The Wii was extremely popular. For years, it outsold every other console combined by several orders of magnitude.

Netbooks absolutely were overhyped, and the market for them died really quickly. They were barely usable, and by 2010 when tablets really started hitting the market, there wasn’t a space for them anymore.

HDTVs weren’t overhyped, they were just expensive, and in 2008 there wasn’t that much content to take advantage of it. I had a 32" 720p TV that I paid nearly $700 for in 2007. Now, you can gt a 40-something inch 4K tv for a little over $200, and there’s plenty of content to make it worthwhile (though the real-world benefit of 4k on such a small set is debatable).

The first iPhone was so incredibly polarizing at the time. The hype machine leading up to that announcement was unlike any other product launch I can recall. So it was never going to live up to that kind of hype. And while it was limited in features for it’s time, it was clear more was on the horizon. And given how it not only revolutionized the phone market, but also the web as a whole, we know how it all ended up.

To be fair, a lot of these are accurate, or at least were at the time.

• Multi-GPU just never caught on. There’s a reason you don’t see even the most hardcore gaming machines running SLI today.

• The Wii’s novelty wore off fairly quickly (about the time Kinect happened), and it didn’t have much of a lasting impact on the gaming industry once mobile gaming slurped up the casual market.

• Spore is largely forgotten, despite the enormous hype it had before release. It’s kind of the Avatar of video games.

• It took years for 64-bit to become relevant to the average user (and hell, there are still devices being sold with only 4GB of memory even today!). Plenty of Core 2 Duo machines still shipped with 32-bit versions of Windows and people didn’t notice or care because basically no apps average people cared about were 64-bit native back then and you were lucky to have more than 4GB in your entire machine, let alone need more than that for one program.

• Battlestar Galactica (2003) fell off sharply after season 2 and its ending was some of the most insulting back-to-nature religious tripe that has ever had the gall to label itself as science-fiction.

• Downloading movies over the internet ultimately fell between the cracks outside of piracy. Most people stream films and TV now, and people who want the extra quality tend to buy a Blu-Ray disc rather than download from iTunes (can you even still do that with modern shows?)

• I definitely know people who didn’t get an HDTV until 4K screens hit the market, and people still buy standard-def DVDs. Hell, they’re still outselling Blu-Rays close to 20 years later. Calling HD a dud is questionable, but it was definitely not seen as a must-have by the general public, partly because that shit was expensive back in 2008.

• The Eee PC and the other netbooks were only good when they were running a lightweight operating system like Linux or Windows XP. Once Windows 7 Starter became the operating system of choice for netbooks, the user experience fell of a cliff and people tired of them. Which is a shame, because I love little devices like UMPCs.

• The original iPhone was really limited for 2007. No third-party applications, no 3G support, no voice memos, you could only get it on a single carrier… the iPhone family did make a huge impact in the long run, but it wasn’t until the 3GS that it was a true competitor to something like a Symbian device.

The only entry on this list that’s really off the mark is Facebook, which even at the time was quickly reshaping the world. And I say that as someone who hates Zuck’s guts and has proudly never had a Facebook account.

The only ones that look wrong to me are iPhone, Wii, and downloading movies from the internet. The rest are dead on. HD literally did exactly what they said, as soon as it got popular it was already on to 2k then 4k then 8k.

They said 64bit computing explicitly calling out the need for more 64bit apps. Dead on as well. When apple went 64bit only there was a huge uproar, even from me, because even in 2018 that was a huge problem.

Facebook they literally agree it’s fun and distracting but that it’s not revolutionary so there’s no reason for the hype. It’s the same thing as with TikTok.

I’m really surprised with how accurate it is honestly.

Dang I had no idea .LGBT was a top level domain

HD only got even more HD.

That’s exactly what they were saying, no? “even more HD” = UHD.

Downloading movies from the internet (is wildly overhyped)

lol what does that even mean

(amazing, everything you said was wrong)[https://youtu.be/2sRS1dwCotw]

I was going to say that I agree iPhones are smartphones are of no benefit, they don’t do anything, I’m being sarcastic, but looking closer at the list, how did they get it all so very wrong?

Don’t need 64 bit for more than 4GB? Every new computer should have 32GB and 64GB is not unreasonable.

Don’t need full HD? How does 8K resolution sound with 16K being developed?

I question their basic knowledge and experience with technological advancements for higher demand, more complicated work loads, and adcancements for security protections like 64 bit memory address randomization that can’t exist on 32 bit hardware.

Since I love playing devil’s advocate, here’s a couple of points in their defense:

Multi-GPU videocards: Pretty much dead, it’s just not efficient.

64-bit computing: At the time was indeed slightly overhyped because while your OS was 64-bit, most software was still 32-bit, games in particular. So games couldn’t really use more than 4 GB of memory. And that was standard for multiple years after this article (this was 2008, 64-bit Windows had been out for ages, and yet 3 years later the original Skyrim release was still 32-bit. Games having 64-bit binaries included was a huge thing at the time) Now most software is 64-bit and yes, NOW it’s standard.

High definition: Depends, did they mean HD or Full-HD? Because the former certainly didn’t last long for most people. Full HD replaced it real quick and stayed around for a while. Of course, if they meant Full-HD then hell no, they were hella wrong, it’s been mainstream for a while and only now is being replaced by 1440p and 4K UHD.

iPhone: The FIRST one as a singular product really didn’t live up to the hype. It was missing features that old dumbphones had. Of course the overall concept very much did revolutionize the phone market.

While I don’t think the iphone is over-hyped I’ve started fantasizing about going back to a dumb phone. The LG enV 2 is still the best phone I ever owned.

• replaceable battery that lasted 3 days
• headphone jack
• physical keyboard
• fit in shirt pocket
• no bloatware