[DigitalToday reporter Kyungmin Hong] As Apple marks its 50th anniversary on April 1, painful examples of hardware failures that were overshadowed by years of innovation are again drawing attention among experts and consumers.

On March 28 local time, IT outlet TechRadar held a reader poll to pick Apple's worst device in its history to mark the 50th anniversary and released the results. The rankings reflected consumers' blunt assessments from design flaws to the failure of excessive pricing policies. They showed, without filtering, a record of trial and error that even Apple, an icon of innovation, could not avoid.

The poll's top dishonour went to the 2020 Mac Pro Wheel Kit, which won an overwhelming 56 percent of the vote. Despite its high price of $700, it received failing marks on practicality because it lacks a brake to lock the wheels, allowing the computer to roll on its own. It drew criticism as a representative case of putting form before function and as a result of a company's excessive pursuit of profit.

Second place went to the mixed reality headset Vision Pro with 14 percent. Its technical achievement was recognised, but its high price of $3,499 was cited as a decisive barrier to mass adoption. Heavy weight that affected comfort and a lack of content were also analysed as major reasons for its commercial failure.

Third place went to the Magic Mouse 2, whose charging port is on the bottom, making it unusable while charging. It was assessed as a typical example of an upside-down design that fixated only on a clean exterior.

Products that sparked controversy over durability and convenience also featured heavily. The FineWoven case, introduced as a replacement for leather cases but discontinued after 1 year due to defects such as easy scratching and staining, ranked fourth. The so-called hockey puck mouse, which delivered the worst grip with its round design, came fifth.

The iPhone 5C, which positioned itself as a low-cost model but had weak price competitiveness, and the 1990s PDA Newton MessagePad, whose handwriting recognition was inaccurate, followed.

Serious defect cases from the past were also mentioned again. The Apple III, released in the 1980s, suffered the humiliation of a full recall of 14,000 units due to defects such as internal chips coming loose from their sockets or the body melting from overheating. The third-generation iPod Shuffle, which removed buttons and put controls on the earphone cable, reducing intuitiveness, also made the list. So did the first-generation Siri Remote, criticised for durability and usability of its glass trackpad, and the 2013 Mac Pro, which revealed limits in internal expandability and earned the nickname “trash can”.

TechRadar said that although Apple has written many success stories over the past 50 years, the selected failures are an important indicator of what happens when technological innovation fails to combine with users' practical convenience or reasonable value. Apple is reportedly seeking a sweeping shift in its hardware strategy, including recently discontinuing the wheel kit and the Mac Pro lineup that were named worst in the survey.