4 ms·

I've been witness to something similar. tl;dr Team member goes to present optical HR tech to BillG. He read up the academic and research literature and after se

I've been witness to something similar. tl;dr Team member goes to present optical HR tech to BillG. He read up the academic and research literature and after seeing our demo, says we are obviously BSing him[1] and that the tech was barely ready for prime time[2]. Completely outside his normal area of expertise, he had obviously researched and become, if not an expert, really knowledgeable in the space. Unrelated, he also heavily advocated for Tablets back in the early 2000s. Indeed, IMHO BillG's problem is that he is often too early on seeing technology advances. Microsoft tried to make Smart TVs back before broadband internet had a large penetration! Smart infotainment in cars way before anyone else! Being too ahead of the curve can be a disadvantage. [1] Not a direct quote, but he was right. Optical HR wearables use some trickery to make the numbers look good, basically unfiltered, swinging your arm around will make the numbers jump up suddenly due to how the tech works, so you have to basically detect this and cover it up, accelerometers help here. There are plenty of other problems with optical HR that get paved over through clever presentation to the user. [2] It is better now, but circa 2014 optical HR sucks, and wrist based still sucks for a lot of types of motion, but they great for running and biking. Anything with regular motions it is great for. HIIT strength training workouts where you are frequently switching exercises? No, just no. Though again now days the tech has advanced to the point it is kind of accurate, but someone who knows the industry can still purposefully confuse most sensors.

