5 Worst Apple Products That Changed The Company Forever

Apple stands as one of the world’s most successful tech companies, yet some of their worst Apple products almost drove them to bankruptcy at different points in their history. Everyone celebrates Apple’s breakthroughs, but their experience to the top came with major stumbles.

Apple has launched more failed products than most people realize. The Apple III faced severe reliability problems and sold just 65,000 units. The Butterfly keyboard proved so defective that Apple created a dedicated service program. The 2013 Mac Pro became such a disaster that Apple had to publicly admit they let their customers down.

Let me get into five Apple product failures that changed the company’s path forever. You’ll learn what went wrong with each product and why they failed so badly. These failures ended up transforming Apple into today’s tech giant.

Apple III: The First Major Misstep

_{Image Source: Tech Junkie}

“It was painful to watch the Apple III fail. But it taught me a valuable lesson: even the most exciting products will fail without complete organizational support.” — Del Yocam, Former VP of Manufacturing, Apple

The Apple III shows how even tech giants can fail spectacularly. This business-oriented computer launched in 1980 with big dreams. It became Apple’s first major commercial disaster and almost killed the company early on.

What was the Apple III?

Apple designed the Apple III to be a sophisticated upgrade to their successful Apple II computer. Dr. Wendell Sander started the project in late 1978 with the code name “Sara” (named after his daughter). Steve Wozniak, Apple’s co-founder, didn’t design this computer – a first for the company.

The Apple III packed impressive tech specs. It used a Synertek 8-bit 6502A processor that ran up to 2 MHz, combined with 128KB of RAM and 4KB of ROM in its original setup. The computer brought several new features to Apple:

• A built-in 5.25″ floppy disk drive
• An advanced operating system called SOS (Sophisticated Operating System)
• 80-column display with upper and lowercase characters
• Support for a real-time clock
• 16-color graphics capabilities

Apple targeted business users with this machine. The price ranged from $4,340 to $7,800 based on configuration – about $17,356 to $31,194 in 2024 money. This strategy showed Apple’s plan to split their market. The Apple III would capture 90% of business customers while the Apple II stayed focused on home and education.

Why it failed so badly

Design flaws, poor management, and market mistakes created the perfect storm that sank the Apple III.

The hardware had terrible reliability issues. Steve Jobs managed the project and demanded no cooling fan because they were “too noisy and inelegant”. This choice backfired badly. The machine would overheat often. Chips would pop out of their sockets and cause system failures.

The heat problems got scary. Users reported their Apple IIIs got hot enough to warp the motherboard and melt floppy disks. Apple’s tech support gave an infamous fix: lift your Apple III about six inches and drop it to push the loose chips back in place.

The real-time clock – Apple’s first – kept failing after extended use. Instead of using better hardware, Apple just removed the clock feature completely.

The Apple III’s problems went beyond hardware:

1. Apple rushed it to market with just three prototype boards ready
2. They limited Apple II software compatibility on purpose to push people away from the older platform
3. Developers made very few programs for it – some say less than 50 Apple III-specific apps existed
4. The price tag was much higher than competing IBM PCs

Steve Wozniak later explained it best. He said the Apple III failed mainly because “the system was designed by Apple’s marketing department, unlike Apple’s previous engineering-driven projects”.

How it nearly derailed Apple’s early momentum

The Apple III disaster hit Apple’s finances hard. Steve Jobs said the project cost “infinite, incalculable amounts”. More specific estimates show Apple lost over $60 million on the Apple III line – huge money for a young company in the early 1980s.

Apple had to replace the first 14,000 Apple IIIs free because they were so unreliable. They tried again in late 1981 with a better version. It had double the memory (256KB RAM) and cost less at $3,495. The damage was done though – nobody trusted the product anymore.

IBM saw its chance and took it. While Apple struggled, IBM launched its PC in August 1981 for just $1,565. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Business customers flocked to IBM machines and their clones.

Apple killed the Apple III in April 1984 after trying one last time with the III Plus in December 1983. They sold only 65,000-75,000 units total. The company had expected the Apple III to replace the Apple II completely. Management thought “once the Apple III was out, the Apple II would stop selling in six months”.

The Apple II ironically kept making money for the company. It funded future projects like the Macintosh after the Apple III flopped.

Lessons Apple learned from this failure

The Apple III disaster taught Apple vital lessons that shaped their product development for decades:

Good thermal management matters most. Jobs wanted a fanless design but learned that looks can’t beat simple engineering rules in electronics. Apple didn’t fully get this right away – early Macs had cooling problems too. They eventually figured out better thermal designs.

