The media loves to latch onto a great success story. There are no shortages of profiles of computer visionaries such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. If success sells stories, then tales of great flops fulfill a guilty pleasure for reporters. In the age of the Internet new products rise and fall so often that many of the disasters are quickly pushed to the wayside. Some of the mistakes were big enough to make lasting memories even in the era of Twitter.

The first tablet personal computer meant for the consumer market was not developed by Apple. The 2009 launch of a product know as the “CrunchPad” was supposed to be the first entry into the now lucrative market. Intended to be used for web browsing, the CrunchPad was the result of collaboration between Fusion Garage and TechCrunch. Like so many marriages these days, this one failed miserably. Due to a combination off greed and strained relationships the partnership dissolved, which left Fusion Garage as the sole owner of a product that received the apt name of the “JooJoo.” The JooJoo launched within days of the iPad, which left Fusion Garage with a product about as useful as a word that rhymes with JooJoo.

Apple might now be a technology industry leader with products such as the iPod, iPad and the iPhone, but before the “I”s had it Apple had its share of flops. In the middle of the dot-com bubble, Apple released the Cube. The compact design was offset by a cumbersome price tag. The Cube cost $1,799 in 2000, which equals $2,279 in today’s dollars. The desktop unit went the same way as another contemporary cube product, the Nintendo GameCube, into extinction.

Technologies fail for a variety of reasons despite often being a superior product. The loss of products such as the JooJoo or the Apple Cube show that even the best and brightest issue duds.