Intel’s graveyard: 12 weird, lifeless merchandise that shouldn’t have existed
Intel’s a chip firm. All the time has been, at all times wi– Wait, what? An Intel sound morpher? Some kind of VR webcam thingie? A child’s microscope?!
Each firm seeks to broaden past its core market, each to fulfill shareholders in addition to develop its gross sales alternatives. Intel has spent a whole lot of money and time through the years attempting to maneuver past processors alone and take a look at the waters as a client model. You can see the evolution: the Intel chime (dumdumdumDUM!), the dancing bunny folks, the growth into varied elements of the PC… and past.
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Intel’s core enterprise, although, has at all times had an underlying aim: promote extra chips. What does a processor do? It processes knowledge. What does a PC do? It processes knowledge. If you wish to promote extra processors, then promote extra PCs, and supply them extra knowledge. Perceive these enterprise wishes, and also you’ll perceive why Intel selected to place its identify on the next merchandise, as bizarre as they’re—after which killed them.
Meet the Intel {hardware} graveyard. (Are they weirder than the Microsoft {hardware} graveyard, although?)
Intel’s QX3/5 Microscope
“Intel Play merchandise put the ability of the PC in a toddler’s arms — empowering children to play, study and create in new and other ways.” On Feb. 3, 1999, Intel launched what it referred to as the “Intel Play” line: a sequence of instructional toys that will nudge youngsters in the direction of utilizing a PC. Intel’s QX3 (and later QX5) have been the primary of these. It was a linked microscope that would broadcast what the picture sensor noticed to a linked PC through a USB cable.
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To be honest, the QX3 may do two issues that at an atypical optical microscope couldn’t. Because it projected the picture to a PC’s monitor, it may spare children the necessity to peer by way of a lens, and will additionally present a number of children without delay what the microscope noticed. However what the QX3 “noticed” was solely a 320×240 picture, which might flip a fragile amoeba right into a amorphous blob. The QX5 at the least may show pictures at 640×480 — higher, however not nice.
Intel Play Me2Cam
The Intel Play Me2Cam was a little bit like Microsoft’s Kinect. As an alternative of transmitting your picture throughout the Web like Skype, the Me2Cam recorded video of the person, interpreted it, and used it as a strategy to work together with objects in a scene. “A complete new system of play the place youngsters see themselves on the pc display and use their very own our bodies to navigate in a digital world” is how Intel described it.
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The Me2Cam (linked by the then-new USB commonplace) shipped with a collection of video games starting from “Bubble Mania” (pop the digital bubbles as they encompass you), “Pinball” (use your arms as flippers!) and “Snow Surfin’.” All of them ran in your PC, in fact, supplied it had a CD-ROM.
Intel Play Laptop Sound Morpher
Why you should purchase (or may purchase) the Intel Laptop Sound Morpher at Newegg is past us. As a result of principally, it stunk.
We’ve by no means used the Intel Play Artistic Sound Morpher, however this YouTube evaluate from a number of years in the past is just not form. Apparently the one factor that the Sound Morpher may do was to document your voice and play it again “like a foul dictaphone” over what seems to be a pair of flimsy USB headphones.
It’s possible you’ll scratch your head on the different merchandise on this checklist, however they do look like made with some care. Not this, apparently. It feels like a waste of cash.
Intel Wi-fi Collection Gamepad
By 2000, Intel was full steam forward within the PC peripherals enterprise, and the corporate’s Wi-fi Collection was designed to point out off the “PC with out wires” idea that was scorching on the time. The Wi-fi Collection consisted of a base station, which may hook up with a separate Intel-branded mouse and keyboard through “digital unfold spectrum radio.”
Amazon
However the weirdest system of the bunch needed to be the wi-fi gamepad, which appeared both like some kind of remedy system for hemorrhoids or an after-hours plaything that we don’t wish to speculate about an excessive amount of. Weirdly, those that purchased it at Amazon appeared to adore it.
Intel Dot.Station and Intel “PCs”
In its exuberance, Intel even made its personal PC! Properly, not a PC, per se, however a “Net equipment” that actually appeared like a PC. It may hook up with the Web, entry e-mail, and even got here with a built-in phone and distant.
“The Intel Dot.Station is the results of intensive client analysis and shut cooperation with our prospects,” mentioned Claude Leglise, vice chairman, Intel Structure Group and basic supervisor of the House Merchandise Group, on the time of the launch. “We consider we’ve got designed a product that not solely meets the wants of service suppliers, but in addition appeals to shoppers who don’t personal a PC and need entry to the Web.”
That in all probability was a telling remark, since Intel’s PC prospects most popular that prospects hook up with the Web through their PCs, as a substitute. The Dot.Station didn’t final lengthy.
Neither did Intel’s Classmate PC, extra of a reference design than an precise product. The creatively-named Clamshell EF10MI2 was an adjunct to the One Laptop computer Per Youngster venture, geared toward seeding PCs into rural areas and growing nations.
Intel additionally manufactured the Intel Net Pill, a “moveable browser” of a kind that by no means actually went previous the prototype stage. It did join wirelessly, although it will solely actually be noteworthy if it didn’t.
