Slashdot Mirror
Another Internet Appliance Dies
pescatello writes "Here's a CNET story describing the disappearance of the internet appliances from the market. The latest is the AOL/Gateway/Transmeta Internet Appliance.
While it won Comdex's Best in Show in 2000, it hasn't been pushed by either AOL or Gateway, and is now unavailable anywhere.
" Meanwhile, my Audrey came in yesterday.
If it's any indication of failure, the Target near me has a few Cidco Mailstation's for $24.99. Even at that price they can't sell.
It's amazing how good the Audrey actually is, if you want simple internet access from a room like your kitchen. It takes up little space, has a usable browser, calender, address book and email capabilities. What makes the Audrey so nice is that you can integrate it seemlessly into your home LAN. It will talk to your mail and dns server and mount file systems using nfs or smb, no need for some bogus proprietay subscription service.
The reason the Audry failed is simple, it is a great little machine for $89 but it's not worth $499. For $89 you have lots of people buying them and playing. 3Com and other appliance would be smart to follow what is going on over a linux-hacker.net and audreyhacking.com and re-evalutate their market strategies when they see what happens when you make a kickass little toy like the Audrey available to the computer literate community at an accessible price.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I just hope you don't have to feed your Audry blood to make it grow, like I did when I had one in my flower shop.
Mod point free since 2001
I think the average out of the loop American wants to buy a computer so they can learn about computers - that's a big deal to most people. Just because they only need internet doesn't mean they're interested in an appliance the none of their neighbors use.
Now if we could only spread the word that Windows isn't the most educational OS out there, we'd be set.
spacefem.com
$400 or less gets you a PC that can do everything you want on the internet, and has the advantage of a hard-disk. All of this internet appliance stuff seemed to miss that point. The idea that you had a $200 box that required a $40,000 box at the other end to act as its brain seemed to be... well brain dead.
The internet is just one reason that people buy a PC, playing games, editing documents, scanning in your photos are all common reasons that people get a PC. Internet appliances couldn't do these things as well as a PC and so deserved their fate. Bad business idea, bad tech idea. Remember X Servers ? They made sense when a Unix box was $20,000 and you could see the reduction in cost, but with internet appliances you would have to sell a huge number of boxes to cover the costs of the backend servers.
Then there are the really stupid ideas... an internet appliance which is basically just a browser, a standalone browser and email client. Something that is cheap and doesn't require a backend server, but does bugger all, and does it worse than a PC. BushTV in the UK is an example of that, and several of these other elements are good examples of abject failure of brains (I know I worked for a company that had such a stupid idea, I worked on abstract software for STBs, they decided to spend $3m on building a box... went bust).
Internet appliances will succeed... when they are appliances. A cooker which connects to food.com or whatever to get receipes, a fridge which connects to the supermarket to order replacement Red Bull, a phone which reads out your emails.
But not when it is a crap PC.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
The www.BBC.co.uk is reporting about this little device?
Nice little unit, as the iopener, audrey, AOL/Gateway Unit from this article and the rest - but *will* this ever come to market? I am doubtfull...
Low end PCs are a cheap as appliances, because of economies of scale. All you need to do is to put a really simple start up interface on it in place of the MS-OS-from-hell. Could be Linux-based or something else.
But you know what internet appliances can do? They can be supplemental to your own PC. How about a device that allows me to check my mail from the TV by using my existing connection? Or remote control my PC to start printing something, so that I can go upstairs later and just pick it up? How about a touch screen device that I have right on the table in the front hallway that can rapidly pull up a traffic or weather channel before I head out the door on the way to work (something I plan to make my Audrey do)? I don't want to surf on my tv or my touch panel. I have specific types of information that I want, and if I can find a supplemental device that will deliver those things to me quickly wherever I happen to be, then I'm gonna be all over it.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
$599? Are you kidding? The whole point of making something that's less than a computer is that it costs less. You can get computers for $599 that can do just about anything. Look at the audrey- didn't sell when it was $499, but now for $89 they're selling well (got mine!) and there're communities around hacking it and generally enhancing it. Of course the $89 doesn't cover what 3Com paid to make it, but $499 was still overpriced. On second hand... Maybe they should take a hint from the hacking communities around the I-Opener and the Audrey and have an open source internet appliance- they can sell it cheaply because all it'd cost is the hardware.
