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OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

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Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#831

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People stare at their phones while walking, having dinner, and driving. It's not a big leap to imagine replacing that with subvocal conversations with AI.

This is better than staring at your phone how?

presumably because you don't have to stare at your phone

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#832
post #830

A while back someone here on Hacker News made a pretty insightful comment that as great of a designer as Jony Ive is, a large part of his success is owed to the fact that he had an "editor" in the form of Steve Jobs. Once Jobs passed, he no longer really had an editor. It remains to be seen whether Sam Altman / OpenAI in general will be a good editor

This is a bit of a risk for Ive, as until now he is credited with Apple's lauded design. If he does not produce an immediate success it'll be brand damaging and wobble on his reputation. I also suspect it might go that way: post-Ive designs have been credited as being better, particularly around apple's laptops that were perceived as too heavily favouring form over function. More realistically Apple's design is good…

[dead]

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The form factor that suggests is an AR headset. Google, Meta, and others have those. They're all flops. Too bulky. Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction.

> Carmack has said that for VR/AR to get any traction, the headgear needs to come down to swim goggle size, and to go mainstream, it has to come down to eyeglass size. He's probably right. Ive would be the kind of guy to push in that direction. I agree with the first 2 sentences, but not the last. Everyone and their grandmother knows size and bulkiness are big blockers to VR/AR adoption. But the reason we don't have…

Tbh I rarely use my meta glasses for AI because most of the time I don't want to ask out loud in public. So I just get my phone out and ask chatgpt or gemini. I think voice is doomed due to that as a UI

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#834
post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exact use cases do I get from being able to talk to chatGPT when I am out in public? I can think of close to 0 value add to have an AI voice in my head when I'm taking a walk in the park or out to dinner.

A friend of mine is constantly asking it questions everytime something comes up. She opens her phone, loads the app, hits the mic button, then listens with the phone to her ear. Would work a lot better as some sort of device.

The interface on iPhone still can be improved - latest ones have dedicated action buttons and camera buttons. Once you can plug it to better assistant and do it without phone unlocking then it becomes more seamless.

Make the same with apple watch to make hand gesture covering your ear like listening to something and then you don't even have to pickup phone from the pocket.

I think there is a lot of way how iphone, apple watch, airpods (case as pendant) could deliver the best UX but it doesn't matter as long as siri sux.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#835
post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's the elusive trick of "leadership" that's so hard to measure - great leaders turn talented (and even not really talented) people into success stories. Bad "leaders" can manage the most talented team of the planet into the ground.

And even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders that people will willingly drop everything to go work for and who leads them on to achieve great things.

I think Elon’s strategy is that he hires workaholics like himself. It’s not a scalable general purpose strategy.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even people that some people decry as bad and terrible people (for example Elon Musk) still can make amazing leaders that people will willingly drop everything to go work for and who leads them on to achieve great things.

I think Elon’s strategy is that he hires workaholics like himself. It’s not a scalable general purpose strategy.

For a workaholic, Elon seems to spend a lot of time not working.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#838

No question that Ive is a legend, but I do think the fall of Humane (also ex-Apple) and the challenges at Meta, Apple, and Google in terms of VR/AR adoption (Meta Ray Ban, Apple Vision, Google Glasses and the new thing) are instructive here. The $6.5B almost feels like the largest ever aquihire.

Humane was very impressive product from hardware perspective and design but poor execution and software (partially because they don't own smartphone os like android/iOS).

If similar hardware was:

- released by apple or google and deeply integrated with android/iOS

- embedded inside apple watch / pixel watch

- embedded inside slim airpods case that could be wear as pendant

- apple had siri as good as gemini and very good local STT to reduce latency

- MCP clients got more adopted by integrated in smartphones AI assistants

then it could be a hit. They lost because they shipped to early, without having big pockets for long game, without owning android OS / iOS and charged big price + subscription for this gadgets.

I think google currently is the best positioned to pull seamless experience with pixel devices (smartphone, watch, buds, gemini)

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#839
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive doesn’t seem to have come from an especially privileged background (beyond the obvious good fortune of being a white guy in good health born in a developed English-speaking country in the post-war era etc.) Middle-class certainly, but not markedly upper-middle-class or a posh boy. Though I suppose I’m in danger of sounding like pg talking about the Collisons as if they were poor boys made good.

Relative to the sweatshop workers he relied on to avoid sewing his own shirts. For the same reason we don’t need 9,000 operating systems, it’s trivial to copy-paste, we don’t need Ive, Altman. The main audience is Millennials and younger and they know how this all works. There’s no generating hype when it’s more of the same; our brains normalize and simply cannot find novelty in it. SaaS competition was faked through…

This is a refreshing and real comment. Ask all your uber drivers two questions:

- do you use chatGPT and could you more or less explain what LLMs are?

- do you think AI is useful and would you buy a product because it has AI?

Enjoy the answers.

Re: OpenAI to buy AI startup from Jony Ive

#840
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive doesn’t seem to have come from an especially privileged background (beyond the obvious good fortune of being a white guy in good health born in a developed English-speaking country in the post-war era etc.) Middle-class certainly, but not markedly upper-middle-class or a posh boy. Though I suppose I’m in danger of sounding like pg talking about the Collisons as if they were poor boys made good.

Relative to the sweatshop workers he relied on to avoid sewing his own shirts. For the same reason we don’t need 9,000 operating systems, it’s trivial to copy-paste, we don’t need Ive, Altman. The main audience is Millennials and younger and they know how this all works. There’s no generating hype when it’s more of the same; our brains normalize and simply cannot find novelty in it. SaaS competition was faked through…

Relative to cave men those sweatshop workers are so privileged they are basically gods. But that's a rather silly statement imo.
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