Microsoft Has Stopped Manufacturing The Kinect

What many don't know: The exact chips and technology behind the Kinect v1 (as developed by PrimeSense) are still in use today in many products:

We (that is -- shameless plug -- my company DotProduct) combine a Primesense Carmine sensor (basically a smaller version of the Kinect) with an Android tablet and our software to create a self-contained portable 3D scanner (www.dotproduct3d.com).

Occipital has created their own version of the sensor which they call the "Structure" sensor, but it's still based on Kinect/PrimeSense tech (www.structure.io).

Matterport (a YC company) is using the tech in a tripod based scanner to create 3D interior walkthroughs (www.matterport.com).

The reason these sensors are still in use is largely that PrimeSense (at the time they released the Kinect) was technologically about 7 years ahead of every other 3D camera manufacturer in the market. Only very recently we're starting to see sensors that rival the Kinect/Carmine in terms of overall quality.

My expectation is that the no-name hobbyist products (with no clear company to sue) will come first, people will buy them, and then major manufacturers will see them and want to get the hardware into their own products too, at which point they'll probably get interested in licensing Apple's patents. Which means the resulting branded products won't cost $3, but they won't be $1000 either.

I don't expect Apple would willingly license their patent to their competitors in the mobile space (who, after all, would just want to slap a FaceID-equivalent feature into their own phones); but they'd probably be interested in licensing it to e.g. electronic door-lock companies, or action-camera companies (add a "depth" track to your video), etc.

My guess is that rather than the Kinect, what people will probably be buying 2-5 years from now for "commercially scalable" projects is an LG USB webcam that has Apple's miniaturized sensors embedded, and is using the (by-then-standardized) no-name Shenzhen remake of Apple's face-recognition ML-accelerator core.

Yes but it was proven to be commercially viable on Kickstarter

I still love my Kinect. It came out at the end of the 360's lifetime, so I waited for the Xbox One to get one which was sadly a mistake. Games supporting Kinect on Xbox One are limited to say the least.

I am still however enamored with the automatic login. It sees me all the way across the room and logs me in. It's wonderful.

It used to work even better with the first gen controllers which had identifier IR lights in them. My friend and I could swap controllers and continue to play the same side of the screen. It was truly magical. The gen 2 "S" controllers however eliminated the IR lights.

> Amazon and Google are caught up in a dumb contest to see who can produce the best hockey-puck-sized speaker [...]. As overwhelmingly large as tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple are, they seem mostly resigned to following trends, as opposed to creating new ones.

I don't think you're giving these companies adequate credit for their innovation. :-)

It's worth remembering that the Echo, a voice-powered home assistant that can be spoken to anywhere in a room ("far-field" voice recognition), was novel when Amazon introduced it. Similarly, the digital e-ink reader was novel when Amazon launched the Kindle. Two other concepts that seem novel to me are the Amazon Go stores (checkout-less shopping) and Amazon Prime Air (automated drone delivery), both works-in-progress. Consider Amazon Web Services (est. 2006) and the cloud services boom.

Amazon created the first devices/services that resulted in the trends for home assistants and ebook readers (etc.), so I don't think it's fair to name them as "mostly resigned to following trends".

Similarly, although Google seems to have followed Amazon's lead with respect to home assistants, it's certainly innovating in the capabilities of their service, and in other areas. Google's voice assistant has access to incredible amounts of information, presumably powered by Google's search and understanding of questions and context. While both Alexa and Google can answer "When was Abraham Lincoln born?", only Google can more difficult questions like "Who was the second CEO of Microsoft?" (per my test today). However, none of the offerings can yet answer "When was the second CEO of Microsoft born?" Boiling the situation down to shopping lists ignores the capability variation in products.

Of course every company will follow trends to some extent, since to do otherwise is to give up a potential market segment. Companies don't exist per se to create trends; they exist to capitalize on business opportunities. A lot of the big tech companies have expertise they can leverage to enter new tech segments, or have related services that they can integrate. E.g., if Apple has Siri and the Apple TV, then a home assistant may still be a sensible play, even if Amazon did it first.

Trying to create a new trend is risky and requires large investment. For every hit like the Echo, you might strike out like the Fire Phone; for every hit like the Pixel phone you might strike out like Google Glass or have moderate success like Kinect. It makes sense for companies to create offerings when there's a proven model to follow in addition to investing in new innovative ideas.

If following is the only thing a company does, then you might judge them as not being innovative; but before you do that, you should look at the innovative things they're trying too, such as the Glass, the Kindle, the Kinect. Apple has been incredibly innovative in their phone design and security features: the first to offer a touch-based phone with no keyboard (as far as I know); the first to offer fingerprint-based unlock instead of PIN code unlock (so convenient!), and now face-recognition based unlock; Siri may have been the first useful voice assistant. Apple's security and privacy has been industry-leading, e.g. Secure Enclave. Apple CarPlay is a great experience and surpasses every other car integration system I've used.

I believe that the reason all of the named companies have continued to be successful and remain market leaders is because they are innovating in products and services.