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The Great CES Swindle: Five Years of Flaunting and Failing 4

by Jon Chase on January 10, 2010 at 12:30 PM

2007: The Year of Cloudy Vistas and Unforeseen Gamechangers


It's fitting that 2007, when the stock market was soaring to new highs, when hubris and irrational exuberance were the national mood, was also the year that produced some of the most spectacular fails in tech history.
  • Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Motorola, Palm, and the rest of the phone makers blissfully showed off their latest wares on a Monday, yet everything came to a screeching halt early Tuesday when Apple revealed the 1st-gen iPhone. One can only imagine the soiling of pants that occurred as those CEOs quickly realized that their R&D was a few years behind, and that they were stuck selling billions of dollars worth of dinosaur bones.
  • In Chapter 2 of the already painful battle between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, LG announced a hybrid player that worked with either format. Warner Bros announced a hybrid disc with versions of movies in both formats. It would come to be the technological equivalent of putting a Band-Aid on a gaping chest wound.
  • The comically delayed Windows Vista was officially demoed to lukewarm praise and a lot of unfavorable comparisons to Apple's OS X. To put it charitably, it was not well received by critics, consumers, or businesses (or PCs for that matter). Sensibly, Microsoft put it out to pasture in 2009. To its credit, however, Vista's sheer awfulness did almost certainly extend XP's lifespan. Give thanks where it's due.


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