Not every Apple item has been a success

NEW YORK — When a Roman general returned from a successful campaign and was rewarded with a triumphal parade through the city, a slave stood behind him on his chariot to whisper the words "Memento mori" in his ear.

The Latin phrase means "remember that you are mortal" and was intended to keep the general's pride manageable. With the launch of the tremendously hyped iPhone soon upon us, it may be worth reminding Apple Inc. and the buying public that not every product the company has put out has been as successful as say, Julius Caesar's conquest of France.

So here's a memento mori for Apple, listing some of its greatest misses:

• The iTunes phone, 2005. It's easy to forget that the iPhone isn't Apple's first venture into the cell-phone business. Motorola Inc. launched the ROKR in late 2005 in partnership with Apple. As a phone, it was decent if unexciting, but as a music player, it fell far short of the iPod. It would hold only 100 songs, and transferring them from the computer was a slow process. It was also criticized for not enabling music downloads over the cellular network, a limitation that will also apply to the iPhone. Some even called the ROKR "the iPhone."

• The Newton, 1993. The iPhone is a slab with a few buttons, mainly controlled through a touch screen. That pretty much also describes the Newton, a personal organizer that was hailed as revolutionary when it came out. "Well before its time" better describes it. Text was entered by writing on the screen with a stylus, but the Newton was quite poor at interpreting it.

Palm Inc. later got the concept of a stylus-based handheld organizer to work by creating a special alphabet and making the device more pocketable. But in recent years, Palm has moved away from emphasizing the stylus in favor of built-in keyboards (as on its Treo smart phone).

The iPhone will rely on an on-screen keyboard for text entry, rather than a stylus and handwriting recognition. It remains to be seen whether users will take to typing on a screen that provides no tactile feedback.

Microsoft's software for Ultra-Mobile PC tablets, which launched last year from a variety of manufacturers, provides a touch-screen keyboard, but Samsung evidently didn't think that was enough. In the second version of its UMPC, it included a small Treo-like hardware keyboard next to the screen.

• The Cube, 2000. This small desktop computer was beautifully encased in a cube of clear plastic. It won design awards but was a flop in stores because of its high price. Speaking of which, the iPhone will start at $499.