Gadgetory

it's time to say goodbye to the tech we lost in 2015 I'm Bridget Carey this is your CNET update this is usually the time when everyone looks back at the tech triumphs of the past year but we also have to look back at the duds the failures and the flops in this special episode of update we pay our respects to the gadgets and apps that we lost in 2015 some were gone too soon others not soon enough and one product didn't even last a week before it was killed off but let's start with an unstable category streaming at the start of the year sony said goodbye to Sony Music Unlimited yeah I never heard of it either but it was replaced by PlayStation Music which was powered by Spotify samsung also mercy-killed milk video in November it was a year after its release the horribly named app was a collection of hot videos from YouTube and other publications beats music is on its deathbed Apple said it will shut down the service in January as it pushes subscribers to convert to Apple music now those who love streaming books had to say goodbye to oyster the service was like a Netflix for ebooks costing $10 a month it was launched in 2013 but it was acquired by Google in September all subscriptions will be shut down by January now another area of casualties is in messaging apps Samsung tried to take on whatsapp with something called chat on it launched in 2011 and it worked in more than 120 countries and 62 languages but it was killed off in March Facebook kept trying to take away the Thunder from snapchat there was slingshot in June last year which also had disappearing messages that you can do tool on Facebook's riff app came out this year on April 1st no joke and it was a way to make weird videos with friends like a vine but you passed the baton on to a friend to keep the silly going and Facebook's Rooms app was an anonymous way to talk about any topic you wanted to anonymous apps grew in popularity this year but the door was permanently shut on rooms in December along with slingshot and riff now also the controversial anonymous app secret was shut down also in April as far as gadgets go Amazon finally put out the fire phone in September Amazon announced that it's no longer going to manufacture its first and the smartphone it launched in July of 2014 but it didn't do very well it was expensive and I had a focus around shopping some say there will come a day when it will rise from the ashes and a great rebirth but I doubt it and then there's the gadget that died before it even arrived LG's latest SmartWatch the LG watch urbane tube it was taking pre-orders in November for only six days before the company pulled it because of some hardware issue and there's no word if it'll ever be sold again this was supposed to be the first android-powered SmartWatch to have its own LTE cellular connection goodbye urbane - you were gone before we even knew you that's it for this tech news update we'll be sure to stay tuned to our CES coverage starting January 4th from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey