Steve,

I clicked on your NPR link before I read your mini-review and boy was that segment annoying! After recording that interview, I would have tossed it. No value.

That was a total cop-out on the creator’s part. Almost like a resume-builder, for a guy who’s now stuck at PayPal.

If he was right that the Audrey is fabulous and the economy alone was the problem, they wouldn’t sell for 99¢ on ebay. By now, okay, the technology’s old, but at some point between 2000 and now there would have been a rediscovery that got Audrey v.2 into production if “she” was *only* hampered by poor timing.

Thanks for pointing us to it. Very interesting.

Regards,

Kelly

Steve — I don’t know much about the Audrey but just from looking at the thing I can point out several reasons why I wouldn’t want it:

1. design — it looks like a cross between a teletubby and a kids’ computer — it doesn’t suit my personal tastes (which, in PCs, leans toward sleek as in VAIO or MacBook Air) nor my kitchen decor (stainless appliances and natural stone countertops) — and while I’m not arrogant enough to think that every woman shares my design sensibilities, I don’t believe the Audrey is on trend with current design trends

2. stylus — that thing is just waiting to be misplaced or dropped down the garbage disposal — a computer in today’s kitchen environment needs a touchscreen-based UI

3. footprint — kitchen countertops are prime real estate — an under-the-cabinet mount design would have made the computer accessible without taking up precious room in the kitchen

4. usage convenience — further argument for an under-the-cabinet design is the fact most countertops are at a level that would require someone to bend over or to sit down in front of in order to use the computer, neither of which is practical for a kitchen user

Given all of these hardware design flaws, I wouldn’t expect the software UI to be much better. Perhaps I’m missing something here but it seems like some basic UI research would have helped.

Denise

I’m thinking Palm V as a more feminine-appealing design that also appealed to masculine views.
Audrey wasn’t! Iseriously looked at it for 2 jobs 1) my family-home with 4 people in it… didn’t work as well as Palms with infra-red synching over breakfast!
2) a group of 4 at office as we were having problems synching with our secretary using MS products….. again Palm infra better!
See also
http://visuallee.com/weblog/2001_10_01_archive.html
and extract from the Chicago Tribune Nov 15, 2003:
Technology companies have a habit of proclaiming that their new gizmos are going to change people’s lives. That’s a near-surefire way to cause the device to fail in the marketplace, Brunner said. And he should know: He’s the former director of industrial design at Apple and worked on the Newton.
“You have to be very careful about the expectations placed on your product,” he said. “With the Newton, there were too many expectations placed on the technology, especially the handwriting recognition and the built-in intelligence.
“The way it was described, it would work nearly flawlessly, but it just wasn’t ready for prime time.”
That gap between hype and reality helped make the gadget into an object of ridicule. In contrast, 3Com never claimed that its Palm Pilot would revolutionize the world. It was marketed as an electronic Filofax, and it sold in the millions.
That happened, in part, because 3Com figured out its target market for hand-helds. But it is a lesson the company apparently forgot in October 2000, when 3Com introduced its Audrey Internet appliance.
Audrey was essentially a dumbed-down PC–a way for new computer users to easily answer e-mail and browse the Web from their kitchen tables. The problem was that you needed a home network, including a broadband Internet connection, to get an Audrey to work right. And that’s something only the geekiest of households had back then. The device was yanked after five months on the market.
The Audrey also tripped over a key hurdle for all gadgets: the cool test. It wasn’t.

Audrey also reminds me of the Steve Jobs statement:
“[The G4 Cube] was not a failure of design,” said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “It was a failure of concept. We targeted the Cube at a professional audience. We thought they would rather have something small on the desk than expandability and we were wrong. It was a wrong concept “fabulously implemented.”
Do you think that Audrey is the opposite?
As a Palm user my connection with their message was strong but on investigation I realised the promise of their strory was not delivered in fact!

Wow. Could its failure be based on the simplistic assumption that women’s lives are centred around one common area - say the kitchen?

This thing was developed just as the Martha Stewart cocooning hysteria was peaking - but even then, women were rebelling against these rigid and obsessive assumptions.

What about “soccer moms” - the women who actually were so over-scheduled and burdened that they didn’t spend a lot of time in one place?

Which is why we need to consult blogs like this:http://femmeden.blogspot.com/

There was a HUGE gape between the expected value and the delivered value!

Very simply, the target market for the Audrey was people who aren’t particularly computer literate, and had unreasonably high expectations about what a slick little computer like this might be able to do. When they actually experienced it, the slow speeds, dim screen, and clunky interaction disappointed them even more than it would for the tech-savvy.