Intel’s a chip firm. Always has been, all the time wi– Wait, what? An Intel sound morpher? Some kind of VR webcam thingie? A child’s microscope?!
Every firm seeks to increase past its core market, each to fulfill shareholders in addition to develop its gross sales alternatives. Intel has spent loads of money and time over time attempting to maneuver past processors alone and check the waters as a client model. You might see the evolution: the Intel chime (dumdumdumDUM!), the dancing bunny individuals, the growth into varied elements of the PC… and past.
Intel’s core enterprise, although, has all the time had an underlying aim: promote extra chips. What does a processor do? It processes information. What does a PC do? It processes information. If you wish to promote extra processors, then promote extra PCs, and supply them extra information. Understand these enterprise needs, 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 products put the power of the PC in a child’s hands — empowering kids to play, learn and create in new and different ways.” On Feb. 3, 1999, Intel launched what it referred to as the “Intel Play” line: a sequence of academic toys that may nudge kids in direction of utilizing a PC. Intel’s QX3 (and later QX5) had been the primary of these. It was a related microscope that might broadcast what the picture sensor noticed to a related PC by way of a USB cable.
To be honest, the QX3 might do two issues that at an extraordinary optical microscope couldn’t. Since it projected the picture to a PC’s monitor, it might spare children the necessity to peer via a lens, and will additionally present a number of children without delay what the microscope noticed. But what the QX3 “saw” was solely a 320×240 picture, which might flip a fragile amoeba right into a amorphous blob. The QX5 not less than might show photographs at 640×480 — higher, however not nice.
Intel Play Me2Cam
The Intel Play Me2Cam was just a little like Microsoft’s Kinect. Instead of transmitting your picture throughout the Internet like Skype, the Me2Cam recorded video of the person, interpreted it, and used it as a method to work together with objects in a scene. “A whole new system of play where children see themselves on the computer screen and use their own bodies to navigate in a virtual world” is how Intel described it.
The Me2Cam (related by the then-new USB customary) 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, after all, offered it had a CD-ROM.
Intel Play Computer Sound Morpher
Why you should buy (or might purchase) the Intel Computer Sound Morpher at Newegg is past us. Because principally, it stunk.
We’ve by no means used the Intel Play Creative Sound Morpher, however this YouTube assessment from just a few years in the past isn’t variety. Apparently the one factor that the Sound Morpher might do was to document your voice and play it again “like a bad dictaphone” over what seems to be a pair of flimsy USB headphones.
You might scratch your head on the different merchandise on this record, however they do seem like made with some care. Not this, apparently. It seems like a waste of cash.
Intel Wireless Series Gamepad
By 2000, Intel was full steam forward within the PC peripherals enterprise, and the corporate’s Wireless Series was designed to indicate off the “PC without wires” idea that was sizzling on the time. The Wireless Series consisted of a base station, which might hook up with a separate Intel-branded mouse and keyboard by way of “digital spread spectrum radio.”
But the weirdest machine of the bunch needed to be the wi-fi gamepad, which seemed both like some kind of remedy machine for hemorrhoids or an after-hours plaything that we don’t wish to speculate about an excessive amount of. Weirdly, those that bought it at Amazon appeared to find it irresistible.
Intel Dot.Station and Intel “PCs”
In its exuberance, Intel even made its personal PC! Well, not a PC, per se, however a “Web appliance” that actually seemed like a PC. It might hook up with the Internet, entry e mail, and even got here with a built-in phone and distant.
“The Intel Dot.Station is the result of extensive consumer research and close cooperation with our customers,” mentioned Claude Leglise, vice chairman, Intel Architecture Group and basic supervisor of the Home Products Group, on the time of the launch. “We believe we have designed a product that not only meets the needs of service providers, but also appeals to consumers who don’t own a PC and want access to the Internet.”
That most likely was a telling remark, since Intel’s PC clients most popular that clients hook up with the Internet by way of 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 Per Child challenge, geared toward seeding PCs into rural areas and growing international locations.