Intel Private Audio Participant 3000
It’s unclear whether or not audiences embraced the Play line, or grokked that they have been basically PC peripherals branded as toys. Maybe as a response, in October 2001 Intel launched three devoted PC equipment: a webcam, an MP3 participant and a digital digital camera.
Amazon
The Private Audio Participant 3000 was launched on Oct. 2, 2001. Intel’s $149.99 participant shipped with 128MB of onboard flash, instruments to tear CDs into MP3 or WMA codecs, a MultiMedia Card growth slot, and a transparent plastic faceplate that could possibly be custom-made. None of it mattered. Earlier than the month was out Apple had launched the iPod, a 5GB MP3 participant for $399 that, in fact, modified the world.
Intel Pocket Digital PC Digital camera
At one level, a 640×480 digital digital camera was cutting-edge. Intel’s $149.99 Pocket PC Digital camera recorded each 640×480 pictures and 480p video, at as much as 30 frames per second, and recorded it on a then-roomy 8MB of flash reminiscence. (Sadly, that translated into 128 pictures or a ten-second video clip.)
Opinions of the system on Amazon reveal that apparently prospects appreciated it in spite of everything. “This digital camera has wonderful high quality, little doubt,” one mentioned. “I’ve had one for a very long time and coming from somebody who has owned a complete of 8+ webcams in her life, belief me after I say this was the very best one I’ve had.”
Different prospects praised it as practically indestructible, although with a bent to shoot poor-quality video, even in good lighting.
Intel Play Digital Film Creator
You can see the place Intel was going with this. Shoot video utilizing the $99 digital camera and edit it on the PC. A CD even supplied inventory footage from Nationwide Geographic that you can edit into your video of your little brother taking part in along with his G.I. Joes. (Solely as much as 4 minutes, although.)
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The Digital Film Creator required a Pentium PC (aha!) and you can ship your creations over the Web. Once more, this was a tool that Intel used to promote PCs, although it’s a bit obscure how a chip firm may actually make a dent out there.
Intel Taking pictures Star drone
Underneath chief govt Brian Krzanich, Intel underwent a bizarre transition: CES keynotes filled with BMX bikers, sensible doorways, perceptual computing, and extra. Intel was dedicated to the cult of edge networking and sensors…till it wasn’t when Krzanich unexpectedly stepped down. Intel’s love affair with sensors went with him.
Maybe the weirdest success story of Krzanich’s legacy, although, was its profitable drone enterprise. Intel created the Taking pictures Star, a quadcopter particularly designed for big, synchronous mild reveals that supplemented and changed fireworks reveals. Lights on the drones could possibly be used to create footage within the sky, and Intel’s drones appeared on the Tremendous Bowl, on the 2020 Olympics, and extra.
In 2022, Intel lastly offered off its drone enterprise, a part of Intel’s efforts to refocus itself about its core chipmaking experience. The client? Nova Sky Tales — owned by Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal.
Intel “Black Field” Set-top field
Intel was the topic of heated rumors in 2003 a couple of new set-top field that will “kill cable.” A reference design was unveiled, based mostly upon a low-voltage Celeron processor at its Intel Developer Discussion board, however the field died rapidly thereafter. Stefan Zwegers, who says that he was requested by Prodrive to design a chassis, has a number of the idea pictures on his web site.
Intel True View
Krzanich’s odd funding methods additionally included Replay, which designed a system for recording, collating, and broadcasting 3D views on main sporting occasions. If you happen to ever watched a basketball or soccer recreation with a “replay” that will swivel round to point out a Matrix-style 360-degree replay utilizing computer-generated gamers, that was Replay. Intel referred to as this True View, and put in methods at dwelling of the Chicago Bulls and at Emirates Stadium, the house of the Arsenal FC soccer workforce. Voke, one other startup Intel purchased, would supply the same perspective, however in VR.
Intel
In 2021, Intel offered off what it referred to as Intel Sports activities, together with True View, to Verizon, and shuttered the remainder as a part of CEO Pat Gelsinger’s refocus on Intel’s core applied sciences.
Intel RealSense cameras
It’s doable that you can embody the Intel RealSense digital camera right here, a biometric expertise that turned extra notable for hobbyist robotics builds than precise client electronics. In 2015, we famous that the RealSense was a puzzle: a bit of {hardware} with none actual apps to drive it. In fact, that was after Microsoft had launched Kinect and earlier than the appearance of Home windows Whats up — which, once more, was extra of Microsoft’s child.
Intel even introduced a RealSense Android smartphone as a growth package! Once more, although, it didn’t go wherever.
Mark Hachman / IDG
RealSense was utterly separate from Intel Sports activities, but it surely represented one other effort to launch machine imaginative and prescient that by no means actually went wherever. Intel discovered extra success with Mobileye, an acquisition within the autonomous automobile house which Intel “unlocked” through an IPO in 2022.
The rest?
This, in fact, covers simply the bizarre {hardware} graveyard that Intel made, and killed. However, in fact, Intel is a chip firm. What chips would you price as an Intel mistake? Tell us on our PCWorld Twitter and Fb pages, and possibly we’ll embody them in a follow-up article.