Reading some of the comments about the "obvious" failure of these internet appliances makes me think many slashdot readers have crystal balls. Many of these companies banked on broadband access to the internet to be commonplace within the time frame of their business plans.
If every house has a T1 line to it, an internet appliance makes a lot of sense for the average consumer. The extra network traffic wouldn't slowdown average applications since the bandwidth is there for it.
And it makes sense to have a central computer requiring zero administrative work by Joe Public. Their appliance would just work with the latest and greatest software. For the those wearing linux-colored glasses, imagine having your computer always running the latest and greatest distribution with no work or compatibility headaches on your end.
The real failure of the internet appliances can be blamed on communication companies that couldn't find a way to make broadband a reality fast enough. With the recent failures of DSL and wireless internet providers, it seems that not only has the crop withered, ie. the appliances, but the farm isn't worth keeping either!
Looking at my personal crystal ball, if the phone companies, cable companies, et al. get their act together and provide broadband access to substantially more customers at reasonable rates, internet appliances will be back.
Ok...suddenly the impulse buyer in me is saying, "I want one" and I need to quell that hunger. Can anyone who's purchased (and hacked) an Audrey provide us with more info. Is it worth it?
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
If you made one of these out of a PlayStation it would sell like hotcakes:
It's just what Sony and AOL both need to fight Microsoft. I wouldn't use it myself, but I'd definately buy one for my mother so we could finally communicate by e-mail instead of running up phone bills.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Lets see,
You can sell an internet "appliance" and make money if you (a) subsidize the cost with internet service or (b) charge an arm & leg. We all know that the former doesn't seem to work too well (*cough* iOpener *cough*) and charging an arm/leg doesn't work well because laptops can replace the devices with more functionality and practicality.
As I've said before, we need an open "disposable" PC form factor standard. Get rid of the ZIF socket, dimms and expansion slots and go with an embedded (as in soldered on the board) processor, ram, video, etc type of solution. Hell, with RAM going as cheap as it is, I don't see why the cheap end of the PC spectrum hasn't gone to this already. You could probably do 1Ghz, 256Mb, video, TV-out, audio, ethernet & 56K for under $150 in quantity.
What happens when nForce and its variants is small enough to sell to CPU manufacturers as an on-chip option? This is probably happening already. Didja ever wonder why nVidia and AMD are so buddy/buddy when the Xbox is Intel-based? Expect to see an AMD system-on-a-chip soon...
What I am getting at is that the open PC architecture is one of the things that made the damn thing so popular. However, its also the very thing that makes it large (ever priced a latop motherboard?). BUT IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE. The market could obviously bring the economies of scale to a small PC solution. This could be used in anything from the appliance to a laptop (or TVs and radios).
All in a cheap, open standard...
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
These little boxes are marketed as "cheap" PC alternatives. In which case they are looking at a segment of society that typically doesn't have computers and isn't too interested in them. These are people who probably grow up with little exposure to computers and don't use them at work. Without a printer, they don't make a good word processor, so they lack an important PC functuality.
Now the real question is whether there is a use for the internet with people that don't want a real PC. Seems to me the answer is no. Email and internet access are useful to the tech savvy and those of us who are used to them, but people can still survive in blissful ignorance without them. Seems to me that there is just no market where these things are targetted, especially at several hundred dollars plus monthly subscription charges.
Why would anyone who is ignorant of PCs want to get online in the first place? The only thing that comes to mind is to chase the fad, but people that buy purely for those reasons, rarely go for cheap crippleware. Seems to me you'd have better luck selling a $300, bare bones word processing system.
Maybe, one of the reasons is that, as long as they keep adding more complicated stuff to web sites, it's never viable to produce a cheap (ie, all in hardware) web browsing device. (I did rant on this subject before.)
/. and Need To Know.
First it was frames (which fucked the Web TVs), then all this layers, DHTML crap. What next?
If the stuff is cheap and in hardware then upgrading your browser or downloading this week's plugin is not really an option.
