From the launch of new game consoles to smarter-than-ever phones, 2013 had a lot of great tech moments.
But in the fast-paced tech world, not everything runs smoothly, and not every product is a success. 2013 also brought more than a few face palms for the tech industry. From the government to the gaming world, even the biggest names faced embarrassments this year. There were massive security breaches, failed gaming launches, website disasters, half-baked products, and more.
One of the first fails of the year happened in mid-April when American Airlines, on a random Tuesday afternoon, had to halt all of its flights nationwide for several hours due to a computer glitch. Travellers had to wait in the airport for hours, and all in all, hundreds of flights were cancelled.
Ultimately, it was revealed that a problem on the airline's end caused an outage of the system responsible for printing boarding passes, online check-ins, ticketing, and tracking checked bags. But the American Airlines blunder was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to tech fails in 2013.
Check out below for a look back at nine major tech gaffes of 2013.
1. Botched SimCity Launch
After 10 long years, the beloved SimCity franchise returned on March 5. But since Electronic Arts insisted that gamers be online to access the game, its servers were quickly overloaded and players faced error messages and disconnections for days. Following the disastrous launch, EA won Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" poll for a second consecutive year.
2. Reddit’s Hunt for Boston Bombers
In the immediate aftermath of the April bombings, members of Reddit, 4chan, and other sites encouraged users to post photos and videos from the marathon online. The idea was that Internet users might spot evidence that would be of use to law enforcement, but in some cases, it ended up confusing things further. Reddit later admitted that the effort got out of hand and issued an apology.
3. Twitter #Music
Amidst considerable hype, Twitter in April unveiled a new music discovery service for the Web and mobile devices. Dubbed Twitter #music, the service promised to "change the way people find music, based on Twitter." In reality, it wound up being a huge flop. Just six months after launch, word spread that Twitter was planning to shut down the service, and it has been largely been forgotten by now.
4. Dell Fights the PC Slump
Dell this year faced an uphill battle in a market that continues to see the PC lose out to tablets and smartphones - areas in which the former stock-market darling has yet to really succeed. Following a fight with shareholders, founder Michael Dell in September completed a US$24.9 billion buyout of the company and took it private. Layoffs are likely on tap, but for now the company is asking employees to voluntarily quit in exchange for separation packages.
5. BlackBerry Woes
After a tough year that included massive job cuts, product delays, and quarterly losses, BlackBerry on Sept. 23 announced plans to sell its business and go private in a US$4.7 billion deal. Less than two months later, BlackBerry announced that CEO Thorsten Heins was out in a deal whereby Fairfax Financial would invest US$1 billion in the company rather than buy it out.
6. Healthcare.gov Launch
Oct. 1 brought healthcare access to millions, but many visitors to Healthcare.gov were thwarted by 404s and other errors, eventually prompting an apology from President Obama. Enrolment numbers have since picked up, indicating many of the early technical problems have been ironed out. Even so, as of early December, one in 10 enrolment notices contained an error.
7. Adobe Breach
Image credit: Reuters
Adobe in late October revealed it suffered a massive security breach which compromised customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders. The company initially said that 3 million people were affected, but later revised the number to 38 million. Meanwhile, Adobe wasn't the only company to experience a breach in 2013. Other high-profile victims include: Apple, Tumblr, and the Finnish government.
8. Facebook Home
The social network had grand plans to take over smartphones with Facebook Home, but the service didn't resonate with users and the only phone to come loaded with the software, the HTC First, was a complete failure. At the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in September Mark Zuckerberg admitted Home was slow to catch on, but said Facebook is committed to the product. Another much-hyped Facebook product we haven't heard much about lately: Graph Search.
9. Microsoft Surface Tablets
In a quarterly filing this July, Redmond revealed that Surface revenue totalled US$853 million between Oct. 2012 and June 2013. That might not seem too shabby, but Microsoft also incurred a US$900 million charge for Surface RT inventory adjustments. Microsoft dropped the price of the device by US$150 before basically admitting Windows RT was a total disaster. It's now hoping for more success with second-generation Surface tablets.
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