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13 Most EMBARRASSING Tech Fails of all time.
Mrwhosetheboss
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20/10/2024
Embarrassing tech fails, from Mcdonalds, to Tesla, to the global IT crisis...it gets bad.
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Tech
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00:00
Prepare yourself for 13 of the most embarrassing tech fails of all time, from the keyboard
00:04
with 113 OLED displays inside of it, to PlayStation's most expensive mistake ever in history, to
00:10
literal global apocalypse.
00:13
Starting with McDonald's, who in one of the weirdest collabs of all time, went into
00:17
partnership with IBM in 2021 to run a trial of an AI-assisted voice ordering system at
00:22
about 100 of their drive-thrus.
00:24
Guess what happened when TikTok got their hands on it?
00:26
Giving orders to the wrong cars?
00:28
Multiplying items?
00:29
And I'm not talking someone walking away with a single extra chicken nugget.
00:33
People were leaving with hundreds of dollars worth of nuggets.
00:36
And I think the most embarrassing, and yet at the same time also the most, we probably
00:39
should have seen this coming, error?
00:41
Giving people ridiculous combinations of products that any human would realise make no sense
00:46
at all.
00:47
Like ice cream with ketchup and butter, or, I really wish I was joking, ice cream with
00:51
bacon on top.
00:52
But hey, at least that means the McDonald's ice cream machine was actually working for
00:56
once.
00:57
McDonald's is still having the audacity to correct the pronunciation of its customers.
01:01
And that b***h says it's caramel.
01:04
Like, huh?
01:05
So yeah, McDonald's basically had to end the trial ASAP, but we got some pretty good
01:09
laughs out of it.
01:10
A pretty harmless 1 out of 10 fail.
01:12
The same can't be said for number 12 though.
01:15
Because in 2005, an unknown Russian design company called Art Lebedev released a series
01:20
of concept images for a revolutionary new type of keyboard.
01:23
A keyboard called the Optimus Maximus, which, yeah, that's a pretty sick name, where each
01:27
individual key has its own tiny display.
01:30
And that's kind of amazing because it means every single key can be whatever you want
01:34
it to be.
01:35
So let's say I get a little board of the normal QWERTY keyboard layout, bam, and it's
01:39
kind of mind-frying just the power that this gives you.
01:42
Every single key can be a letter, a number, a direct shortcut to a Photoshop tool, or
01:47
your ultimate move in League.
01:48
It's kind of like the MacBook Touch Bar, but useful.
01:53
You could change your whole keyboard's language with one press.
01:55
And there's even a programmable side panel which could allow you to fast swap between
01:59
applications.
02:00
Now you might be thinking, in 2005?
02:03
Surely that kind of miniaturised LCD display technology just wasn't there at the time.
02:07
And you would be right.
02:09
This was meant to be a concept.
02:11
But people just got so excited by it that Lebedev decided, this is our chance to do
02:14
something big.
02:15
We actually have to make this thing.
02:17
They quickly realised that LCD displays at the time were too dim for what they wanted
02:21
to do.
02:22
So they decided to go with OLED, tech that wasn't really a big thing yet in 2005, especially
02:26
in such a tiny form.
02:28
Which means that as well as having to make this monster of a keyboard, they also ended
02:32
up having to create their own proprietary miniature OLED display technology.
02:36
Just so they could fit one of them under each one of these transparent keys, which they
02:39
did by working with a Taiwanese supplier called iDisplay.
02:42
And somehow, after all of that, they actually managed to ship a working product in 2008.
02:48
Sadly, they got too caught up in the hype themselves.
02:51
This company became so obsessed with achieving this goal of 113 OLED displays that they forgot
02:56
to actually make the typing experience good.
02:58
These keys have such high resistance that you're just tired after like a minute of
03:01
using it.
03:02
Oh yeah, and the thing was priced at $1500 when it launched.
03:05
So only a very small fraction of the people who first expressed interest actually followed
03:10
through and bought the thing.
03:11
I'm only going to give this a 2 out of 10 fail though, because there was a silver lining.
03:15
Remember iDisplay?
03:16
Well, they put so much time and effort into helping to create this mini under-keyboard
03:20
OLED tech that they decided to run with it anyway.