Bad press can kill a product. The revised Apple III and Apple III Plus fixed the technical problems. But people remembered the original disaster and stayed away.

Marketing and engineering teams must work together. Marketing decisions without proper engineering input lead to disasters.

Apple learned about market positioning. They failed to show customers why they needed an Apple III and what made it special.

Some good came from the Apple III. Its Sophisticated Operating System (SOS) had great features that later showed up in ProDOS and GS/OS for Apple II computers. Apple made a habit of saving good ideas from failed products.

The Apple III story marks a turning point for Apple. This painful lesson helped transform an eager but green company into the product powerhouse we know today.

Newton MessagePad: A PDA Ahead of Its Time

_{Image Source: Science Museum Group Collection}

Apple made a bold attempt to create an entirely new product category with the Newton MessagePad in 1993, right when personal computing started surging into homes and offices. This advanced device became one of Apple’s most fascinating failures—a product that was conceptually ahead of its time but stumbled in execution.

The vision behind Newton

The Newton project started in 1987, two years after Steve Jobs left Apple. CEO John Sculley’s vision for Newton was revolutionary—a handheld computer that worked like a digital piece of paper. Sculley’s ambition reached far beyond that. He had commissioned expensive video mockups of what he called the “Knowledge Navigator,” a tablet computer as big as an opened magazine with advanced artificial intelligence.

Newton’s development took many turns. The project began as a skunk works initiative to retain talented engineer Steve Sakoman. The team named it after Apple’s original logo showing Isaac Newton sitting beneath an apple tree. Michael Tchao pitched the refined concept to Sculley on an airplane in early 1991.

The device’s potential fascinated Sculley so much that he created a now-familiar term for it: “Personal Digital Assistant” or PDA. Sculley made bold claims at the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago. He predicted PDAs would become common and join a digital market worth $3 trillion by decade’s end.

Newton’s original design had specific requirements that guided its development:

• It would have a pen input system
• It would work on a pager frequency
• It would contain built-in forms and templates
• It had to fit in John Sculley’s pocket

Sculley’s pocket size requirement proved telling—though vital, the final product was too large for most pockets. Apple envisioned Newton as something revolutionary: a computer that could leave the desktop and go everywhere with users.

Technical limitations and poor handwriting recognition

Apple started shipping the first MessagePad for $699 on August 2, 1993. Late November sales that year reached 50,000 units. The revolutionary device faced major problems right away.

The handwriting recognition—Apple’s supposed breakthrough technology—became the biggest issue. Paragraph International’s Calligrapher engine powered the original handwriting recognition. The technology seemed advanced in theory. It learned the user’s natural handwriting and interpreted both cursive and printed text. The real-world performance fell nowhere near expectations.

Newton’s handwriting recognition problems became cultural jokes. Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury comic strip spent a week making fun of the device. The Simpsons delivered an equally damaging parody, showing the Newton mistranslating “Beat up Martin” as “Eat up Martha”. These public mockeries cemented Newton’s reputation as an expensive gadget that failed to deliver.

Battery life was terrible too. Some users went through two sets of four AAA batteries on day one. The device would lose everything in storage—including handwriting style data—if batteries drained completely before replacement.

Size became another major problem. One user noted, “Newton is just a little bit too big to be a pocket computer. The large screen looks nice, but size hurt its success. It’s too small to be a tablet PC and too big to work as a PDA”.

The $699 price tag didn’t help, especially compared to the later Palm Pilot with its simpler but reliable Graffiti input system. Palm Pilot’s success showed how Newton tried to do too much with limited technology—and ended up doing little well.

How Newton’s failure led to the iPhone’s success

Steve Jobs killed the Newton project in 1997 shortly after returning to Apple. Walter Isaacson’s biography notes that Jobs “raged against the device for its poor performance (and because it was Sculley’s innovation) and mocked its novel input mechanism”.

Newton’s commercial failure still influenced Apple’s future products. The team’s search for better battery life led them to ARM technology. Apple owned a third of ARM then and guided ARM6 processor development for Newton. This early ARM investment proved vital for Apple’s mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad.

Newton taught Apple to value reliability over ambition. Jobs avoided Newton’s mistakes when he introduced the iPhone in 2007. The iPhone used a touch keyboard instead of handwriting recognition. It focused on features people wanted: “phone calls, email, web surfing, movies, music”.

The iPhone’s relationship with computers was clear, unlike Newton’s “nebulous” connection. Newton struggled without a connected software ecosystem. The iPhone arrived with “a whole ecosystem of websites and apps ready for touch and tap-based interactions”.

