I liked the Transmeta web page from before they launched. It was just bare HTML with no styling. It said:
This page is not here yet.
The product hype and lack of knowledge about what it was meant that nobody knew what to expect. In these hyped expectations, and with Torvalds on board, everyone expected that everything would be different. But it wasn't.
A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.
The hype was part of the problem with Transmeta. Even in it's delivered form it could have found a niche. For example, the network computer was in vogue at the time, thanks to Oracle. A different type of device, like a Chromebook might have worked.
With Torvalds connected to Transmeta and the stealthy development, we never did get to hear about who was really behind Transmeta and why.
It looks like rather than hiring a designer, they let one of their engineers (or worse, the CEO) design the Transmeta logo. I don’t know what that font is, but it might be even worse than Papyrus.
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A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.
The problem with Segway in Germany was rather the certification for road traffic. Because of the insane red tape involved, the introduction was delayed, and for the same reason nobody thus wanted one.
Yeah, for me Segway has been a great lesson in how patents can hold back innovation. It was a niche player that prevented others from trying to innovate on the form factor for a number of years.
One of the dads at school runs a company that does a nanotech waterproof coating for electronics (backed by patents). I told him that it would be very useful for personal electric vehicles, like electric unicycles. He replied that they looked at that, but decided not to license the tech for that use, because there wasn't enough money in it.
i wonder what the world or progress in general would look like if profit-incentives didn't matter (as much as they do), and instead just "would this take us forwards as societies?"
or in a different way, what are we missing out on just because some people think stuff has to be profitable in order to be "good".
I seriously doubt that was the problem. The issue was always that these things were essentially a walking aid for the price of a motorbike/small car and were particularly useless in Europe where you had to transverse cobble stone roads or take one onto the metro (good luck with that).
They were a complete hype product, their projections that they would essentially replace walking and pushbikes were just crazy. I don't think I know anyone who wanted one for more than as a toy.
As a side note, at a ee department where I was teaching around 10 years ago, one student build one as his final year project. Pretty awesome, he essentially did everything himself from software to all the mechanics/electronics... Worked very well as well.
A similar product launch was the Segway, where we went from this incredible vision of everyone on Segways to nobody wanting one.
The hype was part of the problem with Transmeta. Even in it's delivered form it could have found a niche. For example, the network computer was in vogue at the time, thanks to Oracle. A different type of device, like a Chromebook might have worked.
With Torvalds connected to Transmeta and the stealthy development, we never did get to hear about who was really behind Transmeta and why.