zamfi 4y ago
Heart rate detection?
int0x2e 4y ago
Lots of great insight. Thank you for sharing! Your comment about being too early is on point, though I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing. If you're a big company with scale and cash to support it, exploring new frontiers is probably worth it - you either stumble upon the next big thing, or you at least get to stake your flag through some patents, and in the process - make it so if this things does grow - you already have some kernel you can build upon to start that up without having to pay up for an acquisition... It's not perfect, but from a risk / reward perspective - I can see how this strategy could serve a large tech company well over decades...
- com2kid 4y ago
  After a decade at MS I have come to believe that there is such a thing as a first mover disadvantage. Being too early to market is just as bad as being late. Basically a new venture at a high tech company gets a lot of enthusiasm and funding, but it if doesn't succeed within some time frame, not only does it get abandoned, but the company in general won't try again for quite some time. Something else that can happen is the early v1 product gets a bad reputation, making it hard for a better v2 to gain traction. This actually hurt Windows Phone sales. Windows Mobile 5/6 (and Pocket PC before) were miserable consumer products[1]. Sales agents in cellphone stores learned not to sell phones from Microsoft, because their device sales bonus would get clawed back when the device was returned. (Manufacturers give $$ to sales staff for each phone sold from that manufacturer, or at least that is how the market worked back when I was last in it, info is circa 2010! When Windows Phone came out, 2 bad things happened. 1. Sales staff wasn't being offered bonuses for selling Windows Phones 2. When everyone realized how big of a disaster that move was, bonuses started being offered, but staff had been burned by 7-8 years of horrible return rates on prior Microsoft smart phones, everyone knew iPhones didn't get returned, so sales staff pushed iPhones. oops! Microsoft Sync is another one. Microsoft tried to make Android Auto back in 2007! Holy shit. Just think about that. In 2007 MP3 playback was still an extra add on in many models. AUX ports were an add on! No one had smart phones! It was crazy ahead of its time. And cars just weren't designed to be "smart" yet. Heck I am pretty sure in 2007 you could still find a few cars that didn't have power windows. Oh I also used something that looked a lot like docker containers back at Microsoft. It was chained and nested VHD partitions that you could update the OS and Apps separately by just dropping in and relinking the VHDs, so the apps and dependencies were one self contained virtual hard drive image, to upgrade the apps just run some magic commands and the existing OS image had a new app image attached to it. Microsoft had a working, reportedly playable at reasonable speed (never saw it myself) XBox 360 emulator for PC around, I think maybe 2008 or 2009? To be clear, that is an insane technological accomplishment, to have it running at playable speeds on PCs of the time. I got despondent working at Microsoft because I saw so much cool technology just fall by the wayside, or get mismanaged, or get a v1 launched early and then have no one believe in the v2. Amazon Astro, their semi-autonomous robot, yeah MS tried to do that in 2012 or so. Failed because the tech wasn't ready yet (and for many other reasons!) Microsoft tried to do eBooks back in 2000. Oops, way too early. [1] Windows Mobile pre WP 7 was never meant to be a consumer product. Working on it I was told very bluntly that the target audience was corporate, and specifically corporate IT departments who were doing the purchasing. Pre-iPhone Microsoft even had a nice little report from some research firm saying consumers would never pay for a cellphone, they would only, en mass, get cell phones for free from their provider in return for the 2 year contract lock in. This was myopic as fuck. As a new college hire I felt like banging my head against the wall every single day for the horrible business decisions that I saw being made, and this was before the iPhone was announced! An example of this closed mindset: When I first started at work I got my company Windows Mobile device, and shortly thereafter I went out shopping for a new TV. I was at the store wondering which one to get when I realized I could pull out my phone and do research right there. I literally stopped in my tracks and realized that having the internet in my pocket was going to be a huge societal shift. When I told my coworkers what had happened, even the next youngest member on the team dismissed what I said as being inconsequential. Year later, same co-worker was proudly showing off the barcode scanning app on his iPhone that let him comparison shop in stores...
buescher 4y ago
They bought webtv, didn't they? Similarly, Microsoft was not only too early on tablet computing, but also never quite got it right.
- com2kid 4y ago
  > They bought webtv, didn't they? Similarly, Microsoft was not only too early on tablet computing, but also never quite got it right. They bought Webtv and also made Windows XP Home Theater Edition. Lots of technologies get purchased then improved upon by large tech companies, including OS X and Android! Regarding tablets, one can argue that IPad Pro is slowly becoming what Tablet PC was back in 2003. IMHO my 2003 Tablet PC experience was amazing. Everyone back then thought I was insane for having a laptop with "only" a 13" screen (17 and even 21 inch laptops were popular back then), but my laptop had an "incredible" 3-4 hour battery life! Heck my tablet had directional mics, I could specify from what direction I wanted audio recording focus on, it was amazing for recording lectures. I haven't seen that tech in a consumer product since. :( Microsoft not being able to realize they could ship more than one successful OS has hurt them many times. Windows has to be everywhere. Apple got it right by forking the OS and realizing if people wanted to give them money for iOS based devices, let the cash roll in. MS is better about accepting people's money now days. :) See Azure and Linux hosting.
- abawany 4y ago
  I was using the tablet computers when they first came out (2003?) and I remain a fan to this day - all of my subsequent laptop purchases have consisted of models with a Wacom stylus and the ability to take notes with a pen. While the Transmeta-based model that was my first purchase was less than perfect, the subsequent models were amazing. All of my class notes from that era are still in some Windows Journal file or on OneNote.

zamfi 4y ago

Heart rate detection?

int0x2e 4y ago

Lots of great insight. Thank you for sharing! Your comment about being too early is on point, though I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing. If you're a big company with scale and cash to support it, exploring new frontiers is probably worth it - you either stumble upon the next big thing, or you at least get to stake your flag through some patents, and in the process - make it so if this things does grow - you already have some kernel you can build upon to start that up without having to pay up for an acquisition... It's not perfect, but from a risk / reward perspective - I can see how this strategy could serve a large tech company well over decades...

