Software or hardware that compels the user to spend more time tweaking, configuring, adding-on, and generally serving the machine than they do actually using it.
This includes:
- a notorious proprietary operating system that requires regular yearly outlays of time and money. And the CPU manufacturer it rode in on.
- LinuxDistributions that never work when installed but entail nights and weekends of searching, downloading, combining and tweaking packages.
- hardware manufacturers that advertise "plug and play" but don't have the drivers ready for your OS revision.
- the many open source programmers that HelpSourceForgeSuck.
- just about any Unix WindowManager.
Here's another: an editor (with its own wiki, even!) with version numbers past the teens that buries its (estimate) 1500 preferences, but includes a Rogerian psychotherapist to help you deal with the sheer overload of knobs to tweak.
Could you be referring to MicrosoftWord? [No, Emacs; the comment was literal in all respects, not satirical (aside from some hyperbole about intentions). Emacs is a much larger phenomenon than non-users could possibly imagine -- speaking as a vi user.]
Not sure that this one qualifies, as EmacsEditor is actually useful out of the box, unlike the other examples above.
Speaking as an Emacs user, I have found Vim to be more useful straight out of the box...