03:23
And they were eventually purchased by Elgato, which is what led to the Elgato Stream Deck,
03:27
which even today is one of the must-have gadgets for any streamer.
03:31
But not every story has a happy ending.
03:34
Some of them have a nappy ending.
03:36
This is Paul and Rachel Barron, who, after being completely unable to find a washable
03:41
swim nappy for their son that was actually good and actually fit, decided to make their
03:46
own.
03:47
They started a company called Bow & Bell Littles, selling them on Amazon, and very
03:50
quickly hit $1 million in sales.
03:52
These guys were killing it.
03:53
They were appearing on shows, they were being profiled by Forbes.
03:56
But four years ago, possibly the absolute worst thing that could have happened, happened.
04:01
Amazon, you know, the nearly $2 trillion technology company, sent one customer a used diaper.
04:07
And you bet that customer left a review.
04:09
The diaper arrived used and was covered in poop stains.
04:12
Nothing could have been more disgusting.
04:14
These were not small stains either.
04:16
I was extremely grossed out.
04:18
Now, this sticky situation was nothing to do with the Barrons.
04:21
This happened because the person at Amazon, responsible for checking returned products
04:25
before sending them out to new customers, did a, well, a pants job.
04:29
But the worst part of this is, after the Barrons saw this review, and they scurried to tell
04:33
Amazon that it wasn't their fault, that it could very heavily damage their business,
04:37
and to take it down, Amazon refused.
04:40
And the Barrons were right.
04:41
This one review did completely tank their business.
04:44
Four years later, they're now $600,000 in debt, including a loan that has their house
04:49
up as collateral.
04:50
It's only after Bloomberg published an article about the whole debacle that Amazon finally
04:54
agreed to take the review down.
04:55
But the damage was already done.
04:57
So four out of ten fail.
04:59
Made worse by the fact that it wasn't even these guys' fault.
05:02
So if you ever find yourself in the market for a washable swim nappy, now you know where
05:07
to go.
05:08
Just maybe don't return it after you've used it.
05:11
Okay, we've seen all sorts of laptops over the years.
05:14
Super high-end gaming laptops, super affordable $400 laptops.
05:17
But what on earth does a $100 laptop look like?
05:20
Well, in 2005, the founder of the MIT Media Lab, Nicholas Negroponte, formed One Laptop
05:26
Per Child, a non-profit whose goal was to transform education in the developing world
05:30
by creating and distributing as many devices as possible to children in schools.
05:35
And the device that was going to change children's lives?
05:38
The XO.
05:39
A quirky little green plastic laptop designed to be produced as cheaply as possible while
05:43
still giving disadvantaged kids access to a computer.
05:46
And this thing had a lot of thoughtful features packed into it for its tiny cost.
05:50
Especially considering this was 2005.
05:52
A hand crank that would allow children to power their device even if they didn't have
05:55
access to an electrical outlet.
05:57
Which means that the device ran on a tiny fraction of the power of probably whatever
06:01
you're watching this on.
06:02
And that was crucial to allow kids to use it outside of school.
06:05
The screen could flip around to turn it into an e-reader.
06:08
The thing was made of shock-absorbing plastic and rubber, a feature that Negroponte clearly
06:12
very much enjoyed showing off.
06:14
A rubberized, spill-proof keyboard, as well as all the ports being covered by the Wi-Fi
06:18
antenna when closed.
06:19
All with a logo in various colors so that kids could tell their laptops apart.
06:24
And the absolute core of the whole thing was that the device ran on a Linux-based operating
06:27
system, giving kids total access to the computer.
06:31
The organization actually managed to gather so much steam that they were even offered
06:34
free macOS licenses by Steve Jobs himself.
06:38
Which… that never happens.
06:40
But Negroponte turned them down just to keep the system as open as possible.
06:45
All this for only $100.
06:47
And they didn't even want to stop there.
06:49
We really believe that we can make literally hundreds of millions of these machines available
06:53
to children around the world, Negroponte promised, and it's not just $100, it's going to
06:58
go lower.
06:59
If you're thinking this is all too good to be true, good instincts.
07:02
And people started to pick up on this when the crank broke off at the live demo.
07:06
Not a great start.
07:08
And by the time the laptop actually came out, a lot of these promises had just mysteriously
07:12
went away.
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