Meta Ray-Ban Display: Zuckerberg’s demo fail wasn’t the most cringe in tech history

You can like Mark Zuckerberg for everything he has built; You can hate him with a passion for the same reason.

But just for a moment, when the meta -PDG stands on stage in its Meta Ray -Ban displays and does not manage to perform the easiest possible task that the glasses charged by AI have been designed – capture a WhatsApp call – it is no longer Zuckerberg the big and powerful.

He’s just a guy, standing in clumsy silence in front of an audience of thousands of people, asking them to ignore a strong ringing in progress.

We have seen that many of these technologies fail in products of products over the years, the annoying moments that remind us that we see human beings struggling powerfully in the arena of the gods of demo. Sometimes they are soft (Craig Federighi d’Apple ahead of hanging up on his mother while showing a new operating system), but above all, they are annoying to the point of cringing teeth.

Above all, we look at someone who was not the biggest presenter to start (what technological nerd is it?) Fleuvant when a defect in advanced technology has turned a scene that they have been practicing for as long as a high school a play. You would be forgiven to feel like a parent who wants to put the camera at this stage.

So yes, Zuckerberg’s demo enters the Tech Fail Hall of Fame (and since Apple will no longer even do technological demos live during his Keynotes, he can at least be applauded to give him a blow). But it is always a recruit error compared to these jewels of the history of technology.

1. Steve Jobs begs the public for more wifi

Which technological nerd was The largest presenter? You will get few arguments of anyone in Silicon Valley: Steve Jobs, whose Keynotes have prospered on a feeling of intimacy with the public. (I have seen this on several occasions, including the legendary unveiled of the iPhone 2007, which had its own range of interesting moments).

But even powerful jobs could turn away or become furious. In 2010, he launched a camera that failed to connect to an iMac to a handle. And in the demo of the iPhone 4 above, Jobs spends uncomfortable minutes in fact not to speak to the public, a rarity, while he tries to load the New York Times On Safari.

Later in the speech, being jobs, he continues to bury not a handle, but all the public, many of whom are technological journalists wearing mobile hotspots. It comes with receipts: “There are 570 wifi base stations operating in this room” – before asking everyone to close their laptops and close their hot spots so that the demo can work.

“The Wifi” is always an essential excuse for technological demos that are going wrong; We saw this when opening Zuckerberg. But these jobs are not a case in which we can say wifi was to blame.

2. Elon Musk breaks a Cybertruck window

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“Funny each time you look at him.” It was the Mashable exam of the 2019 demo when Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, went too far by trying to demonstrate how the windows of his cybertruck, then to years of production, would be.

Here’s how it went. The main designer of the Cybertruck dropped metal balls on Tesla glass plates that do not break. Then Musk insisted for the designer throw Truck balls. Having put a hole in a window, it continues to double and the cybertruck obtains two Smash marks in the shape of a ball.

What retrospectively can be the first sign that Cybertruck was intended to become an entire stainless steel bucket – and this also seems an appropriate summary of the way Musk has been fraying a path through the years since.

3. Microsoft surface freezes

The infamous “blue screen of death” windows may no longer be, but its heritage continues in the best known product of Microsoft fails. The best known: time Bill Gates was on stage next to a Windows 98 machine that crashed while trying to make Daisy chain too many USB devices.

But is it really a classic demonstration? No way; Gates had an outing. “It must be the reason why we do not yet send Windows 98,” he joked.

To be really legendary, a demonstration failure must act the demonstrator and mark the image of the product in a very public manner. And in the Microsoft Annals, there is no bigger example than the president of Windows, Steven Sinofsky, revealing what the company hoped to be his iPad Killer, the surface tablet.

Sinofsky’s problem was that he doesn’t Get a blue death screen; His surface was simply freezing while he was trying to “go smoothly” on the Internet Explorer. The next few seconds undoubtedly haunted his nightmares, and can haunt yours, while Sinofsky tried to make his way through the frost by Turn your public tablet. Yes, it will work!

4. Google Gemini fails twice

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Regarding the demo, the AI ​​era failure, Zuckerberg has a long way to go if he wants to challenge Google for the crown.

The research giant has demonstrated it to Google I / O 2025, where a live translation demonstration has produced what was so far, the most infamous intelligent glasses of the year fail. But the real clumsiness of the moment was tempered by the fact that the demo was described as “very risky” in advance and closed the second where it stopped working.

For a real classic start, you need a failing product twice With a so-called easy task, he is asked to do, ideally with a wheel moment that turns when his software is blocking. This is what happened during a “Made by Google” event in 2024, where the main director of the Dave Lemon product tries to show how his pixel can watch a concert poster by Sabrina Carpenter and determine if there is space in his calendar for him to get tickets.

Gemini, Google’s AI, seems to go up the nose to the very idea; Lemon demand disappears, not once but twice. In particular, Lemon finally finishes working it After Invoke “the gods of the demo”.

Memo to all the leaders who wish to avoid this list: the gods of the demo can be fictitious deities, but calling for their help certainly does not hurt.