colossal cock-ups of the last 12 months, including face-plants by Google, Facebook, Apple, and others who succumbed to that most universal of human …
Fail? NO U!
"Weunderkind" would lose you points in any exam, as would "Wünderkind".
What exactly is hard to understand in "It's spelled WUNDERKIND".
And certainly not "WEUNDERKIND", for Christ's Sake.
And the "probably" adjective is not to be used here. At all.
This post has been deleted by its author
Was sure it would be the number one cock-up. Launched years too late when so many people have already got alternatives. Confusion with regard to the packages on offer and then the major shareholders decide to pump big money into advertising it's biggest competitor Freeview+ on TV at Christmas!
Not just Doh, but Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) comes to mind...
While lots of the happenings in this article make good tech headlines, surely the single biggest tech foul up in terms of its impact on ordinary people was the RBS computer "glitch". When companies are threatened with going to the wall due to cash flow issues and when ordinary people are denied access to their own money, for 10 weeks in N Ireland I believe, then nothing else comes close!
Thought the same, but it is an American article.
Apple getting top position is questionable imo. It's just a single rushed application and I am horrified by the Objective C, itself, and some of the crap one has to put up with iOS (to program, that's it). AAPL is just not worthy the attention they get.
If it were just a rushed app then that would be understood alongside all the other rushed apps of history, but Apple managed to screw up an app that most users were happy with. Apple has always positioned itself as a premium offering but in the maps decision they really forgot their users.
American journalist or not, The Register is an international site based in Britain, and the RBS cock-up was on a far greater scale than anything mentioned here and is a cautionary tale to financial institutions everywhere why you don't outsource critical IT jobs and infrastructure.
I also think the NHS Project for IT should be on here, even though they finally killed it off last year. It should be on every list of IT disasters everywhere until the British government creates an even bigger cock-up.
Apple's map flap is shocking only to those that are deaf, dumb and blind. The quality of their code has been *obviously* suspect for years; map flap is just the latest example. They need to clean ranks in their coding department.
The MS Metro fiasco is far far far worse. It signals an inflection point for Microsoft. When *all* Win 8 products flop in the marketplace, it'll be obvious where they're headed.
Well said Sir!
The Apple Maps was just one APP in an Ecosystem
Metro is a whole Ecosytem.
Utter fail on Microsoft's part and El Reg's.
Then again, the Apple Haters rule here ok!
Androids ain't so wonderful (Her indoor's Samsung Galaxy corrupted the SD card over Christmas, my HTC Sensation regularly misses incoming calls)
And Google mapping is still far from perfect and the satellite images are old. Streetview is pretty good but realistically hardly ever *need* it. I've tried both Apple and Google Maps - it's not clear-cut by any means - Apple seem to give better routes, Google have more POIs but navigating to an address / post code (which is what many people will use it for) is about the same. Sure if you are a darwin award contestant and drive through Oz with no paper maps etc. you may have got caught out but Google Maps are not perfect with that either.
Was the Map issue so bad for anyone - Google are down more than 500bn a year and Apple are up the same? Apple users now have BOTH, Apple get breathing room to make theirs better, can provide cheaper / more access to developers, users could ALWAYS go to maps.google.co.uk anyway.
As for the quality of the maps - well for me Apple sat pics are more up to date and three routes I know well were navigated worse (further) with Google Maps than Apple Maps. And - you think Google Maps is perfect - think again - over the last week or so noticed many POIs around 1/2 out of their genuine position and another Australian police force gave a warning against Google Maps as well.
So to summaries - iDevices now have both - users = win, developers get better access = win, Apple saves buckets of cash = win
Actually, there is not much wrong with the map app from a software POV, the issue is with the dataset that it accesses and queries, but that has rapidly improved too. It's certainly more polished that Google's iOS offering. That has the opposite issue, great data, not so great software.
There are problems with the Apple Maps software - not just the data.
1. The colours are ridiculous. Stupid. Who's bright idea was it to make almost all roads pale grey on a pale yellow background?
2. It doesn't understand U.K addresses. In particular, it often seems to take the town from your postcode and thinks that's where you live. So if your address is '1 High street, Cookham, SL6 1AX'. It sees the 'SL' bit and thinks you live at '1 High street, Slough' - which is miles away.
Much as I'm an anti-apple-fanboi, (Their products are ok, but massively overpriced for what they do, and sometimes restricted in weirdly arbitrary ways, and thus I like el Reg's constant attacks on them), I agree, the maps fiasco was merely a one off mistake, the 'interface previously known as metro' is hideous, and apparently was designed by someone who wants microsoft to go under. I attempted to use a windows 8 machine in John Lewis, couldn't figure out how to use it.
Previous incarnations of windows have not been like that. Windows 98 was new to me (my previous computer experience had been DOS and CP/M), yet clicking the start menu was obvious, as it looked like a button and said "Start" on it. This new interface may be okay for touchscreens, but for a normal computer with a pointing device, and a screen bigger than 'tiny', it looks more ludicrous than XP's luna theme, and the fact it breaks the UI paradigm they've used for so many years may well be 'game over' for them.
Why do people keep harping on that Apple are 'massively' overpriced - guess you can say that of a BMW when you buy a Ford etc. When I bought my Macbook Air the competition was scarce and was about the same price (but the Air was better made). When I bought my iPhone I considered a Samsung Galaxy - it was about £3 less per month - hardly significant when the contract cost was about £45-50 anyway or about £70 less SIM free (which over 2 years is not much). However, with Apple the support is much better and when I dropped the phone and the camera lens got slightly dislodged the Apple Store just fixed it at no cost and in 20 minutes. I'm happy with the choice and suspect a lot of other people are as well - wait until you have a problem and that's how good you know a company is.
Don't try, commentards don't quite grasp this concept.
I could easily open a curtain making business and call it Windows or a shoe repair shop and call it Apple or a chair cushion called iPad.
So long as it is in no way confusable with the other item, then there is no issue (although the large megacorps try to bully others into giving it up)
Maps is just one 'app' and it was always a trivial issue to bookmark maps.google.co.uk onto an icon on your device. Most people who have tried the two side-by-side are not all that bothered as in reality Google Maps is better is some respects and Apple Maps in others so it depends on your usage. I find Apple Maps quicker, like the 3D view and routing seems better - Google Maps has streetview and a few nice features as well.
It's such a good phone / OS despite 'maps'. When you compare it to the fragmented, poorly service / support and insecure 'Android' it's clear. Anyone can make an Android phone - so next year Samsung may not be king of the Androids but Apple will still be growing it's user base of longer term, more loyal users.
I've never actually met someone that had a serious issue with Apple Maps - at least no-one who had tried both and could say Google Maps was definitely better. Most said the mapping on Apple was more up to date and Google still have inaccuracies - I reported 2 about a year or so ago - still not fixed - c'est la via ;(
Suspect most of the people on here who whinge about Apple Maps are probably non-iOS / Android users who:
1. have never used it / never compared it side-by-side
2. have a bigoted view of Apple and anything they do
3. are jealous as now iOS users have both Apple Maps and Google Maps
4. believe Google Maps is perfect (when clearly it is not)
5. do not appreciate that competition is good
6. work for Google ;)
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