Why it matters: Ikea is a brand universally known for cheap, ready-to-assemble furniture, home appliances, and other home accessories. The company is now trying to put its mark on the smart home business as well, bringing the same affordable and minimalistic approach to the hi-tech monitoring market.
The crash cart: In a hospital a crash cart could save your life, but Microsoft had a different type of crash cart back in the day that usually spelled the death of a testing PC. In-house developers called it the "Cart of Death" – a repurposed mail cart carrying daisy-chained USB hubs and tons of connected USB devices to test plug-and-play support on Windows PCs.
Sony's new PlayStation Portal lets you stream PS5 games on a nice screen and its DualSense controllers feel great, but it doesn't run games natively or PS Plus games, nor does it support Bluetooth resulting in a very expensive device for what it is.
In brief: Half-decent attempts at knockoff electronics usually focus on trying to match the outward appearance of the original as closely as possible to avoid detection. Under the hood, however, it's a whole different ballgame.