Apple’s modern voice assistant Siri builds on Newton’s legacy. Newton pioneered “intelligence assistance”—software that understood written commands and made them actionable. This concept evolved into today’s voice-based Siri.

Walt Mossberg called the first iPhone “a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer”—echoing Newton’s original vision. Apple had learned to execute its vision in ways that delighted rather than frustrated users.

MobileMe: The Cloud That Crashed

“We’re not a pit crew at Daytona. This can’t be fixed in seconds.” — Andy Hertzfeld, Original Macintosh team member, Apple Inc.

Apple took a bold step into cloud computing in 2008 with a service Steve Jobs marketed as “Exchange for the rest of us”. MobileMe marked the company’s first serious try at building a complete online service ecosystem. This attempt became one of the worst Apple products ever made.

What was MobileMe supposed to do?

MobileMe launched on July 9, 2008, replacing Apple’s existing .Mac service. The service promised to sync all Apple devices through what the company called “push” technology. Users could update an email, contact, or calendar entry on one device and see changes appear right away on their other connected devices.

Users paid $99 yearly for an individual subscription (or $149 for a Family Pack) to get these features:

• 20GB of online storage for emails and files
• Push email, contacts, and calendar synchronization
• Web-based applications you could use from any browser
• Photo and video gallery sharing
• iDisk for file storage and sharing
• Web publishing through iWeb

Apple created its first true ecosystem beyond physical devices. MobileMe promised to connect users’ digital lives across Macs, PCs, and the new iPhone 3G. The web applications at me.com came “100 percent ad-free” and offered a “desktop-like experience”.

Launch issues and user backlash

Steve Jobs later called the MobileMe rollout “not our finest hour”. Everything went wrong from the start on July 11, 2008, the same day Apple released the iPhone 3G.

Users faced these major problems:

• Overloaded servers stopped many customers from signing up or logging in
• The promised “push” features didn’t work properly—Mac and PC syncing happened every 15 minutes instead of instantly
• Failed syncs mixed up users’ contacts, calendars, and emails
• A mail server crash made some users lose their emails. Apple admitted that about 1% of MobileMe users (20,000 people) lost 10% of their emails between July 16-18

Apple’s marketing claims made these technical issues worse. The company heavily promoted MobileMe’s “push” features that didn’t work as advertised. Customers felt cheated after paying $99 yearly for the service.

Mac and iPhone users voiced their anger about this broken service. Tech writers pointed out how rare it was to “see Apple fall flat on its face,” noting this launch disaster seemed unusual for such a detail-oriented company.

Steve Jobs’ internal memo and Apple’s response

Steve Jobs grew furious about MobileMe’s failures. He called a meeting at Apple’s Town Hall auditorium where he asked the MobileMe team, “Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” After hearing an answer, Jobs shot back, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”

Reports say Jobs spent an hour criticizing the team. He told them they “should hate each other for having let each other down” and that they had “tarnished Apple’s reputation”. The MobileMe team leader lost their job right there.

Jobs sent a frank internal email to Apple staff on August 4, 2008, which leaked to the media. He pointed out three key mistakes:

1. “MobileMe was simply not up to Apple’s standards—it clearly needed more time and testing”
2. “Rather than launch MobileMe as a monolithic service, we could have launched over-the-air syncing with iPhone to begin with, followed by the web applications one by one”
3. “It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store”

Jobs ended the memo saying, “The MobileMe launch clearly demonstrates that we have more to learn about Internet services. And learn we will”.

Apple took unusual steps to fix things:

• Early users got two free 30-day service extensions
• A special status page showed issues and fix updates
• Apple’s first-ever blog focused on MobileMe status updates
• Leadership changed when Jobs made Eddy Cue Vice President of Internet Services to run MobileMe

How it paved the way for iCloud

MobileMe never recovered from its terrible start. Its reputation suffered permanent damage. Jobs himself noted during the 2011 iCloud announcement that people might doubt Apple because of their previous cloud failure.

Apple unveiled iCloud as MobileMe’s replacement at WWDC in June 2011. Jobs tackled the trust issue head-on by asking, “Why should I believe them? They’re the ones that brought me MobileMe!”

MobileMe shut down on June 30, 2012. The service’s failure helped shape iCloud in several ways:

1. iCloud became free, removing MobileMe’s subscription costs
2. Basic storage changed from MobileMe’s 20GB to a free 5GB tier for everyone
3. Apple rolled out features gradually, avoiding the “monolithic” launch Jobs criticized
4. New infrastructure fixed MobileMe’s scaling problems
5. The company focused on core features that worked well instead of trying too much at once

MobileMe’s collapse made Apple rethink its online services approach. Cloud services needed different skills than hardware and software development—skills Apple had to build or buy.

iCloud now powers the Apple ecosystem invisibly, serving hundreds of millions of users each day. Its reliability shows how a major failure can lead to success.

