Virtual tour of Museum of Failure

https://collection.museumoffailure.com/

by laktak • 3 years ago

70 29 3 years ago

collection.museumoffailure.com

helph67• 3 years ago

"Failure is success in progress" Albert Einstein https://www.azquotes.com/author/4399-Albert_Einstein/tag/fai...

BugsJustFindMe2• 3 years ago

Some of these entries are questionable...

Calling the Iridium network a failure is wrong. Iridium has been in consistent active use by the military and ships at sea from its inception to now and they are still launching new satellites as recently as last year.

And the blurb on No Man's Sky ends with "the game later managed a major turnaround from its disastrous launch and became a great success". Great Success is not the same as Failure.

ortusdux• 3 years ago

I'd love for this site to have an entry about itself full of critiques like yours.

BugsJustFindMe2• 3 years ago

Lol. You know what, if that were the first entry I'd be pleased.

"All museums are inherently failures, including this one. Here are the accumulated critiques from visitors just like you..."

This is a real thing that real museums really do struggle with. Including it would be honest and introspective.

RajT88• 3 years ago

In fairness... The military bought it in a fire sale after it failed.

Totally agree on No Man's Sky.

Minidisc was questionable because it definitely found a few niches, of which I knew a bunch of people in college:

- Music Fans / Bootleggers

- Radio station DJ's

- People who thought portable CD players were too big (before MP3 players)

- Audiophiles(?)

It had some good use cases, it just didn't live up to Sony's Dream of becoming the new standard. Sony, for its part, had a few huge successes, but their past is littered with failed formats they hoped would be the Next Big Thing.

secretsatan• 3 years ago

Always disappointed to see minidisc on these lists, especially as it was much more successful outside the US (I think the perception is often US centric).

But OTH, you can still buy CDs, it did fail as a replacement.

ajsnigrutin• 3 years ago

And not just them... you can still buy a lot of consumer devices, that are quite popular with people who travel to areas with spotty cell reception.

eg: https://www.garmin.com/en-US/c/outdoor-recreation/satellite-...

dang• 3 years ago

Museum of Failure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33369961 - Oct 2022 (74 comments)

Museum of Failure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19188943 - Feb 2019 (26 comments)

robocat• 3 years ago

I would love to play with an iBot wheelchair! https://collection.museumoffailure.com/ibot-wheelchair/

The hulahula hawaii-chair advert video is classic: https://collection.museumoffailure.com/hawaii-chair/

abetusk• 3 years ago

Note that this is mostly commercial failure. A lot of these entries were either too early, implemented badly or adopted by hackers, nerds, independent musicians, etc.

For example, the Roland TB-303 is listed as a commercial flop, but for some reason they omitted the TR-808, which was also a commercial flop [0]. The narrative goes that the "affordably" priced synths then got dumped into thrift stores and available at bargain basement prices that the next generation of musicians then picked up and used. I've heard Snoop Dogg did something similar with editing equipment (though I can't find the reference now).

Pets.com was a failure but Chewy.com is going strong. Cue-Cat was a financial failure but was a shot in the arm of a lot of hardware hackers at the time.

Weird to see "No Man's Sky" as I was under the impression that was a commercial success.

Of course, some were just abject failures, like Theranos.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_TR-808

jhbadger• 3 years ago

This museum also has a physical side that travels from place to place opening for a couple of months and then moving on. I saw it last summer in Washington DC where it was installed in the upper floor of a dying shopping mall, appropriately enough.

kloch2• 3 years ago

Very good collection but I was surprised to not see the i-Opener on there

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-Opener

nneonneo• 3 years ago

If anything it sounds like the product was too successful!

kloch2• 3 years ago

For hacker customers, yes. For the company selling it was an unmitigated disaster.

metabagel• 3 years ago

Or WebTV

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4xaqe9/why-webtvs-remote-con...

com2kid• 3 years ago

I've worked on Tablet PC, Windows Phone, and Microsoft Band.

I'm surprised all three aren't in there! (Along with WebTV, Microsoft's ebook stuff, and Microsoft Auto, all of which were good ideas attempted way too early!)

They list Google TV, but that feels unfair, as some variant of something resembling Google TV still exists.

mattyw• 3 years ago

Disappointed to see Google Wave on here[1]

Google wave didn't fail, mankind failed to appreciate how amazing it was. This is a hill I'm prepared to die on

[1] https://collection.museumoffailure.com/google-wave/

xobs• 3 years ago

The problem with Wave was that it requires a network effect to be of any use, and Google was very stingy with invites early on. Interest had died down by the time they started allowing more people to join.

echan00• 3 years ago

Stingy invites isn't the problem. It was more it offerred nothing new or better.

Swizec• 3 years ago

I remember Google Wave! It felt more like a technology demo than a product.

lmm• 3 years ago

You probably had a high-spec PC, and were using it with only a couple of friends at a time? Wave was cool but the performance issues from being built on XMPP killed it.

infotainment• 3 years ago

I totally agree with you that Wave was great.

But, regardless of the reason for its failure, it was ultimately a failure, as much as I liked it.

gotmedium• 3 years ago

No 404?? That is a failure

keyle• 3 years ago

This is cool and it reminded me of so many failures I lived through.

I half expected the Metaverse to be in there though...

tomcam• 3 years ago

The Deka iBot deserved the Nobel Prize IMHO https://newmobility.com/the-ibot-is-back/. It is a wheelchair that

* Can traverse any stairs

* Can travel on sand and gravel

* Can raise the user to standing height

At $30k it’s inaccessible to most users, but mass production could make a huge impact.

oyster143• 3 years ago

Similar vibe, from a different perspectvie: pitch decks and presentations by failed companies.

https://www.slidebook.io/blog/article/on-the-road-to-failure...

zubairq• 3 years ago

I definitely learned some lessons by reading and digging into the different items on the Museum of Failure. Thanks!

hejira• 3 years ago

A fun site indeed, but I felt that the entries were quite random. Many were successes that eventually failed (as many do) and others were failures that became successes, and everything in between. What's the real criteria for inclusion?

dmd• 3 years ago

How about Lotus Notes? Or is that just "a road we didn't go down"? I've always felt it had so much promise.

Virtual tour of Museum of Failure

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