For many Americans, Thanksgiving is about turkey, football, lounging around the house, and dealing with people we’d rather not see but once a year. But it’s still all about the turkey, which reminds us of some of the real Turkeys we’ve seen in the technology and gaming industry.
You know what a Turkey is. You’re all excited about it. You can smell it in the air; it gives you a big craving. The anticipation is overwhelming and you can’t wait to get your hands on it… and then and then it ends up putting you to sleep.
The same thing goes for Tech Turkeys. They are the products that may have been hyped as the next big thing, but in the end put many of us to sleep. We now present to you [OC]ModShop’s Top 7 Technology Turkeys of 2007.
7. DDR3
In electronic engineering, DDR3 SDRAM or double-data-rate three synchronous dynamic random access memory is a random access memory technology used for high speed storage of the working data of a computer or other digital electronic devices.
Its primary benefit is the ability to run its I/O bus at four times the speed of the memory cells it contains, thus enabling faster bus speeds and higher peak throughputs than earlier technologies. This is achieved at the cost of higher latency. Also, the DDR3 standard allows for chip capacities of 512 mebibit to 8 gibibit, effectively enabling memory modules of maximum 16 gibibyte in size.
DDR3 also has an improvement over DDR2 in its power consumption (a reduction of 30%), but since it runs at higher frequencies, it often runs hotter than DDR2, which is why heatspreaders are required in the DDR3 specification. The main benefit of DDR3 comes from the higher bandwidth made possible by DDR3’s 8 bit deep prefetch buffer, whereas DDR2’s is 4 bits, and DDR’s is 2 bits deep. The latency of DDR3 modules is commonly much higher than DDR2, and is currently way more expensive.
I’m all for the evolution of new technology, but if you don’t let the consumers catch their breath then they’re going to get pissed off. The industry may want us to move to DDR3, but many of us just got used to DDR2. It is too soon, and DDR3 is currently too expensive. To paraphrase Hamlet: The same meat used for the funeral also sets the wedding table.
6. Apple’s iPhone
The iPhone is a multimedia and Internet-enabled quad-band GSM EDGE-supported mobile phone designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a multi-touch screen with virtual keyboard and buttons. The iPhone’s functions include those of a camera phone and a portable media player, in addition to text messaging and visual voicemail. It also offers Internet services including e-mail, web browsing, and local Wi-Fi connectivity.
The iPhone is a hybrid PIM / cell phone / MP3 player… it packages all of these things into one device but is lacking in a key area in each category.
- As an MP3 player it is extremely expensive, and has a maximum 8GB capacity. Those with 80GB iPods won’t be replacing them with an iPhone.
- As a phone it works great, and the integration with the OS is brilliant. However, 6 to 8 hours of battery life for a cell phone is unacceptable by any other standard.
- As a PIM it is ok, but consumers are very limited with the number of software choices.
Consumers don’t like being told what to do, and it was only a (short) matter of time before someone “unlocked” the iPhone to work with any cell carrier (originally designed to work with AT&T’s network). There are a few limitations to using a hacked iPhone, but is overall very usable.
iPhone fanboys may disagree with its placement on our Turkey list. The reality is that for most consumers the device isn’t the killer product that Steve Jobs promised it would be. The iPhone received alot of hype but in the end doesn’t really excite us.
5. Lair for Playstation 3
The Playstation 3 needed a strong exclusive title to really compete with the Xbox 360, and Lair appeared to be it. Lair was developed by Factor 5 and published by Sony. Players control a kight named Rohn who belongs to the Asylian peopl’s elite dragon-riging force.
Lair had great graphics, and there hasn’t been a creative gameplay dynamic like it in a long time. The game made use of the motion control features of the PS3’s Sixasis controller, which promised innovative gameplay like the Nintendo Wii. The player flies the dragon by tilting the controller, with additional moves also using motion sensing; one such example is fighting a dragon by tilting the controller to match the enemy dragon’s flying height, and then slamming the controller left or right to knock the dragon sideways and out of the battle.
There was alot of hype over Lair, mainly over its mind-blowing graphics. However, once it was actually released it was seen as a critical commercial failture and reviewed very negatively. The artwork and graphics were great quality, but the control scheme (such as the impossible targeting system) made the game pretty much unplayable.
