The Ugliest Products in Tech History

There are some things that are so sleek and gorgeously crafted you wonder how they could have come from such, er, less-than-glamorous forebears. Exhibit A is Liv Tyler. Exhibit B is the Motorola Razr, whose ancestor is the DynaTAC 8000X--the very first cell phone. At an unwieldy 10 inches tall (not including the antenna), the blocky 28-ounce 8000X wasn't all that visually or ergonomically appealing even in the big-hair, skinny-leather-tie 1980s. However, people were so awed by the concept of a truly mobile phone when the 8000X made its 1983 debut that thousands of people happily dropped $3995 for the sake of being cutting-edge. By 1984 there were over a quarter of a million wireless subscribers worldwide.