Butterfly Keyboard: A Design That Backfired

_{Image Source: iFixit}

The butterfly keyboard stands as one of Apple’s most frustrating design mistakes that Mac users remember. Apple launched this ultra-thin keyboard mechanism with the 12-inch MacBook in 2015, which became a classic example of style trumping substance.

Why Apple created the Butterfly keyboard

Apple wanted thinner devices and developed the butterfly keyboard mechanism. The butterfly design measured 40% thinner than previous keyboard mechanisms. This dramatic size reduction helped Apple create slimmer laptops.

Apple marketed these butterfly keys as more stable. The company said the butterfly mechanism spread finger pressure evenly across each key. This design aimed to give users consistent typing whatever part of the key they pressed.

The 12-inch MacBook debuted the butterfly keyboard in March 2015. Apple rolled it out to other models soon after. The 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pro models got an updated second-generation butterfly keyboard by 2016. The MacBook Air received this controversial design later, completing the shift across Apple’s laptop lineup.

Problems are systemic

The quest for thinness created serious functional issues. The butterfly mechanism had a basic design flaw that showed up right away – the keys needed more space to work properly. Users faced several ongoing problems:

• Keys felt “sticky” or unresponsive
• Letters or characters repeated without warning
• Letters or characters didn’t appear when typed

The root cause was basic—dust and debris. The butterfly mechanism’s design, with two parts joined by a middle hinge, left plenty of room for particles to get stuck. Even tiny specks could stop keys from working right.

AppleInsider’s service data showed butterfly keyboards failed twice as much as older models during the first year after each MacBook Pro release. These weren’t just random complaints – the numbers showed a clear drop in reliability.

Apple’s slow response and repair programs

User complaints started piling up in 2016. Apple resisted admitting the keyboard had fundamental problems. Things came to a head in May 2018 when Apple faced a class-action lawsuit claiming they knew about the defective butterfly keyboard.

An online petition about keyboard issues gathered almost 43,000 signatures that year. The mounting pressure made Apple launch a “Keyboard Service Program” in June 2018. The program offered free repairs up to four years after purchase.

Apple waited until March 2019—almost four years after launching the butterfly keyboard—to apologize: “We know some users have issues with their third-generation butterfly keyboard and we apologize”.

Return to scissor-switch and user trust rebuilding

Apple ended up admitting defeat. The company ditched the butterfly keyboard starting with the 16-inch MacBook Pro in November 2019. They switched back to a scissor-switch mechanism in their new “Magic Keyboard”.

The MacBook Air got the scissor switches in March 2020, followed by the 13-inch MacBook Pro in May 2020. These changes marked the end of the butterfly keyboard era. Apple finally accepted what users had said all along—the butterfly keyboard wasn’t reliable enough.

Apple agreed to pay $50 million to settle the U.S. class action lawsuit about butterfly keyboard issues in July 2022. Affected customers got between $50 and $395 based on their repair history.

The butterfly keyboard story shows what happens when Apple pushed too hard for thinness at the cost of basic function. Making them go back to a proven design proved that even Apple faces risks when style matters more than reliability.

AirPower: The Product That Never Shipped

AirPower stands out as Apple’s only failed product that never made it to customers’ hands. Apple introduced this ambitious wireless charging mat during its September 2017 iPhone X event with a truly innovative promise.

What was AirPower?

Apple designed AirPower to charge three devices at once – an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods with a wireless charging case. Users could place these devices anywhere on the mat. The technology used multiple overlapping charging coils that could detect devices and send the right amount of power to each one. The system combined Qi wireless charging and Apple Watch’s inductive charging into a single solution.

Why Apple announced it prematurely

Apple made an unusual move by announcing AirPower before getting FCC approval. The company said it would launch in early 2018, likely to build excitement with the iPhone X release. This early announcement backfired when regulatory approval never came through. Apple had shown working prototypes to people at the event, but none of these units actually worked.

Engineering challenges and quiet cancelation

The technical problems proved too difficult to solve. The overlapping coils made the device overheat badly, and some prototypes got hot enough to melt AirPods cases. The complex charging system that handled multiple devices also created interference and software problems. Apple stayed quiet for almost 18 months, missing several deadlines. Dan Riccio, Apple’s hardware engineering chief, finally announced on March 29, 2019, “After much effort, we’ve concluded AirPower will not achieve our high standards”.

