30% Of Tech Fans Think This Is The Worst Apple Product Of All Time - SlashGear Survey
Apple often finds itself in the list of the world's most successful brands. The company's lineup of hyper-successful consumer electronics products is largely behind Apple's meteoric rise in the past two decades. Today, many of Apple's products have dedicated fan followings all their own. Perhaps the best example of this is none other than the iPhone.
Since it first launched in 2007, the iPhone ranks among world's most popular smartphones. Even 15 years since the release of the first iPhone, the latest generation of iPhones continues to sell in massive numbers. Other successful products from Apple include various iterations of the Apple iPod — widely considered to have revolutionized portable audio after the Walkman era — the iPad lineup of large-screen tablets, and the MacBook Air, which set the benchmark for lightweight laptops.
Surprisingly, despite these massive successes, Apple also had its share of spectacular failures, and it seems many of our readers vividly remember these failed Apple products. We know this thanks to a SlashGear survey in which we asked our readers what they thought were the worst Apple products of all time. Here's what we found.
Apple's poorly designed mouse and keyboard
Of the 611 people we polled, a good 30% of the respondents picked a little-known product from the late-'90s as the worst ever Apple product. Launched back in 1998 alongside the iMac G3, the Hockey Puck mouse was not only a poorly designed product with poor ergonomics — it did an abysmal job at being a mouse. Reviewers also panned its poor build quality, and Apple took it out of the market in less than a year.
Coming in at a close second position — with 27.21% of the votes — is another massive disappointment from Apple: the infamous butterfly keyboard. Apple introduced this keyboard mechanism in the 2016 12-inch Macbook, which proliferated to the company's Pro and Air lineup in the next few months. Within months, it became evident that this keyboard design was inherently flawed. Apart from giving users a lousy typing experience, it was more prone to failures and difficult to repair. Still, Apple persisted with this keyboard design for five years before retiring it in 2020.
A failed iPod accessory and the Apple Maps diasaster
In 2006, as Apple rode the massive popularity of the iPod, the company decided to introduce a dock for the music player that would also double up as a compact home stereo system. Apple called this product the iPod Hi-Fi, and when introduced, it cost an astronomical $349. Despite offering good sound quality, the product simply did not sell well, resulting in Apple discontinuing the product in 18 months. 17.21% of the respondents chose the iPod Hi-Fi as the worst Apple product of all time.
With 15.9% and 9.67% of the votes, Apple Maps and the Apple Mac Pro came in fourth and fifth places, respectively. While both of these products were introduced with great fanfare, neither lived up to the lofty expectations placed on them. In its early days, Apple Maps simply couldn't compete with Google Maps, while the 2013 Mac Pro was more expensive than its predecessor (via CIO) even though it offered fewer features.