21–30 of 31 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see any evidence that this is a "reverse engineering" of a Segway - it seems to be more of a "re-engineering" from scratch.
Is there a practical difference?
Maybe they should add some kind of stepper thing which speeds up the thing. So, old people can just cruise at the base speed and others can step up the speed.
Is the rest of the book this good?
I don't want to sound cocky, but I could have saved Dean a lot of grief and time if I had the chance before he launched the segway. The reason the segway failed is because people look like fucking dorks when they ride them. I'm surprised Jobs didn't make that remark (maybe thats what he meant when he was criticizing the design). When they revealed it on the Today show they had people riding around on them with bike h…
If not, I highly suggest you try it. The control system feels so natural. It's like a motorcycle on your feet.
"Not a good reason, in Jobs's view, because the code could easily be reverse-engineered. No it couldn't, said Tim. Could, said Jobs." I don't know where Jobs gets his instincts about this stuff, but he was totally right: http://tlb.org/scooter.html
In a world where people crack encryption schemes or write open-source drivers for hardware without any documentation or specifications to speak of -- for fun, mind you -- it's the height of either arrogance or ignorance to assume that something won't be re-created just because it's hard.
I don't want to sound cocky, but I could have saved Dean a lot of grief and time if I had the chance before he launched the segway. The reason the segway failed is because people look like fucking dorks when they ride them. I'm surprised Jobs didn't make that remark (maybe thats what he meant when he was criticizing the design). When they revealed it on the Today show they had people riding around on them with bike h…
Have you rode one before? If not, I highly suggest you try it. The control system feels so natural. It's like a motorcycle on your feet.
To be fair - I've used a similar analogy for a modern sportbike. "It's like running really fast" - most modern sportbikes are so compact that they aren't anywhere in your field of vision.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The obvious? I side with pg. "Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin homo?" http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html
That's... not exactly a quote, now is it?
Although I'm not entirely sure of his conclusion that bike-like styling would be a solution to this problem. Plenty of us get the occasional homophobic insults from jagoff motorists.
On that topic, I think another reason the Segway wasn't very successful is that it has few compelling advantages over a $300 bike-- it has the same speed, has a lower range and is harder to refuel, doesn't fit in that well with existing infrastructure, and doesn't get you exercise. The only upside I can think of is that, because you aren't exercising, you don't sweat (slow down riding your bike or take a shower!) and that it's high-tech.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's... not exactly a quote, now is it?
It should have been written "'Too lazy to walk, ya fuckin' homo?'" Although I'm not entirely sure of his conclusion that bike-like styling would be a solution to this problem. Plenty of us get the occasional homophobic insults from jagoff motorists. On that topic, I think another reason the Segway wasn't very successful is that it has few compelling advantages over a $300 bike-- it has the same speed, has a lower ran…