com2kid 4y ago
After a decade at MS I have come to believe that there is such a thing as a first mover disadvantage. Being too early to market is just as bad as being late. Basically a new venture at a high tech company gets a lot of enthusiasm and funding, but it if doesn't succeed within some time frame, not only does it get abandoned, but the company in general won't try again for quite some time. Something else that can happen is the early v1 product gets a bad reputation, making it hard for a better v2 to gain traction. This actually hurt Windows Phone sales. Windows Mobile 5/6 (and Pocket PC before) were miserable consumer products[1]. Sales agents in cellphone stores learned not to sell phones from Microsoft, because their device sales bonus would get clawed back when the device was returned. (Manufacturers give $$ to sales staff for each phone sold from that manufacturer, or at least that is how the market worked back when I was last in it, info is circa 2010! When Windows Phone came out, 2 bad things happened. 1. Sales staff wasn't being offered bonuses for selling Windows Phones 2. When everyone realized how big of a disaster that move was, bonuses started being offered, but staff had been burned by 7-8 years of horrible return rates on prior Microsoft smart phones, everyone knew iPhones didn't get returned, so sales staff pushed iPhones. oops! Microsoft Sync is another one. Microsoft tried to make Android Auto back in 2007! Holy shit. Just think about that. In 2007 MP3 playback was still an extra add on in many models. AUX ports were an add on! No one had smart phones! It was crazy ahead of its time. And cars just weren't designed to be "smart" yet. Heck I am pretty sure in 2007 you could still find a few cars that didn't have power windows. Oh I also used something that looked a lot like docker containers back at Microsoft. It was chained and nested VHD partitions that you could update the OS and Apps separately by just dropping in and relinking the VHDs, so the apps and dependencies were one self contained virtual hard drive image, to upgrade the apps just run some magic commands and the existing OS image had a new app image attached to it. Microsoft had a working, reportedly playable at reasonable speed (never saw it myself) XBox 360 emulator for PC around, I think maybe 2008 or 2009? To be clear, that is an insane technological accomplishment, to have it running at playable speeds on PCs of the time. I got despondent working at Microsoft because I saw so much cool technology just fall by the wayside, or get mismanaged, or get a v1 launched early and then have no one believe in the v2. Amazon Astro, their semi-autonomous robot, yeah MS tried to do that in 2012 or so. Failed because the tech wasn't ready yet (and for many other reasons!) Microsoft tried to do eBooks back in 2000. Oops, way too early. [1] Windows Mobile pre WP 7 was never meant to be a consumer product. Working on it I was told very bluntly that the target audience was corporate, and specifically corporate IT departments who were doing the purchasing. Pre-iPhone Microsoft even had a nice little report from some research firm saying consumers would never pay for a cellphone, they would only, en mass, get cell phones for free from their provider in return for the 2 year contract lock in. This was myopic as fuck. As a new college hire I felt like banging my head against the wall every single day for the horrible business decisions that I saw being made, and this was before the iPhone was announced! An example of this closed mindset: When I first started at work I got my company Windows Mobile device, and shortly thereafter I went out shopping for a new TV. I was at the store wondering which one to get when I realized I could pull out my phone and do research right there. I literally stopped in my tracks and realized that having the internet in my pocket was going to be a huge societal shift. When I told my coworkers what had happened, even the next youngest member on the team dismissed what I said as being inconsequential. Year later, same co-worker was proudly showing off the barcode scanning app on his iPhone that let him comparison shop in stores...

buescher 4y ago

They bought webtv, didn't they? Similarly, Microsoft was not only too early on tablet computing, but also never quite got it right.

com2kid 4y ago
> They bought webtv, didn't they? Similarly, Microsoft was not only too early on tablet computing, but also never quite got it right. They bought Webtv and also made Windows XP Home Theater Edition. Lots of technologies get purchased then improved upon by large tech companies, including OS X and Android! Regarding tablets, one can argue that IPad Pro is slowly becoming what Tablet PC was back in 2003. IMHO my 2003 Tablet PC experience was amazing. Everyone back then thought I was insane for having a laptop with "only" a 13" screen (17 and even 21 inch laptops were popular back then), but my laptop had an "incredible" 3-4 hour battery life! Heck my tablet had directional mics, I could specify from what direction I wanted audio recording focus on, it was amazing for recording lectures. I haven't seen that tech in a consumer product since. :( Microsoft not being able to realize they could ship more than one successful OS has hurt them many times. Windows has to be everywhere. Apple got it right by forking the OS and realizing if people wanted to give them money for iOS based devices, let the cash roll in. MS is better about accepting people's money now days. :) See Azure and Linux hosting.
abawany 4y ago
I was using the tablet computers when they first came out (2003?) and I remain a fan to this day - all of my subsequent laptop purchases have consisted of models with a Wacom stylus and the ability to take notes with a pen. While the Transmeta-based model that was my first purchase was less than perfect, the subsequent models were amazing. All of my class notes from that era are still in some Windows Journal file or on OneNote.