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I'm not sure if the directX port ever saw the light of day. At that point the top brass were putting their hopes in the 'Network Computer' [1] and Set Top Boxes

by ajb 2y ago

I'm not sure if the directX port ever saw the light of day. At that point the top brass were putting their hopes in the 'Network Computer' [1] and Set Top Boxes, so it may have shipped with one of those, or been intended to. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer_Reference_Profile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer_Reference_Pro...

VelesDude 2y ago
The NC is one of those things that feels like it was simply to far ahead of where the technology and the mind set of users was. Nowadays it would have much more traction thanks to SaaS. In tech, one step ahead is an innovator. Two step ahead is a martyr.
- ajb 2y ago
  Yeah, this was back in the days of dial-up. Chromebooks are effectively the modern NC
  - VelesDude 2y ago
    A great example. Chromebooks also managed to also take the better ideas of Netbooks and go with them.
- flomo 2y ago
  Trivia at this point. But the Oracle Network Computer was a low-end x86 box running FreeBSD and a full-screen Netscape Navigator. Very much a product of its time. (WebTV, later purchased by Microsoft, was the more successful product in this space.)
  - xyzzy3000 2y ago
    Acorn did the reference profile NC for Oracle, and it was an ARM7-based machine with NCOS, a stripped down version of RISC OS. The Acorn-built NCs were then sold under a variety of brandings, including Acorn's own and Xemplar (the Acorn/Apple education collaboration in the UK). Was the Oracle Network Computer a later variant?
    - flomo 2y ago
      Possibly, this was after it was spun-off as a separate company.
- squarefoot 2y ago
  > The NC is one of those things that feels like it was simply to far ahead of where the technology and the mind set of users was. They were just like X dumb terminals that predated them by about a decade: far behind what the technology was offering with storage and computing power becoming cheaper every year. I'm glad they never caught up, and hope the same happens to Chromeboxes/books; I don't want prices of common hardware I use go up because of market shrinkage due to lots of people ditching real computers in favor of dumb terminals where even the simplest service is something that they must access and run remotely with no or reduced local storage/computing power. Sorry for having an unpopular opinion, but to me SaaS is like going back 40-50 years to the mainframes era, and essentially is a way to put everything behind a counter so that users can be charged tomorrow for what today is still free.
repelsteeltje 2y ago
Brian McCullough's book How the Internet Happened (https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone/dp/1631493078 https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone...) angles this in terms of the centralized digital superhighway versus the open distributed internet. (Where thin clients, set top boxes, etc. are in the first group and web browsers and WWW protocol are the second.) Essentially, by 2005 the open internet had won, but the iPhone (or more precisely: the App store) became the dream of a thin client and became the platform NCs had initially targeted — turning the internet into a walled garden with a vengeance.

by ajb 2y ago

VelesDude 2y ago

The NC is one of those things that feels like it was simply to far ahead of where the technology and the mind set of users was. Nowadays it would have much more traction thanks to SaaS. In tech, one step ahead is an innovator. Two step ahead is a martyr.

ajb 2y ago
Yeah, this was back in the days of dial-up. Chromebooks are effectively the modern NC
- VelesDude 2y ago
  A great example. Chromebooks also managed to also take the better ideas of Netbooks and go with them.
flomo 2y ago
Trivia at this point. But the Oracle Network Computer was a low-end x86 box running FreeBSD and a full-screen Netscape Navigator. Very much a product of its time. (WebTV, later purchased by Microsoft, was the more successful product in this space.)
- xyzzy3000 2y ago
  Acorn did the reference profile NC for Oracle, and it was an ARM7-based machine with NCOS, a stripped down version of RISC OS. The Acorn-built NCs were then sold under a variety of brandings, including Acorn's own and Xemplar (the Acorn/Apple education collaboration in the UK). Was the Oracle Network Computer a later variant?
  - flomo 2y ago
    Possibly, this was after it was spun-off as a separate company.
squarefoot 2y ago
> The NC is one of those things that feels like it was simply to far ahead of where the technology and the mind set of users was. They were just like X dumb terminals that predated them by about a decade: far behind what the technology was offering with storage and computing power becoming cheaper every year. I'm glad they never caught up, and hope the same happens to Chromeboxes/books; I don't want prices of common hardware I use go up because of market shrinkage due to lots of people ditching real computers in favor of dumb terminals where even the simplest service is something that they must access and run remotely with no or reduced local storage/computing power. Sorry for having an unpopular opinion, but to me SaaS is like going back 40-50 years to the mainframes era, and essentially is a way to put everything behind a counter so that users can be charged tomorrow for what today is still free.

repelsteeltje 2y ago

Brian McCullough's book How the Internet Happened (https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone/dp/1631493078 https://www.amazon.com/How-Internet-Happened-Netscape-iPhone...) angles this in terms of the centralized digital superhighway versus the open distributed internet. (Where thin clients, set top boxes, etc. are in the first group and web browsers and WWW protocol are the second.) Essentially, by 2005 the open internet had won, but the iPhone (or more precisely: the App store) became the dream of a thin client and became the platform NCs had initially targeted — turning the internet into a walled garden with a vengeance.