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Disney Enters PC Market
Zebbers writes "Disney announced today from NYC that they are entering the personal computer market. With a childish design, built in content control and other kid-friendly features, it could be a breakthrough or just another specialized device flop. Do children really need their own specialized computer?" johnpaul191 points out that frogdesign designed the box, and writes "It looks sort of like a squared-off eMac (but blue), and has a flat mouse-shaped front (the ears are speakers!). It uses a a pen for on-screen input, as well as a keyboard and mouse."
Frogdesign is awesome. They've done projects for Disney before (including the Disney Cruise ship) not to mention their work in Windows XP, a longstanding relationship with Apple, Ford, Motorola... the list goes on and on.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
for Kiosks in Disney stores, Disney Land/World etc, maybe daycare centres. I expect that Disney would be bundling a suite of Disney related software titles etc. This is most definately targeting the 2-6 year old range. It may actually take off, its amazing how many people I know whos young childrens bedrooms have a Disney theme... adding a Disney PC would be the icing on the cake.
It comes bundled with ContentWatch's Internet filtering tools and multimedia children's software called Disney Flix, Pix and Mix.
/.), but content-watch is a bad program.
I believe their biggest mistake here is using Content Watch. My wonderful mother had that lousy filter installed on our computer when I was just a young-in and it is the buggiest thing I have ever seen. It crashes the computer, takes up the resources, and DOESN'T work. It blocks programs from running that are perfectly fine programs (like VTI from ticalc.org). (and one of the bugs present here is that if you leave the "this program uses a bad word 'sex'" window on and open the program again, it doesn't catch it).
Anyway, I don't mind filtering the internet for children (i know i'll get flamed by the 'yro' crowd here at
Wasn't IBM's "PC Jr." an attempt at making a computer for kids? What about the Tandy Color Computer 3 (my first "Computer" by the way)?
Full on computers geared for kids don't work...it's better having parents install kid-related software on regular PC's/Mac's...no point in buying another PC just for the tykes (instead, you could buy them educational electronic toys, but not full on computers)..
Or a touch-screen... all sorts of systems used to come with light pens etc, but now it's pretty much only the mouse except on PDAs.
I always wanted a touchscreen/pen to play RTS games with.
I'll tell you why this will flop, and it's not just some "I think disney sucks" diatribe.
In the computer industry, you either have to have a superior design and high profit margins, or deal in large volume. Niche markets for low volume in the computer world don't work. Also, tie in's between computers and other products have always flopped. Look at the barbie computer and matchbox computer. Last a couple months.
Parents buy computers, not kids. Some kids will be able to get their parents to buy this stuff, but its a very small niche, and there's no margin to justify the industrial design costs for things like this. You just won't get the volume of purchases. People like well designed computers, but they look at it more like an appliance.
Apple can get away with high cost industrial design because of their niche, and their niche has nothing to do with appealing to kids. Back in the day they targeted education in order to get kids to grow up on macs, but it had nothing to do with how the macs looked.
I also noticed this line in the end of the article:
"There may not be anything technologically new about any of the gadgets, but it's easy to imagine them inspiring toy lust. "
If that's not corporate pandering I don't know what is. This computer will not make anyone gadget envious, and either the author is an idiot for thinking that or he's kissing up to the corporate parents. I mean c'mon, people don't have printer envy these days, and joysticks and digital cameras are common place.
Finally, I'd just like to say that the spin of the poster makes it seem like disney is actually into the computer business to compete with Dell. This is just a brand tie in, and is nothing new.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I know the kids I know (6months-12years) would rather have a real pc with a real keyboard and mice because they like to use the computer cause that is what they see me doing. I showed a 2 year old my laptop for the first time and he said he didnt want to use it cause it was just a toy, he wanted to use the computer at the desk. adding a cool shape and crippling the OS does nothing to teach the children how to use a computer
Of course being a Disney computer, my first response is - so what's the DRM on it like and how badly is it locked down eg. are you actually *allowed* to do anything on it besides Disney (TM) approved actions? I just keep on thinking of another big megacorp who tries to do hardware and is part of big media *cough*Sony*cough*. They make good hardware that is badly crippled with DRM and anything else their media side wants to put in - and I don't mean crippled as in the Slashdot version "Anything with DRM is bad" but crippled as in it is actually a pain for normal people to use and people keep on mentioning it in reviews "Well this is a great piece of hardware but..." I can just imagine that Disney's dream of a perfect Disney computer is one where you have to ring Disney for permission everytime you want to do something not specifically Disney (TM) approved eg. installing software not on the Disney (TM) approved list.
I haven't RTFA'd yet, but I'm wondering if this has wireless?
