Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Intel Exits the Maker Movement (hackaday.com)

Posted by msmash on from the quiet-developments dept.

Reader szczys writes: Intel just killed off its last "maker movement" hardware offering without fanfare by quietly releasing a Product Change Notification PDF. The Arduino 101 is halting production on September 17th. This microcontroller board is built around the Intel Curie module around which Intel bankrolled a television series called America's Greatest Makers. News on the end of life for the Arduino 101 board follows the recent cancellations of their Joule, Galileo, and Edison boards. This is the entirety of Intel's maker offerings and seems to signal their exit from entry-level embedded hardware.

3 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Core Competency by AlanObject · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is about the 15th iteration I have witnessed of this.

    Step 1: Somebody at Intel gets a Bright Idea to develop some new market. We gots lots o cash so why not lets do it. (i.e. collect underpants)

    Step 2: ...

    Step 3: Profit.

    Step 3.1: Er, no profit. We ended up not owning the market. Pull the plug lets get back to our core competency: i386-architecture processors it is. What's AMD been doing recently?

  2. Intel microcontrollers were too expensive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When compared to Arduino Uno R3 and other microcontrollers, Intel microcontrollers were too expensive, bulky, and slow compared. No communitiy formed around these microcontrollers because Intel was unresponsive to the community. Sort of like big companies like Oracle who are unresponsive or allergic to community efforts.

    Let me see: $25 for an Ardunio UNO with a huge responsive community vs. $90 for a microcontroller from Intel where there is no community. Hmmm...

  3. Not a Surprise by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Anyone who ever seriously considered Intel's "maker" products for embedded use (as I did) would quickly find that they were power hungry and over-priced. Either one of those problems would be death in this market.

    Marketing can cover a lot of sins, but these together are really hard to overcome. "Let's market the shit out of this shit" only really works when aimed at consumers or executives. Makers are engineers. They can smell the bullshit from miles away.

    It's a healthier marketplace without such inferior offerings in it.

    --
    the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause