Though the onset of 2010 certainly brought along less drama than that of the previous decade, it also brought with it the usual bevy of "Top _____s of the Last Decade" lists. I especially liked one entitled "Top 10 Things We'll Miss Most About the 2000s", which reminded me of the sad fact that those cool "200_" glasses, with the middle "00" as the eye frames, will never return until the year 3000. Anyways, I decided that I too would pitch in, somewhat belatedly, to the fray of best-of-the-decade-compilations.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, The Top 5 Most Underwhelming Inventions of the Last Decade.
5. The Playstation 3
In May of 2005, Sony finally announced the long-awaited PlayStation 3. It was the sequel to the PlayStation 2, the most successful console ever in the history of video games; it was also the heavyweight retort to Microsoft's Xbox 360 and was supposed to continue Sony's undeniable reign over the game console industry.
On paper, every single hardware spec was better than the Xbox 360. The 360 had three processors, the PS3 had nine. Yes, nine. In fact, even the programmers at Sony didn't know what to do with so many processors, so one of them is dedicated entirely to OS security and another one is completely unused. Still, with seven-ish processors running at 3.2 GHz, the PS3's peak single-precision float capability is estimated at a whopping 204 gigaflops, twice that of the Xbox 360 and probably three or four times that of your computer. The PS3 had built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, native high-definition DVD playback capability, flash memory plug-in support, and bigger hard-drive options than its competitor.
So did the PlayStation devour the Xbox when it went to market? Well, no. It's only sold about 70% what the Xbox 360 has, and it's sold that many only because 1. Blu-Ray, luckily for Sony, won out over HD-DVD and the PS3 is one of the cheapest Blu-Ray players on the market, and 2. hackers like to buy PS3s to use as cheap supercomputers. The Folding@home project at Stanford, for example, uses the PS3's massive processing capability to simulate protein folding.
So how on Earth did the fastest gaming machine in the world get relegated to doing protein origami? Because even though it's got the juice of a supercomputer, the PS3's in-game processing capabilities never matched up to the Xbox 360's. Why? Well that's the saddest story of them all:
The bus speeds were too slow. The processors couldn't communicate with each other quickly enough. They were too fast for their own good.
4. The Atkins Diet
Above, the Atkins Diet (for females) in a single equation. Below, the Atkins Diet in a single word: doubtful. (I am convinced, however, that there exists a way to rearrange the above equation to make it true.)
The Atkins Diet wasn't exactly invented in the 2000s, but for some reason it became the coolest thing since slicedbread steak around 2003, so I'm classifying it as belonging to the 2000s. In short, Dr. Robert Atkins, the man who invented this program, advocated a low-carb, high-protein diet to lose weight and improve cardiovascular health. Which already doesn't make sense.
Low-carb, high-protein means you have to take your standard plate of spaghetti-n-meatballs, take out all the spaghetti, and replace it with even more meatballs. So you take an otherwise wholesome, healthy meal and turn it into artery-clogging juiciness.
And did Dr. Atkins even bother to think for a millisecond about, um, hmm, Asians? Because let's see here: most Asians eat rice, and almost only rice. The rest eat noodles, and almost only noodles. Even well-fed Asians are still some of the skinniest people in the world. So did Atkins ever, um, hmm, wonder why that was the case?
The only reason that I've included this in my list of "underwhelming inventions" rather than just "bad, ill-conceived, and clearly wrong inventions" is because of the frighteningly ardent following that the Diet first attracted, followed by its frighteningly quick abandonment once people realized it didn't work. At one point, around one in ten people in America was on the Atkins Diet. Until, of course, Dr. Atkins himself died in 2003 as an indirect result of a heart-problem he developed. Presumably from eating too many meatballs.
3. The Segway Human Transporter
Admittedly, it's strange that riding on a bicycle, a two-wheeled contraption with a giant knob wedged in between your legs, is still so much cooler than riding on a Segway, a two-wheeled contraption without a giant knob wedged in between your legs.
After months of intense media speculation that ranged from hoverboards to anti-gravity propulsion, inventor Dean Kamen introduced the Segway Personal Transporter in 2001, and it turned out to be underwhelming before it had even had a chance to sell a single unit. Not a hoverboard, nor that floating car Obi-Wan Kenobi had in Episode IV, the Segway was instead revealed to be a platform on two wheels that could keep itself upright with what I would like to call "a bunch of gyroscopes and shit". Oh, and you could stand on it, and make it move.
So it's surprising that, despite how a bicycle could do pretty much the exact same thing, the Segway was still hyped like there was no tomorrow. Steve Jobs thought it would be as significant an invention as the personal computer. John Doerr, a well-known venture capitalist, said it would be more important than the Internet. Dean Kamen himself said that it would "be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". The company estimated it would sell 100,000 units in the first year alone.
But tomorrow came, and now, more than nine years later, the Segway has sold a grand total of...drumroll please...50,000 units. Half of its first-year predictions. If the car had performed this dismally against the horse and buggy, then we'd probably still be riding in carriages today. And to add insult to injury, the Segway isn't just a massive business failure, but it's also become a popular target to lampoon, whether it's by Andy Richter on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien or by the writers of Arrested Development, who made the Segway the vehicle of choice for the underachieving, melodramatic magician named Gob.
