Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on October 23, 2007 by CyberNet.

How many times have you seen a gadget or application and thought to yourself “man is that ugly.” PC World was able to list off 10 items that will surely make you think just that.

I’m not going to post their list verbatim because they give a good amount of detail about each item they chose. Remember, a lot of the items in the list are over 10 years old, and at that time function was a lot more important than design. It’s also like looking at photos from 20 years ago where you wonder “what the heck was I thinking?”

Here’s what their top 10 consists of, and my thoughts on each one:

1. Acoustic Coupler Modems – These are apparently from the 1970’s, and I’ve never seen one of these things in person. Thank goodness our computer modems aren’t like this anymore!
2. Osborne 1 – A 24-pound portable computer that had a full-size keyboard, TWO floppy drives, and a sweet 5-inch monochrome monitor. Chicks are sure to swarm to you if you’re carrying this thing around!
3. Motorola DynaTAC 8000X – Sure this phone was the size of a brick, but that didn’t stop people from dropping nearly $4,000 on it! After all, everyone wanted to be like Zack Morris.
4. Microsoft Windows 1.0 – It may not have the 3D graphics and glittering eye candy that we are used to, but it did have a user interface. I guess the poor design didn’t hold people back from picking up a copy of Windows.
5. Nintendo Virtual Boy – I never actually knew anyone that had used this because of the bad rep it got, but I’m amazed that no other game consoles have attempted their own version of virtual reality.
6. Furby – This was one of those gifts that every kid wanted back in 1998 just like the classic Tickle Me Elmo. It’s pretty funny how fast these toys fall off the face of the Earth.
7. iMac Flower Power – Apple is often applauded for their excellent taste in design, but what the heck were they smoking when they made a tie-dye design like this?
8. Neuros II Digital Audio Computer – I remember hearing about this audio player back when it was released in 2004. It was supposed to take the market by storm with its wide array of supported audio formats (OGG, WMA, MP3, etc…), but it was lacking a bit in visual appearance.
9. Commodore 1541 Floppy Disk Drive – Some accessories for the Commodore 64 were a bit bulky, but it is still a computer many of us will never forget.
10. Microsoft Zune – I don’t think that the Zune deserved to be on this list because I think they look rather good. Well, the brown one is a bit interesting, but when they are selling for $80 my personal taste can be compromised.

Top 10 Ugliest Tech Products [via Donation Coder]

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• Google Integrates Desktop Gadgets into iGoogle
• Windows Live Gallery Released
• Google Page Creator Lets Users Experiment With Gadgets
• Sony Offers Software To Recover Damaged Files On Memory Sticks
• Your Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

How sick is Steve Jobs? Very, according to Bloomberg News. The financial site is reporting that the Apple CEO is looking into a liver transplant to help with complications from his bout with pancreatic cancer.

Jobs, of course, step aside earlier in the week, citing a hormone imbalance. Aple COO Tim Cook has taken over until his planned return in June.

According to the site, patients with his condition can live up to 20 years from original diagnosis.

Jobs, for his part, has maintained his position of not speaking with the press on the matter. Asked by Bloomberg to comment during an interview today, he answered, “Why don’t you guys leave me alone–why is this important?”

See if you can guess which icon represents said “new low.” Have a guess? I bet you do. But thankfully, there were some legit cool apps this week too.

Zit Picker: The aforementioned low. I write about it only to warn fellow Gizmodo fans, with hopes of condemning this app to the graveyard. You pick zits with multitouch here. It’s vile, and I wish nothing but failure for this app. Any press is good press you say? Take a stand. No more ridiculous bodily function apps in the store. Join me in the movement! $1

And now, the good stuff:

Quad Camera: The Japanese love their toy cameras, and they’re also proving quite skilled at making creative camera apps for the iPhone. Quad camera mimics certain Lomo-cams that expose multiple shots on one frame by taking 4-8 sequential shots at a single click of the button, accompanied by a satisfying vintage shutter click sound. Cool stuff. $2

Fast Tap Camera: And the second cool-looking camera app is one that adds a functionality I’ve been looking for: expanding the camera’s tiny shutter button to the whole screen. I’ve dropped my phone countless times trying to awkwardly hit the shutter button in a non-conventional shooting angle, and this solves that problem. Let the self portraits and hail mary shots flow. $1

Big StopWatch: Yeah, your iPhone already has a capable stop watch. But does it look as beautiful as this? I probably wouldn’t pay for ornamentation alone, but this retro analog stop watch is a great piece of design work, and it’s free, so why not?

Incognito Browser: And finally, we saw Apple lift its restriction on browser replacement apps this week, so long as they’re based on WebKit. So far, no one’s doing anything much more interesting than giving you a separate porn browser that doesn’t record history or cache. If you have been waiting for a porn browser for you iPhone, my hat’s off to you. Will be interesting to see if anyone else does anything novel with the new browser rules. $2

This Week’s App News on Giz:

• iFight for iPhone Kicks Ass, Literally

• Chipotle’s Mobile Ordering App For Magic iPhone Burritos

• Beijing Man Shows Why Certain iPhone Games Shouldn’t be Played on the Subway

• Apple Approves New Browsers in App Store, As Long As They’re Based On Safari

• Novelist Censors Own Book To Sell As iPhone App

• iPhone App Store Hits 500 Million Downloads, We Break Down the Numbers

• Cat Stacking iPhone Game is Cute Cruelty

• Ustream’s Upcoming iPhone App Lets You Watch Obama Inauguration (Or Any Stream) On Your iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

An upcoming Apple system will be based on a new low-powered platform from Nvidia, according to tech blog Tom’s Hardware.

The blog reported receiving a tip from an Nvidia partner claiming Apple received prototypes of Nvidia’s Ion platform.

The Ion platform consists of a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor (similar to the CPU used to power netbooks) and the same graphics processing unit (Nvidia 9400M) used in Apple’s latest aluminum MacBooks.

Tom’s Hardware predicted that Ion must be the platform being used in the next Mac Mini, Apple’s portable desktop system, which is long overdue for an upgrade.

The source also told Tom’s Hardware that Apple will launch a new Mac Mini in March.

However, we find it very unlikely that the next Mac Mini will be based on Ion. That would be a downgrade from the current Mac Minis, which are powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo chip — much faster than Atom.

Incorporating Ion into a Mac Mini would equate to a significantly smaller computer, but we doubt Apple would make such a compromise in performance for the sake of extreme miniaturization.

So the question remains: If the Ion rumor is true, what could Apple be using the platform for? A smaller Apple TV perhaps? Is Apple finally working on a netbook? It’s certainly a head scratcher, and we don’t have any solid ideas. What do you think?

Photo: Apple

People trading in salacious gossip have been counting on an update of the Mac mini for ages now, with most of the rumors centering on it making its appearance at Macworld. Well, the festivities came and went without a peep about the mini — but that hasn’t stopped the rumors from swirling. The latest we’re hearing is that the refresh will be built upon NVIDIA’s new Ion platform, which houses a 9400M GPU — the same graphics processor as the new unibody Macbooks — and could mean an even minier mini than the one we already know. Tom’s Hardware, the source of this newest rumor, also speculates on a March release date, though they’re not guessing on the price just yet.

Filed under: Desktops

Rumored Mac Mini refresh said to be Ion-based originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments