Taking things that have already been invented and slapping their logo onto it is pretty much the modus operandi of Apple at this point. As such, we think its important to remind everyone that Apple once released a computer so bad it had 100% failure rate. The Apple III.You’re probably thinking right now, how the fuck could a computer possibly fail 100% of the time? Well we have two words that explain that for you, Steve Jobs.
According to technicians who helped build the Apple III, Steve Jobs insisted that that he wanted the computer to be built without any fans or vents so that it would be almost entirely silent. Such demands were common of Jobs who often tasked engineers with seemingly impossible tasks to make products fit with his idea of perfection. For example Jobs once asked engineers to make the first iPod smaller after seeing a prototype and becoming enraged at its unwieldy size. When the engineers told him this simply wasn’t possible, he threw it into a fishtank and pointed to the bubbles that came out of it, stating that if there was room for air, there was empty space that was being wasted.
While this worked for the iPod, Jobs’ insistence that Apple III have no vents understandably led to it being, no shit, massively prone to overheating. To try and circumvent this Apple engineers designed the computer to have a solid aluminium base (aluminium being an excellent natural conductor of heat), thinking that it would act as a heat sink for the internal components.
That didn’t really work out though and the computer would often overheat so much that its internal components would expand and pop out of place. Luckily, Apple had a very advanced solution for any user suffering from this problem, pick up the entire computer and drop it onto the fucking ground. If you think we’re being at hyperbolic about that, we’re not. Apple’s official response to Apple III computers breaking due to a problem they were directly responsible for was to “lift it six inches off the desk” and then drop it to let the dislodged components smash back into place. And it worked which is, actually kind of awesome and we wish more things could be fixed by doing that.
Other problems included Apple soldering the chips inside the machine too aggressively into place, resulting in them constantly channelling their inner Johnny Five and short circuiting all of the time.
As you’d expect, the Apple III sold worse than an Xbox in Japan, reportedly shifting only 75,000 units, 20% of which had to be replaced months after being bought because they sucked harder than a blowjob in the vacuum of space.
So, while you’re reading about all of the cool new things Apple are going to release next year, remember that they once released a computer so bad it literally failed 100% of the time and still charged the equivalent of $12,500 for it.
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