The subscription pay for bandwidth - unlike your phone, the chumby does not really have the memory to store apps beyond some simple caching, so they're basically streamed to the device.  In addition, some apps use other services provided by the chumby servers.

So...the apps require the subscription.  If you terminate the subscription, the apps will go away at the end of the current subscription period and the device will revert back to the "unsubscribed" clock.

As you already know, the device will work fine as an alarm clock and streaming music player without a subscription.  Some of the music services still use the chumby backend services, but we offer that for free to all chumby users.  Some users that do not subscribe will occasionally buy charms or stickers as donations to support that functionality.

Charms and stickers are available at the Chumby Store.

We do have a couple of dozen new-sealed-in-the-box Sony dash units in inventory.

We're working on the disclaimer language for the store to make sure people know precisely what they're getting - we have had issues where we sold units with a pretty clear all-caps disclaimer about the imminent demise of the Sony service and people still came back to us to complain when it finally happened.  And that's not counting people that have been coming to us for a couple of years *before* the shutdown asking for support for the dash when Sony was unresponsive.

One thing that's also an issue is that the softer plastic/rubber around the outside discolors with age, even in brand new units.  In general, a simple cleaning will take care of most of it, but we've had customers keep sending units back as though they're defective.

Since we now have an official "dingle" with the patches on it makes it easier to ship units out since the users can get some use out of the dashes immediately instead of having to download software, find a compatible dongle, etc.