While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).
It did kickstart the "netbook" form factor, which ended up replacing most OLPC use cases. So not a total failure from a technology standpoint, like Juicero and Theranos were. But it is a bit of a poster child for everything that's wrong with the MIT Media Lab.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17233946/olpcs-100-laptop...
I'd say it kind of did (as did Netbooks as a technology for the most part as well).
It's smartphones really that won the segment that OLPC was primarily targeted at. Chromebooks became fairly big in education but primarily AFAIK in developed countries.
That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that was $1250, and I used it for 8 years, after which I also donated it to my sister, and she's still happily using it. That's a roughly similar $150/yr, but for a best in class product with great comfort and wide usability.
I wonder if anyone used a OLPC's for more than a year or two.
For "small," the category was replaced by Ultrabooks as people realized that it's usually better to have a thin laptop that doesn't force you to compromise on the display or keyboard size.
I remember traveling with a netbook so that I'd have a computer I could use for tickets and reservations, and even for that, the low resolution 8-10" netbook screens were painful. 12-14" Ultrabooks with >= 1080p panels are much more comfortable, and the weight is comparable.
* By the standards of the time
I really enjoyed the one I bought in college - it actually fit on those terrible fold-out desks that lecture hall seats have.
I'll bet the children in Africa etc with the OLPCs used them for several years. They can't switch to a MacBook.
if you earn $250 a month in a developing country, $1250 is like 9-month pay (* calculation may be wrong --- gotta sleep?)
Definitely not suggesting kids in Africa should just buy macbook pro's, but $100 is also a lot of upfront cost for a product that's actually not that useful and destined for the wastebin within a year or two.
I do hope I'm wrong and it brought some cool technology too some kids far removed from the big cities.
A netbook, feh, doesn’t matter if it breaks.
I know people that created books and websites on a netbook, who got though school and business meetings with them. I never seen that for a smartphone.
If you visit a community college or know someone who teaches at one, a surprisingly high percentage of students do their homework and write papers entirely on their phone. It's kind of amazing.
We do have impossibly cheap computers now that are far more accessible, that do nearly all the things normally expected of computers, and with widely available resources for programming on them - RPi, Chromebooks, etc.
The success of those devices relative to OLPC (with of course, the benefit of hindsight) seems to come down to a few major differences in the approach:
- insistence on highly-custom everything, rather than exploiting as much as possible off-the-shelf to keep costs down.
- insistence on targeting the absolute lowest-cost end of the market initially rather than starting at a higher price point and using that as a starting point for iterative cost-reduction.
The latter pitfall one still sees various hardware startups fall into with some regularity. Universal accessibility is a fantastic goal, but often the easiest way to do it is to sell something considerably more expensive first.
Still, it was a fun thing to play with. The form factor was like a durable OG iBook, and it worked well for basic tasks.
The OLPC Foundation went on to create a series of increasingly ridiculous design renders of future projects -- dual-screen laptops, tablets with solar cells on the back, ultra-thin tablets... none of these were manufactured. Most of them weren't even technologically feasible!
The OLPC project did jump-start interest in ultralight laptops, though, and probably led to the development of early netbooks like the Eee PC. So there's that.
[0]: see the Iron Law of Evaluation.
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2010/07/01/the-playpump-wh...
I didn't need to hear Justin Kan talking stupid claiming it missed the mark because of phones in that video about the toys ignoring the timeline/history, it was years before that which is a lot considering how fast things changed
It's a pretty classic example of a CEO who was very capable at establishing business partnerships but had such a rigid view about the problem they were trying to solve. They never really proved that the 1:1 concept actually had merit, but ended up being so invested in quantity over quality.
In developing countries, the computers were too simple to teach effective computer skills. And in undeveloped countries, the laptops did nothing to address actual education problems.
Chromebooks have the benefit years of Chrome apps being developed to solve actual problems. They also give up a lot of the goofy ideas like hand crank recharging or mesh networking and etc.