Failed Microsoft gadget dies a quiet death
Can it really be 4 years back that Microsoft produced that always destined to fail product the datacasting SPOT watch? Yep, apparently it can, and apparently it has finally been killed off once and for all. Heck, how could it have succeeded? Cast your mind back to 2004 and think of the exciting new smartphones that were just starting to appear, how mobile phone technology was making that decisive move towards data, how WiFi was a reality. Then think how anyone at Microsoft could seriously expect us to go bananas about a larger than you might like wristwatch, that also cost more than you might like, looked as if it had been created by someone who thought that retro was the same thing as ugly and which expected punters to pay as they went to get stupidly miniscule data fragments (news and weather) that could be found for free, and in full, elsewhere with less fuss. Yet that's exactly what happened, and the SPOT watch was deemed a worthy product to pitch.