So how can anything be even more underwhelming than something that was supposed to be more important than the Internet? Stay tuned for Number 2 and Number 1.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, The Top 5 Most Underwhelming Inventions of the Last Decade.
5. The Playstation 3
In May of 2005, Sony finally announced the long-awaited PlayStation 3. It was the sequel to the PlayStation 2, the most successful console ever in the history of video games; it was also the heavyweight retort to Microsoft's Xbox 360 and was supposed to continue Sony's undeniable reign over the game console industry.
On paper, every single hardware spec was better than the Xbox 360. The 360 had three processors, the PS3 had nine. Yes, nine. In fact, even the programmers at Sony didn't know what to do with so many processors, so one of them is dedicated entirely to OS security and another one is completely unused. Still, with seven-ish processors running at 3.2 GHz, the PS3's peak single-precision float capability is estimated at a whopping 204 gigaflops, twice that of the Xbox 360 and probably three or four times that of your computer. The PS3 had built-in WiFi and Bluetooth, native high-definition DVD playback capability, flash memory plug-in support, and bigger hard-drive options than its competitor.
So did the PlayStation devour the Xbox when it went to market? Well, no. It's only sold about 70% what the Xbox 360 has, and it's sold that many only because 1. Blu-Ray, luckily for Sony, won out over HD-DVD and the PS3 is one of the cheapest Blu-Ray players on the market, and 2. hackers like to buy PS3s to use as cheap supercomputers. The Folding@home project at Stanford, for example, uses the PS3's massive processing capability to simulate protein folding.
So how on Earth did the fastest gaming machine in the world get relegated to doing protein origami? Because even though it's got the juice of a supercomputer, the PS3's in-game processing capabilities never matched up to the Xbox 360's. Why? Well that's the saddest story of them all:
The bus speeds were too slow. The processors couldn't communicate with each other quickly enough. They were too fast for their own good.
4. The Atkins Diet
Above, the Atkins Diet (for females) in a single equation. Below, the Atkins Diet in a single word: doubtful. (I am convinced, however, that there exists a way to rearrange the above equation to make it true.)
The Atkins Diet wasn't exactly invented in the 2000s, but for some reason it became the coolest thing since sliced
Low-carb, high-protein means you have to take your standard plate of spaghetti-n-meatballs, take out all the spaghetti, and replace it with even more meatballs. So you take an otherwise wholesome, healthy meal and turn it into artery-clogging juiciness.
And did Dr. Atkins even bother to think for a millisecond about, um, hmm, Asians? Because let's see here: most Asians eat rice, and almost only rice. The rest eat noodles, and almost only noodles. Even well-fed Asians are still some of the skinniest people in the world. So did Atkins ever, um, hmm, wonder why that was the case?
The only reason that I've included this in my list of "underwhelming inventions" rather than just "bad, ill-conceived, and clearly wrong inventions" is because of the frighteningly ardent following that the Diet first attracted, followed by its frighteningly quick abandonment once people realized it didn't work. At one point, around one in ten people in America was on the Atkins Diet. Until, of course, Dr. Atkins himself died in 2003 as an indirect result of a heart-problem he developed. Presumably from eating too many meatballs.
3. The Segway Human Transporter
Admittedly, it's strange that riding on a bicycle, a two-wheeled contraption with a giant knob wedged in between your legs, is still so much cooler than riding on a Segway, a two-wheeled contraption without a giant knob wedged in between your legs.
After months of intense media speculation that ranged from hoverboards to anti-gravity propulsion, inventor Dean Kamen introduced the Segway Personal Transporter in 2001, and it turned out to be underwhelming before it had even had a chance to sell a single unit. Not a hoverboard, nor that floating car Obi-Wan Kenobi had in Episode IV, the Segway was instead revealed to be a platform on two wheels that could keep itself upright with what I would like to call "a bunch of gyroscopes and shit". Oh, and you could stand on it, and make it move.
So it's surprising that, despite how a bicycle could do pretty much the exact same thing, the Segway was still hyped like there was no tomorrow. Steve Jobs thought it would be as significant an invention as the personal computer. John Doerr, a well-known venture capitalist, said it would be more important than the Internet. Dean Kamen himself said that it would "be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy". The company estimated it would sell 100,000 units in the first year alone.
But tomorrow came, and now, more than nine years later, the Segway has sold a grand total of...drumroll please...50,000 units. Half of its first-year predictions. If the car had performed this dismally against the horse and buggy, then we'd probably still be riding in carriages today. And to add insult to injury, the Segway isn't just a massive business failure, but it's also become a popular target to lampoon, whether it's by Andy Richter on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien or by the writers of Arrested Development, who made the Segway the vehicle of choice for the underachieving, melodramatic magician named Gob.
So how can anything be even more underwhelming than something that was supposed to be more important than the Internet? Stay tuned for Number 2 and Number 1.
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