How Next Thing Co and Popcorn Computer Screwed Customers

this is a pocket chip from next inco and I've had to wait almost 7even years to get it in this video I'm looking at the Shady history of next thingo and the current state of popcorn computers this is the story of promising technology concerning business practices and thousands of disappointed customers it's a story that spans more than a decade and across multiple companies that took customer money but never delivered next thingo was a startup founded in Oakland California in 2013 by Dave Rous Gustavo Huber and Thomas Decker in 2015 they launched the chip Kickstarter campaign chip was a single board computer similar to a Raspberry Pi and marketed to the same hobbyists the kickstarter campaign hit just after the release of the rasbury 2 model B but the chip was more desirable in some respects it had a cortex A8 processor with a slightly faster clock speed 1 GHz compared to 900 mahz though that was only a single core instead of four but the chip was significantly smaller than the raspberry 2 model B and Raspberry Pi didn't release the zero form factor until later that year and it had built-in land storage so a separate SD card wasn't necessary it featured both Open Source Hardware and open source software but its biggest selling point was the low cost just $9 that was huge for comparison the raspberry 2 model B cost $35 at the time the original chip had an all- R8 system on chip but the later chip Pro contained the GR8 which was a system in package made by next thing Co themselves the chip Pro wasn't necessarily better it was actually worse in some metrics but it was supposed to streamline Supply and Manufacturing the chip boards made waves thanks to their capability and low cost but the real excitement came in 2016 with the announcement of the pocket chip the pocket chip was a handheld computer based around the chip SPC a keyboard a touchcreen and a battery an exposed gpio header along the top made it clear that this was a product meant to be hacked and people were oppressed it helped that the pocket chip looked amazing the pink and white color scheme visible PCB low poly faceted shell and some Stellar marketing gave it a kind of vapor wave of aesthetic that many of us really loved it also came with cool software like pico8 p8 is a fantasy console and game engine it's a modern interpretation of what an 8-bit console could have been but with modern programming tools and a community built on sharing I even programed my own pic8 game which I'll show you later suffice it to say that the pocket chip was cool very cool I had just started freelancing for hacker and fell in love with the pocket chip after writing an article about somebody that used it as a portable hacking platform on August 23rd 2017 I ordered a pocket ship from the next thing Co website it cost $69 $ and after shipping it came to $771 then I waited and waited and waited over the following months I never heard anything from nextino after the initial confirmation email they wouldn't respond to my emails or support requests after several months I ended up requesting a refund but I never received any response to that request either and I wasn't alone many other people online were reporting that they also had unfulfilled orders and weren't able to receive any communication from next inco and here's where things started getting really messy on November 8th 2017 more than two months after I had placed my order next thingo made a new blog post on their website that post acknowledged the shipping delays and found all kinds of things to blame they said they were running into supply issues they said the Chinese golden week holiday had caused a delay in customs they said they had an issue with with their system providing incorrect delivery estimates and charging too little for shipping but they still assured customers that their orders would eventually be fulfilled they said that they had 800 pocket chip computers in stock and ready to ship within a week I guess my order wasn't one of those 800 it's also important to note that they're still taking pocket ship orders up until that point that's a big deal because they weren't even able to fulfill the orders they had taken months before they had continued to take customer money but behind the scenes the company was in big trouble supply issues was a serious understatement most of the details are still unknown but their business model was unsustainable the best explanation I've heard is that they're trying to work on the same business model as Razer companies selling the handles at a low cost and then charging a markup on the razors themselves according to this theory nexo was selling their chip single board computers at a very low price and then trying to make up the difference in money by selling overpriced accessories and add-ons if that was the case it didn't work likely because most customers weren't interested in buying the high markup items by March of 2018 they had officially entered into insolvency and next thing CO's assets were liquidated that included a stock of 662 of their GR8 chips who bought those chips a company called Source Parts the CEO of source parts and the only person I can find associated with the company is Jose Angel Torres who is he well he was an engineer at next inco Torres through Source Parts purchased next ino's stock of GR8 chips he then formed popcorn computers and announced the kettle pop which was a single board computer that was essentially a clone of next thing CO's chip Pro I even wrote an article for hater about the kettle poop at the time thinking it was legitimate but popcorn computers history is even more concerning than that of next thingo there have been several announcements a Kickstarter campaign and pre-orders for products from popcorn computers but I can't can't find any confirmation that anyone has ever received a single popcorn computer product that includes the kettle poop that was based on the same gr chip that was in the next thing Co chip Pro in various posts online Tor has made excuses regarding production delays and design flaws but all the while he was still promising another exciting new product the pocket PC the popcorn computer pocket PC is an obvious spiritual successor to the pocket chip and has been in development for years as usual pre-orders were accepted but no products were ever shipped to customers the last official update I can find from August of 2022 put the blame on more production issues and asked customers to be patient as far as I can tell they've ceased all communication and nobody has heard from Torres since then popcorn computers Community forum is full of requests for information but they've all been ignored for nearly two years now I can't find a single word posted by Torres online since August of 2022 and and remember that he accepted pre-orders from customers for the kettlepop and pocket PC but nobody