Impact on Apple’s product announcement strategy

This unprecedented cancelation of an announced product changed how Apple approaches new releases. The company now rarely announces features more than a few months before they’re ready. The AirPower failure and delays with features like next-generation CarPlay led to this cautious approach. The concept might still have merit – Apple reportedly keeps an AirPower-like device in its long-term plans, which shows the idea was sound even if the technology wasn’t ready.

Conclusion

Apple’s history shows that even the biggest tech giants can stumble. The company’s five biggest product flops teach us valuable lessons. The Apple III got so hot that users had to drop their computers to fix them. The Newton MessagePad became a joke because it couldn’t read handwriting well. Each of these failures taught Apple important lessons about matching big ideas with real-world results.

These failures helped create future breakthroughs. The Newton’s work with ARM processors helped build the iPhone’s efficient chip design. After MobileMe’s disastrous launch, Apple had to rebuild its cloud services from scratch. This led to iCloud’s strong infrastructure.

The sort of thing I love about these failures is how they show Apple’s struggle between looks and usefulness. The butterfly keyboard mess showed what happens when pretty design matters more than reliability. AirPower’s cancelation taught Apple not to announce products before solving technical problems.

These big mistakes changed Apple’s approach to making products. After each failure, the company focused more on what matters – making products that work reliably instead of just showing off cool features. Apple learned that customers care more about dependability than fancy features that don’t work right.

These products cost Apple billions in money and trust, but they made the company stronger. Each failure made Apple question everything, improve its methods, and focus on quality. Without these tough lessons, Apple might not have the discipline and intuitive approach that makes its best products so good today.

Next time your iPhone works perfectly or iCloud syncs without issues, note that these wins exist in part because Apple once made computers you had to drop, PDAs with bad handwriting recognition, email-losing cloud services, dust-prone keyboards, and charging mats that ran too hot. The path to being great sometimes needs some big failures along the way.

Key Takeaways

Apple’s biggest product failures became the foundation for their greatest successes, proving that strategic learning from mistakes can transform a company’s trajectory.

• Failure drives innovation: The Newton’s ARM processor investment and handwriting recognition experiments directly enabled the iPhone’s revolutionary touch interface and efficient chip architecture.

• Reliability trumps ambition: The butterfly keyboard and Apple III disasters taught Apple that customers value dependable functionality over cutting-edge features that don’t work consistently.

• Premature announcements backfire: AirPower’s cancelation forced Apple to adopt a more cautious product announcement strategy, avoiding promises before engineering challenges are solved.

• Cloud services require different expertise: MobileMe’s catastrophic launch led to iCloud’s robust infrastructure by teaching Apple that online services demand specialized knowledge beyond hardware development.

• Design must serve function: From fanless Apple III overheating to butterfly keyboards failing from dust, Apple learned that esthetic priorities cannot compromise core usability.

These failures cost Apple billions but ultimately strengthened the company by forcing rigorous quality standards and user-centric design philosophy that defines their most successful products today.

FAQs

Q1. What are some of Apple’s most notable product failures? Some of Apple’s biggest product failures include the Apple III with severe reliability issues, the Newton MessagePad with poor handwriting recognition, MobileMe’s problematic cloud service launch, the butterfly keyboard’s design flaws, and the AirPower wireless charging mat that never shipped.

Q2. How did the Apple Newton’s failure contribute to future successes? Despite its commercial failure, the Newton project led to Apple’s investment in ARM processor technology and experiments with handwriting recognition. These efforts ultimately paved the way for the iPhone’s revolutionary touch interface and efficient chip architecture.

Q3. What lesson did Apple learn from the butterfly keyboard fiasco? The butterfly keyboard failure taught Apple a crucial lesson about prioritizing reliability over esthetics. It demonstrated that customers value dependable functionality more than ultra-thin design, leading Apple to revert to a more reliable scissor-switch mechanism in newer MacBooks.

Q4. How did the MobileMe disaster impact Apple’s approach to cloud services? MobileMe’s problematic launch forced Apple to completely rethink its approach to cloud services. This led to the development of iCloud with a more robust infrastructure, free basic storage, and a gradual rollout of features to ensure reliability.

Q5. What effect did the AirPower cancelation have on Apple’s product announcements? The unprecedented cancelation of the already-announced AirPower charging mat caused Apple to adopt a more cautious product announcement strategy. The company now generally avoids announcing features or products more than a few months before they’re ready for release.