by , 1:25 PM EDT, April 4th, 2007

The Apple Newton/MessagePad, the Lisa and the NeXT Platform have been nominated by Computerworld as one of the biggest technology flops of all time on Wednesday. They were on a list of 21 products that included E-books, the IBM PC Jr., and OS/2.

The Lisa and NeXT Platform were runners up because they had considerable success for a short period of time.

Newton MessagePad

"So why did Newton flop? One reason was the ridicule heaped on it by talk show comedians and comic strips (most notably "Doonesbury"), which focused on the supposed inaccuracy of the handwriting recognition," Computerworld said.

Even though the Newton was a flop in the middle 1990s, it was the technology revolution that paved the way for the next generation of PDAs and today's smart phones.