seems to have ever received one this is a repeating pattern that looks an awful lot like what happened at next thingo I don't want to throw around allegations but I don't think anyone will ever receive a single product from popcorn computers by all appearances taures took the money and ran but what about the original founders of next thingo Dave rwork has little online presence but seems to post very occasionally on Twitter as at 11 arms he has a website rwork research.net that seems to allude to work across the tech industry but that doesn't have any real information Gustavo Huber bounces from one company to the next and currently lists full-time employment at meta on his LinkedIn page his personal website is still up and it even lists chip products among his accomplishments Thomas Decker has also been hopping around and is currently a senior product designer at Pacific Gas and Electric according to his LinkedIn his personal website redirects to some scam nonsense which indicates that he let the domain name expire and it got snatched up for that purpose I actually don't hold much against these three original Founders their company failed and they moved on which happens all the time but it's unacceptable that they continued to take customer money even when they had a months long backlog of unfulfilled orders I suspect but cannot legally prove that they knew the company was going under and they chose to keep AC AC in customer money anyway many customers myself included never received any communication or refunds from next Ino and that's just unacceptable Torres is even more problematic in my opinion he spent years making promise after promise while taking customer [Music] money and then went radio silent without any explanation once again customers paid real money for products they never received and they weren't even given the courtesy of an explanation we may never get the full story but if that doesn't boil your blood then I don't know what would however one thing is true next thing code did release and deliver products for a while I've been salty about my undelivered pocket chip for almost 7 years now and I finally decided to do something about it I went on eBay and found a new inbox pocket chip how is that possible I'm honestly not quite sure but the seller seems to deal in a random assortment of electronics I assume that they purchased from Liquidation auctions and that was how they were able to find New Old Stock of pocket chips after tax and shipping it cost me $147.6 which is almost twice what I paid for my undelivered pocket ship back in 2017 there's something funny about buying the same device twice and I mean literally the same device instead of fulfilling my order next thing Cod must have sto their stock in liquidation to pay back their creditor so this very well could be the exact same device that should have been shipped to me all those years ago but now I can finally answer the question was I really missing out let's take a look and find out before we do allow me to tell you about this video sponsor PCB way you're probably already familiar with PCB way and may have even used them in the past to get professional pcbs delivered to your door you could for example get a PCB like this one on the pocket ship if you're going to build your own own handheld computer but did you know that PCB way also offers 3D printing and CNC Machining Services you can use these to get beautiful 3D printed and even mil aluminum parts for your projects and the prices are really reasonable if you want to give that a try use the link in the description for a discount all right now back to the pocket chip right off the bat I can tell you that the pocket chip is just as cool to see and hold as I had always imagined I adore the color scheme and aesthetic as well as clever touches like the hexagonal hole that lets you use a pencil as a kickstand the keyboard Keys have a nice tactile click to them and the keyboard layout is sensible with a good size the transparent backshell has a faceted low poly design that looks really cool and gives you access to the chip SPC on the back and the row of gpio headers on the top lets you connect other components after turning power on the chip takes a few minutes to boot up and then you're presented with the custom home screen it has big icons for the terminal pic8 the make music synth software the help documentation a basic word processor and a file browser there are icons in the corner for the battery Wi-Fi power and basic settings like screen brightness and volume the pocket ship doesn't have a built-in speaker but the chip on the back does have a 3.5 mm headphone jack the 4.3 in display as a resistive touchcreen and it looks pretty decent the resolution is pretty low at just 480x 272 but it's usable if I launch pico8 I can even play a game that I programmed way back in 2018 it's called Ti 83 fall and it's no mge to the brick fall games that were popular on TI 83 calculators when I was in [Music] school [Music] p8's a really neat project that's completely independent of next thing [Music] Co the games are free and you can even edit their code right inside of the pico8 console which also runs in web browsers I'll put a link to TI 83f in the description if anyone wants to check it out other than PCO 8 which you can use on any other computer I have to say that the pocket chip is a little boring the novelty wears off really quickly and then you're just left with a pretty rudimentary pocket computer it's running Linux specifically a customized version of dbn so there's virtually unlimited potential but modern Alternatives such as Clockwork pies Dev term and U console offer much better performance there are also many open- Source DIY systems released over the years if you like getting your hands dirty so while the pocket chip is still really cool I can't help but feel like so much of its appeal comes down to Aesthetics and some sense of nostalgia remove those factors and there's little reason to hunt down a pocket chip on eBay honestly I doubt I'll end up using mine for anything it will likely sit on my shelf as a beautiful reminder of the reality of the modern tech industry it can sit there in my periphery and then hopefully I'll see it anytime I'm tempted to back an ambitious Kickstarter campaign so what about you have you owned a pocket chip were you one of the many customers who gave their money to next thing Co or popcorn computers if so tell everybody about your experience in the comments thanks for [Music] watching

Channel: Serial Hobbyism

Views: 59,195

Keywords: maker, hacks, arduino, raspberry pi, 3d printing, cnc, technology, science, retrocomputing, vintage, adafruit, sparkfun, esp32, esp8266, iot, home automation, home assistant, diy, computers, programming, coding, embedded, soldering, pcb, circuits, fabrication

Id: 9QphSElOPLA

Length: 14min 23sec (863 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2024