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