Live data from Hacker News

It's the “hardware”, stupid

haebom.dev

51–60 of 124 posts

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was early. Social acceptance will happen like it did for phones (although I still get weirded out looking at a bus full of people all staring at a device).

... why? I imagine most of them are doing the same activity as a bus full of people reading the newspaper or a magazine, just with new forms of media...

As an older person, I have to say that it feels palpably different to me.

Old time buses with people reading felt a little more like some 80s buses full of people with Walkman headphones. The material was a bit of a performance of "I'm minding my own business".

A modern environment with people grafted to their phone apps feels more than that. It sometimes feels more like the movie cliche of an opium den.

Here, people aren't just signalling the idea that they are minding their own business. They really are lost in their own world of addiction. A circus clown could ride down the aisle juggling flaming bowling pins and these phone users would not even know.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#52
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because wearing eye glasses signals a handicap whereas this instead could signal being part of an in-group. Kind of like torn jeans. Before the mid sixties torn clothing would signify economic disadvantage and you’d avoid it if possible but afterwards it signified rebellion and people wanted to signal rebelliousness with torn jeans or at least signal being part of an in-group however large and diluted it be.

> Before the mid sixties torn clothing would signify economic disadvantage It still does. Absolutely insane to me that people are willing to put on the appearance of being poor, and they think it's cool. You will never catch me wearing ripped jeans, but maybe that's because I grew up poor enough that I had to wear ripped jeans when we couldn't afford new ones.

See, the elites can tell the provenance of the rips at a glance.

Whether it is a high fashion rip of the season, made by artisans, versus some counterfeit rip made at home or in an unlicensed sweat shop versus the unimaginable actual wear and tear of old clothes.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#53
post #4

Someday, it won't be a device; it will already be in the air.

Could be a plot device, nanites that only certain people's genetic lineage can control, they wave their hands and the swarms of nanites move like waves as if they were a mage casting a spell

This leads to nanite drone warfare and nanite allergy seasons and all the other craziness in the Diamond Age...

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#54
post #22

I would love to know if Ives was truly foundation to the iPhone, or if he was more given the overall idea and polished it with the final look/feel (which is also important). Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Perhaps the team just sat around a table and came up with the vision. Or maybe it was Jobs, but clearly there were some good vi…

> Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll).

Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation between companies like Nokia, Palm, HP, Sony, Ericsson and Blackberry with platforms like Pocket PC, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile.

The iPhone was announced in Jan 2007 at MacWorld (and shipped in July), I was there and played with it extensively in the Apple booth. I remember thinking it had some especially clever ideas and was a very nice implementation. It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary. It was definitely significant but still a (large) step in an ongoing progression of refinement, integration and search for product/market fit. There were already large color touchscreen devices which integrated a phone, messaging, camera, music player, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Here's an article looking at a few pre-iPhone devices: https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-....

The iPhone 1's design was uniquely simple and svelte but I was immediately concerned about it having enough battery to support that screen. The choice to go with just "One Big Button" and no physical keyboard or navigation keys was bold, weird and also a bit concerning. The on-screen keyboard-only and gesture nav-only choices did feel a bit like two steps forward, one back in iOS 1. It felt like they made a 'purist' design decision and had to make it work as well as it could. That worked out to be "well enough" but sometimes similarly bold but risky choices can fail when they sacrifice too much. However, the battery life did become a very serious issue for active users when the first iPhone shipped and limited the success of the device. It's also worth remembering the usability of iOS 1 was pretty clunky. I played with most of these early phone devices and owned several but didn't adopt an iPhone as my primary device until the iPhone 3G shipped 18 months after the iPhone launch. The 3G was significantly better, different and more refined than the iPhone 1.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#55
post #5

The article buries the lede on the only point that matters with these "AI" hardware devices. They need to solve a problem their customers have, and all the devices these companies have released so far don't do anything that a smartphone can't easily do.

What problem? All these AI devices seem like a solution in search of a problem.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#56
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the interesting part was that OpenAI's only viable option for a mobile OS is Android, while Google is their main competitor.

Why is that interesting in why would it matter. Many competitors to Google use Android on their devices. Why would this be different?

[deleted]

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#57
post #22

I would love to know if Ives was truly foundation to the iPhone, or if he was more given the overall idea and polished it with the final look/feel (which is also important). Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Perhaps the team just sat around a table and came up with the vision. Or maybe it was Jobs, but clearly there were some good vi…

> Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll). Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation betwe…

The iPhone was the first really well done general purpose computing phone. It had a real web browser, a real music player, apps that didn't suck. Adoption was huge because the design was great, but we would have just seen the same thing transpire over a number of years if iPhone hadn't been created.

I know a lot of people basically who were basically saying "finally"

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#58
post #7
post #5

The article buries the lede on the only point that matters with these "AI" hardware devices. They need to solve a problem their customers have, and all the devices these companies have released so far don't do anything that a smartphone can't easily do.

For me the interesting part was that OpenAI's only viable option for a mobile OS is Android, while Google is their main competitor.

Well, I wouldn't put it past that. It could literally feed Android into an llm context window and probably redesign it to be even better and it already is.

Android still has weird laggy jumps and just is not that smooth. Even on the new pixel devices.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did iOS actually invent the idea of scrolling with a gesture? I could have sworn it already existed at the time. Like panning over a map on a GPS… The momentum on iOS is nicely tuned though.

Touchscreen scrolling has been in consumer products since at least the early 1980s and inertial scrolling on a touchscreen has been around since at least the early 1990s with Sun's Star7[1]. (And I wouldn't be surprised if there are academic papers that predate the consumer products by a decade or more.) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s

I love the delightfully 90's/global village icons they used in the UI here. So few pixels but they still incorporated popular aesthetics from the time.

Re: It's the “hardware”, stupid

#60
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be a plot device, nanites that only certain people's genetic lineage can control, they wave their hands and the swarms of nanites move like waves as if they were a mage casting a spell

I can't identify your voice spellcaster,try retraining your voice model in the Home app, checking that your correct account is linked, and ensuring the app and device firmware are updated

Your subscription has expired
Post reply on HN