Mission accomplished I would say. They have proposed a new form factor, kept on making and selling machines conforming to the form factor and showed the market it is feasible. And now when everyone is on board and the form factor is not so new anymore, it's time to leave.
It's a shame because the Nucs had a really clean but feature-rich BIOS, a modern design aesthetic and a generally high quality feel to them.
Eagerly waiting to see which manufacturer fills that spot - we've got the likes of Beelink, Minisforum and Gigabyte et al. but at the moment most feel like knock-offs IMO. There are some really appealing ones demoed on ServeTheHome now and again though...
Yeah the BIOSes found in Intel NUCs are not fancy but are real solid. I have only tried lower end models (N5105, N6005, and N100) from ASUS and Gigabyte. I think most of them are comparable.
Those from China (e.g. Beelink, Minisforum, and Morefine) however can get finicky from time to time. I recall getting a 1235U unit that had a nearly raw AMI BIOS... I can literally set (and break) anything lol.
Happy with Intel Nuc for the homelab / selfhosting because they don't take so many place and still have much power (sometimes on the cost of the fans loudness.
Same here. I have an 8i5beh home server in an Akasa case and I love that it's tiny, low power and completely silent. During power outages, a cheap APC UPS keeps it, the router, and switches running for hours.
I'm a little worried about the future of those 3rd party fanless solutions now that Intel is leaving the scene, but I see that Akasa has AMD and raspi variants, so that's promising at least.
And Intel is really trying to clean up their ballooning manufacturing costs. Getting rid of a whole additional PCB, chip, power supply, case molding, etc. supply chain for a low volume product will be a good cost savings. Hope it helps them refocus on the core business and get their endless fab issues figured out.