That has been the most important aspect of my daughter's (5 yo) acceptance of the machine. No matter where you 'think' they want the PC, they always want to drag it somewhere else. With 802.11b, I was able to build it into a self contained unit where it could be moved anywhere she wanted. (Well anywhere there was a power cord). Now she has one of my old laptops, and can even go sans power cord.
(what does a 5 y.o. need with 'net access? Well besides the normal kids flash sites, it's amazing what you can do on a homepage. She left her ever-present stuffed lamb toy at a hotel once, and some photoshopped googling showed that lamby was 'on vacation' with all sorts of pictures from the road)
I also find this makes the machine become more than just a glorified PC with a mouse. When you put it in the kid's little world it becomes a tool for 'normal' play activities instead of another ADD training excercise. She plays Barbie.com with friends (real and stuffed) and integrates the happenings of Disney games on screen with the physical toy world around her.
When the machine is locked down at a desk, it's amazing how it becomes the sit-straight-mouse-in-hand-1000-yard-stare effect.
Of course this is anecdotal, but I bet there's some universal truth to it. So I'm interested to see if this machine is intended to be an enhancement of the kids normal playworld, or just another implementation of what's been done before.
I have to just quick agree with you. My five year old son knows how to use Gentoo/KDE better than he knows how to use Windows (or the old Mac at his pre school). It's what I use so that's what he's grown most experience with.
Granted he doesn't really know anything about "system administration" and all that stuff, but the point is that he's very familiar with "Daddy's Computer" and knows how to mount cd's and launch cedega (WineX) to get Jedi Academy running and knows how to get to Playhouse Disney, and all that sort of thing.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
I thought it was amusing when the substitute host on the Cavuto show on CNBC asked the company president if the computer would block references to Disney's Gay Days at the park. Hummina hummina hummina.
I think it will be a bad flop (yeah, children hate things made for children),but anyway it's a diseducative move.
Children have to learn computing on real computers. Real computers are NOT difficult for children (expecially now),and there was a /. story about 3-y.o. people using Linux ;)
Anyway,I remember I learned computers when I was 5, on my dad's VIC-20. I remember I was amazed I could tell that machine what to do!. I just typed :
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 10
and I stared looking that machine that did what I asked it...Ok,I asked something stupid,but I felt powerful! And I had just learned what a loop is...
Later (when I was 6-7) I learned to POKE around...and,guys,there were *worlds* in the memory of that machine! I remember I thought I would have "decrypted" the odd character noise that happened with some POKE command...
The fact is with that computer I learned how to program and how computers were made, seamlessly, and having fun. Because it was a real machine, and because I had to program to make it work. I felt powerful.
Therefore, wanna build a children-oriented computer? Just do it :
;) )
-Install Linux (Mandrake -or any other well-done KDE/Gnome desktop will work)(oh,I know this advice is pure mod-gold
-Install all xmms/mplayer codecs etc.
-DON'T install all games you can think of : tell him/her how to find and install them!
-Give your child a good Python tutorial and tell him/her "Can't you find that game?You can do YOUR GAME.Now."
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
You thought wrong
The PC is $599. I'd say that's a pretty reasonable price for any new PC. Plus it's got cute little mouse ear speakers! Ooh!
$599 is not reasonable for a toy whose novelty will wear off quite quickly. Kids grow up fast, and what will happen to that limited mousey computer in 12 months? Video game consoles last for years, as do regular computers, as do decent bicycles, Legos, even coloring books. All the while Mickey Mouse PC collects dust next to the $199 electronic keyboard and the $250 kid-sized electric car, and, in teenage years, next to that broken-down $900 go-kart in the garage. I'm amazed that there is such a market for expensive limited-use toys.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Huh? Inside of a computer educational?
Give the kids a magnifying glass and send them outside to fry ants and look at other stuff, much more educational than looking at a bunch of grey chips and shiny copper.
If I point out that you are incorrect, making me a foe does not make you any more correct.
I bought an unfinished one off ebay. It looks like it came right from the factory mid-assembly. Sanded side panel, pink handle, pink button. No decals whatsoever.
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Disney is the legal powerhouse trying to make general-purpose computers illegal. You want to be free to install any OS and perform any computation, they want to sell you a welded-shut box with pushbuttons labelled "Lion King", "Beauty and the Beast", and "Little Mermaid", and no disk drives, slots, or connectors.
This version may be crude and we may laugh at it, but this is the start of the slippery slope. This machine can utterly fail in the marketplace and it won't matter because they'll learn from it and they'll be back. If they win the war, it won't matter to them or to us how many battles they lost along the way.
When I was a kid in the 1960s nobody worried about Japanese competition because they only made junk. Twenty years later they were eating our lunch. Disney knows exactly where they want to go and they have the blessings of the current administration and they don't have the disadvantages of centuries of cultural isolation and a language barrier.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?