Intel additionally manufactured the Intel Web Tablet, a “portable browser” of a form that by no means actually went previous the prototype stage. It did join wirelessly, although it might solely actually be noteworthy if it didn’t.
Intel Personal Audio Player 3000
It’s unclear whether or not audiences embraced the Play line, or grokked that they had been primarily PC peripherals branded as toys. Perhaps as a response, in October 2001 Intel launched three devoted PC equipment: a webcam, an MP3 participant and a digital digicam.
The Personal Audio Player 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 may very well be personalized. None of it mattered. Before the month was out Apple had launched the iPod, a 5GB MP3 participant for $399 that, after all, modified the world.
Intel Pocket Digital PC Camera
At one level, a 640×480 digital digicam was state-of-the-art. Intel’s $149.99 Pocket PC Camera recorded each 640×480 photographs and 480p video, at as much as 30 frames per second, and recorded it on a then-roomy 8MB of flash reminiscence. (Unfortunately, that translated into 128 pictures or a ten-second video clip.)
Reviews of the machine on Amazon reveal that apparently clients appreciated it in spite of everything. “This camera has amazing quality, no doubt,” one mentioned. “I’ve had one for a long time and coming from someone who has owned a total of 8+ webcams in her life, trust me when I say this was the best one I’ve had.”
Other clients praised it as almost indestructible, although with a bent to shoot poor-quality video, even in good lighting.
Intel Play Digital Movie Creator
You might see the place Intel was going with this. Shoot video utilizing the $99 digicam and edit it on the PC. A CD even offered inventory footage from National Geographic that you would edit into your video of your little brother enjoying along with his G.I. Joes. (Only as much as 4 minutes, although.)
The Digital Movie Creator required a Pentium PC (aha!) and you would ship your creations over the Internet. Again, this was a tool that Intel used to promote PCs, although it’s a bit obscure how a chip firm might actually make a dent out there.
Intel Shooting Star drone
Under chief government Brian Krzanich, Intel underwent a bizarre transition: CES keynotes stuffed 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.
Perhaps the weirdest success story of Krzanich’s legacy, although, was its profitable drone enterprise. Intel created the Shooting Star, a quadcopter particularly designed for big, synchronous mild reveals that supplemented and changed fireworks reveals. Lights on the drones may very well be used to create footage within the sky, and Intel’s drones appeared at the Super 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 purchaser? Nova Sky Stories — owned by Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal.
Intel “Black Box” Set-top field
Intel was the topic of heated rumors in 2003 a couple of new set-top field that may “kill cable.” A reference design was unveiled, based mostly upon a low-voltage Celeron processor at its Intel Developer Forum, 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 concept images 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 ever watched a basketball or soccer recreation with a “replay” that may swivel round to indicate a Matrix-style 360-degree replay utilizing computer-generated gamers, that was Replay. Intel referred to as this True View, and put in techniques at dwelling of the Chicago Bulls and at Emirates Stadium, the house of the Arsenal FC soccer staff. Voke, another startup Intel bought, would offer the same perspective, however in VR.
Intel
In 2021, Intel sold off what it referred to as Intel Sports, together with True View, to Verizon, and shuttered the remaining as a part of CEO Pat Gelsinger’s refocus on Intel’s core applied sciences.
Intel RealSense cameras
It’s potential that you would embrace the Intel RealSense camera right here, a biometric know-how that grew to become 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. Of course, that was after Microsoft had launched Kinect and earlier than the advent of Windows Hello — which, once more, was extra of Microsoft’s child.
Intel even introduced a RealSense Android smartphone as a growth package! Again, although, it didn’t go wherever.
Mark Hachman / IDG
RealSense was fully separate from Intel Sports, however it 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” by way of an IPO in 2022.
Anything else?
This, after all, covers simply the bizarre {hardware} graveyard that Intel made, and killed. But, after all, Intel is a chip firm. What chips would you fee as an Intel mistake? Let us know on our PCWorld Twitter and Facebook pages, and possibly we’ll embrace them in a follow-up article.