4. Windows Vista
Let me get one thing clear: I love Vista. Unfortunately, the industry doesn’t have the same love affair that I do with the new Operating System. Part of the problem is that there just wasn’t industry support when the OS launched. Many people had software that worked great on XP, but no longer worked on the Vista platform because of its new architecture. Software vendors weren’t keen on providing a “free” upgrade because you updated your OS, which meant that many people had to purchase new versions of their software (if it had even been released).
Microsoft has done a great job by introducing some great new technologies into Vista. They have the marketing muscle to nudge the industry into the 64-bit computing world, and have made the OS very compatible with existing software, inspite of its updated architecture. Unfortunately, the consumers decide the fate of software, and they vote with their wallets.
Most of the problem is the industry not being ready for Vista. The new architecture means that vendors have to develop both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of their drivers, and drivers may be buggy because they have to re-learn how to write them properly.
The fact of the matter is that alot of hardware and software didn’t work with Vista at first. Vista is stabilizing as vendors deliver better drivers and software, but it had a very rocky start. Service Pack 1 for Vista is expected to fix alot of customer’s woes, so it appears that 2008 will be the year that determines if Vista is a true flop or not.
3. Manhunt 2
Manhunt 2 is a video game developed by Rockstar Games, who made a name for themselves with the Grand Theft Auto series. Even though 2007 brought us many overhyped games like Halo 3, Manhunt 2 caught alot of media attention because of its censorship in the United Kingdom for being too violent. Rockstar announced a modified version of the game to satiate the ESRB, but was again rejected.
One would expect a game with such hype to be worth waiting for, but the game has received mediocre reviews. The gameplay can be similar to “stealth-action” games like Splinter Cell and Thief, but the game just isn’t that fun. The over-the-top brutal killings are disturbing but really not as graphic as one expected based on the media hype.
2. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray
High-definition movies can be found in several formats today. The main contendors for the next-generation DVD format are Sony’s Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. If we’ve learned anything from history, then we know that market saturation is the way to win the war, and the way to saturate the market is to make the products widely available and affordable.
HD-DVD and Blu-Ray interest many technology enthusiasts more as a high capacity storage medium rather than a video technology. Another way to make one format ubiquitous over another is to gain wide acceptance on the Personal Computer, and the lack of HD-DVD burners is a serious mistake in Blu-Ray’s favor. Blu-Ray burners are available, but both the drives and media are still too expensive to be anything but a toy for the Geek That Has Everything.
As a video format: I’m happily watching high-definition movies compressed in Windows WMV-HD format. A two-hour 1080p movie with 5.1 digital sound easily fits on today’s dual-layer DVDs, so there is nothing forcing people to upgrade just to watch next-generation movies.
I’m also waiting for a standard 5.25″ HD-DVD drive to throw in my Media Center PC, but they still aren’t all that common. The Xbox 360’s HD-DVD drive can be modded to work on a PC, but by now the industry should have drives available for PC users.
So, boos and hisses to HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. Get yer asses in gear if you want to win the format war.
1. Xbox 360’s Red Ring of Death
There, I said it. I am most disappointed with how Microsoft handles the Xbox 360 hardware. In an effort to make one of the most powerful home consoles they inadvertantly manufacturered a product that overheats and breaks down (30% of units by some estimates).
Although Microsoft pays for the shipping of RMAing your hardware, it takes 4-6 weeks without any gaming. The problem has grown so bad that there are now services that offer a 1-day repair turnaround as an alternative to Microsoft’s slow repair process. If the hardware is salvagable then Microsoft’s usual solution to circumvent the problem is to underclock the chips inside. Games that once played very smoothly at 720p now appear to skip frames. I personally have gone through 3 different consoles in 2007 alone, while my first-generation Xbox 1 is still going strong.
I fear for the investment of my video games once the next Xbox comes onto the market. Unless the new console is 100% compatible with the Xbox 360 then all of my current games will become unplayable (because I don’t expect my 360 to last much longer after warranty).
I heard from a Microsoft employee (unofficially) that 360s with an updated chip fab started shipping in November. Microsoft is not actively publicizing the fact that these new consoles use a smaller chip fabrication process (therefore running cooler and more stably), because that would be admitting that they had made a blunder, and people would be returning their old consoles for the new ones. The only way to tell if a console uses the new chip fab is to look at the serial numbers. And no, the Xbox 360 Elite doesn’t necessarially use the new chip fab.
I, for one, am going to exchange my overheated, underclocked white box for an updated model at the first opportunity.