QOTW: Which doomed tech products were actually good?

[philehidiot]

Gravis Ultrasound. Superb audio technology, killed my Microsoft basically adopting the pathetic Soundblaster hardware as the basis for their Windows API.

Ultrasound? I never wanted to attract bats.

[DanceswithUnix]

Ultrasound? I never wanted to attract bats.

But I suspect even bats have a better technical understanding than Microsoft so not surprising if they liked the sound card too

For those that never heard of it, the card was basically an updated Amiga sound system on an ISA card with it's own local memory allowing lots (16 or 32, can't remember) of samples to be played at the same time with decent audio quality and individual stereo positioning. The Soundblaster cards of the era were some iffy synthesizer chip and a DAC on a dumb card forcing the processor to do all the work, which with a 386 or 486 wasn't a good idea.

[spacein_vader]

But I suspect even bats have a better technical understanding than Microsoft so not surprising if they liked the sound card too

For those that never heard of it, the card was basically an updated Amiga sound system on an ISA card with it's own local memory allowing lots (16 or 32, can't remember) of samples to be played at the same time with decent audio quality and individual stereo positioning. The Soundblaster cards of the era were some iffy synthesizer chip and a DAC on a dumb card forcing the processor to do all the work, which with a 386 or 486 wasn't a good idea.

See also A3D, a positional audio technology from a company called Aureal that knocked the spots off anything Creatives EAX could muster at the time (circa 1999.)

Creatives response wasn't to innovate but to sue. They put together a spurious patent case and although Aureal won it Creative kept it going long enough to effectively bankrupt them and then bought the assets.

The final blow was that rather than support and develop the technology they instantly stopped supporting it, swept it under the carpet and carried on with EAX instead.

[chj]

OQO handheld pc's

[philehidiot]

But I suspect even bats have a better technical understanding than Microsoft so not surprising if they liked the sound card too

For those that never heard of it, the card was basically an updated Amiga sound system on an ISA card with it's own local memory allowing lots (16 or 32, can't remember) of samples to be played at the same time with decent audio quality and individual stereo positioning. The Soundblaster cards of the era were some iffy synthesizer chip and a DAC on a dumb card forcing the processor to do all the work, which with a 386 or 486 wasn't a good idea.

I had a sound blaster AWE 32 back in those days which did allow 32 samples at a time. Dunno about stereo positioning or anything. It had slots for extra local memory but we never populated them. I can't remember if it had any onboard memory.

[MrJim]

See also A3D, a positional audio technology from a company called Aureal that knocked the spots off anything Creatives EAX could muster at the time (circa 1999.)

Creatives response wasn't to innovate but to sue. They put together a spurious patent case and although Aureal won it Creative kept it going long enough to effectively bankrupt them and then bought the assets.

The final blow was that rather than support and develop the technology they instantly stopped supporting it, swept it under the carpet and carried on with EAX instead.

I was just going to mention Aureal and their A3D positional audio too. Such a great technology that produced realistic positional audio effects from simple two-speaker audio systems. And Creative buried it. Such a shame

[SylvanSagacious]

Mini-disc, although I still use it
HD-DVD

Still own a load of HD-DVD titles, maybe one day they will be worth something.

again Betamax, the poor 2nd choice won the market

Same (IMHO) with HD-DVD, I still think BluRay is the poor choice over HD-DVD.


and whatever happened to DVD-Audio, one of THE great audio formats... SACD - thats what

I can't think of a single area where HD-DVD is better. Production cost perhaps, but the end-user didn't really see any of that.

[meuvoy]

Windows phone

[DanceswithUnix]

See also A3D, a positional audio technology from a company called Aureal that knocked the spots off anything Creatives EAX could muster at the time (circa 1999.)

I had one of those as well, but it gave me quite a bit of grief with game compatibility.

I had a sound blaster AWE 32 back in those days which did allow 32 samples at a time. Dunno about stereo positioning or anything. It had slots for extra local memory but we never populated them. I can't remember if it had any onboard memory.

They came a few years after, probably as a reaction to the GUS. They never seemed to generate the sort of fanaticism like GUS owners raving about their product though. These days you can just mix some samples on part of a spare core in software, but the GUS was just jaw dropping when it came out.

[ETR316]

Windows Phone.

the last windows phone i tried for 3 months, and gotta say, people are stupid, i say that because it was really truly great. better than android. Also, i agree on ZUNE that was hands down a fantastic player for its time, above all the rest, even apple's ipod

[Zhaoman]

Windows Media Centre which was very useful for HTPCs. I was very surprised when it just died a death suddenly.

[cheesemp]

"Many of those deserved to die the slow death - just thinking about the dreadful Nokia N-Gage sends a shiver down the spine"

Take that back - I loved my ngage - so cheap to buy and half decent games to keep me occupied at lunch! None of this dumb micro-transactions mobile gaming is now filled with.

[Ttaskmaster]

And maybe the cartridges for NES and Commodore? i kinda liked that system.

How is that doomed tech? Cartridges carried on with all kinds of consoles and handhelds. Even the DS series uses carts.

OQO handheld pc's

Were they any good, though?
They look about the same size as my HTC Desire Z, which was OK for small text-based apps but pretty dire for full-on PCing. UMPCs kinda peaked and died early on, especially things like the Sony Vaio UX.
The Flipstart and Open Pandora had the better form factor, while the GPD series is actually quite usable and capable. But even today they're still very expensive and somewhat limited.

[DaMoot]

iPod

[DaMoot]

Ick. And why in the world would people want the Windows Phone? The hardware was all atrocious. It was an incredibly fractured ecosystem. There were no apps. Lots of problems with the OS itself.

We had to steer so many clients away from Windows Phone devices because they weren't compatible with anything, and when bizarre issues popped up (which they did very frequently), there were no fixes and no support from Microsoft.

I'd like anyone to give an argument as to why Windows Phone was good... Especially if you can provide it from an IT provider point of view!

[shaithis]

I can't think of a single area where HD-DVD is better. Production cost perhaps, but the end-user didn't really see any of that.

The end user did see many other benefits though but for the first time ever Sony unfortunately won a format war

I would have preferred region free discs and Sony not pushing up prices due to the money they paid to studios to make BluRay-exclusive releases.....they killed my disc purchasing way before Netflix etc became popular.


The thing that I remember from when I was young (yes we are talking 20-30 years ago!) was the laser-based record player. I remember seeing it on tomorrows playing an original pressing of Bing Crosbys "White Christmas".....it would happily track warped record surfaces using 3 lasers.
Shame I never saw one for sale ever