I bet that lots of companies could produce a cheap, simple browsing device - providing all you wanted to browse was
Does anyone else want to join a Keep Websites Simple/Kill All Graphic Designers movement?
This sig made only from recycled ASCII
I haven't seen this posted in the discussion yet... One can purchase an Audrey for $89, brand new in a sealed-by-3Com box, at Tiger Direct. I have two of them, and they're quite fun to play with. :-)
- Eric
That hideous price tag is now down to $89, plus $30 for the USB Ethernet adapter if you have a LAN at home (this is at TigerDirect). Audrey still works fine, if all you want to do is e-mail and light web browsing (the "channels" of presumably specialized content no longer work, but otherwise the unit is fully functional).
If you do a little relatively easy hacking, you can get a GUI text editor onto it that could be a passable word processor, and Audrey does hook up to certain USB printers with no modification.
Most people are hacking the shit out of them, though-- they make great little terminals for controlling home automation and stuff-- I have two.
~Philly
O.K., Then why hasn't someone created the obvious (IMNSHO) appliance? Namely one that:
1. has an 10/100 (or even GigE) Ethernet interface;
2. can receive streamed audio and video and decode it to the appropriate outputs: analog stereo audio, S/P-DIF digital audio, Dolby AC-3 5.1 digital (possibly analog as well), composite video, S/Video, RGBHV and or SD/HD component video, 1394 transport of audio and video, as well as the ubiquitous CH3/4 RF modulater A/V; [obvously not all of these are required on all versions of the product, but some A/V streaming support is essential];
3. Provide a Web-like control interface for such remote sources, and possibly a complete browser.
Options might include multiple A/V inputs for existing local components (and the ubiquitous IR controller), along with local (or remote) HTML "interface pages" for providing a UI to control them; or even an embedded 10/100 Mb/s switch.
The idea is to try to (a) allow for A/V data to be retrieved from an existing home server, and (b) tie in all the other legacy devices you have (perhaps via some kind of outboard adapter). Current attempts at "universal controls" are clumsy at best.
I just got a new Sony 32" HDTV ready set, and HDTV satellite/terrestrial receiver. The set has multiple inputs, and the receiver can provide different resolution material on multiple outputs, but switching resolutions requires controlling BOTH the receiver output AND the set input. Alas, the only remote which does this is the receiver remote which lacks the fancy split picture and other TV controls. Yes, I could program a "universal remote", but it would lack the necesary buttons. Things like a Pronto help, but are a hack at best: I should just plug things together, maybe download a "driver" or "plug-in" of some kind to the device I described above, and it should "just work".
Now, you're all thinking, "1. Use a PC. 2. Do it under [GNU/]Linux. 3. GPL the code and release it". Well, fine, except: (a) PCs are ugly, (b) PCs are noisy. I haven't found one quiet enough to do the job in a living/family room setting.
You could've hired me.
Humorless moderators: -1 Blinding Flash Of The Obvious
Moderators with a sense of humor: +.5 Giggleworthy
/Brian
...and I'll show you a Web Pad.
The crap released thus far as IA's are not. End of story.
"And like that
Oh, definitely. Actually, one of the nice things about the iOpener was its form factor -- create something of roughly the same design only don't cripple it and you have what I'd consider to be a pretty nice OEM what-can-we-do-with-this sort of machine. That's one thing none of the rest of these things on the market have/had.
Anyway, I have to add my voice to the chorus saying, "Shocked? Not hardly." The fact is that a computer is a computer, and if you gut it it's not going to sell. I think even non-geeks realize that; why sell a Mailstation when you can use nearly the same parts with minor enhancements to bring back the glory days of the Trash-80 Model 100?
/Brian
Take the I-pod - Who needs another MP3 player? "But it's small, you can store other files on it and it's firewire". Only when you start adding features do some of these consumer electronics start attracting interest.
Rather than sell a dedicated internet appliance, add a capability to an established platform, such as PS2. Sony would be able to market the hell out of it. They could sell controllers that have LEDs and hotbuttons for e-mail. Everybody would run out to buy keyboards and mice for the PS2. You just need some storage, OS & software, and preferably a high-bandwidth connection. Now would be a good time for that Linux distro to come out in America. Sony could smack the X-box.