6 ms·

Humane, a startup full of ex-iPhone talent, trying to make phones obsolete

71 points by bilsbie 3y ago

hackideiomat 3y ago
[flagged]
averageRoyalty 3y ago
Ok. It's currently Spring 2023. What is it?
camillomiller 3y ago
Until they show us something more than a boxy little calculator with clever product placement and an Aliexpress-sourced laser beamer, I claim vaporware.
- amelius 3y ago
  What do you think the first iPhone prototypes looked like?
  - pazimzadeh 3y ago
    They didn’t talk about them on any stage at that stage
pazimzadeh 3y ago
Sorry for being negative, but Humane as-is is going nowhere. It can’t do video calls, it sucks. You’d have to have an iPhone and one of these. AirPods Pro 5 will do 99% of what this can do through voice. Sorry for saying something irrelevant, but I wish Apple would put e-ink (or equivalent) displays on the back of iPhones and iPads.
- concinds 3y ago
  I have no idea how they manage to recruit talent. They're trying to generate hype, yet there's no hype, just universal criticism. See here, see Twitter, see the comments on that TED Talk speech. No one's buying into it. Plus, I really hate how "we used to work at Apple" is their main marketing strategy. They wouldn't need to do that if the product was any good. Which it's not, because the concept is a gimmick. It's supposed to be "more humane" and blend into the background, yet palm projection and voice interaction are incredibly invasive and socially awkward. So is having a camera attached to your chest at all time. So again, how do they recruit? It's like watching a slow-motion trainwreck.
  - pazimzadeh 3y ago
    I guess the British accent + ‘we worked at Apple’ goes a long way It also seems like a mobile version of what Bret Victor is working on. Could use that to hype it up.
- amelius 3y ago
  The iPhone 1 wasn't a very capable phone either.
  - pazimzadeh 3y ago
    It wasn’t too shabby
  - p_l 3y ago
    the 3G upgrade that also introduced app store felt positively clunky compared to some phones then in use. Arguably explosion of the App Store quickly turned into major differentiator
  - paxys 3y ago
    Compared to its competition? It absolutely was.
    - m463 3y ago
      People don't remember it didn't have any apps.
      - Someone 3y ago
        It had apps (Maps, Contacts, Safari, to mention a few), but no third party ones (Maps used Google data, but AFAIK, was 100% written by Apple, and certainly was installed by Apple in the firmware image)
    - andrensairr 3y ago
      Nah. I was using a cheap Nokia 3230 in 2008 when looking for a replacement. the iPhone had just been released and it could not offer me a number of features I had been used to for years: - Video calling (they didn't get front facing camera for ages) - Video recording. Of any kind. - Picture messaging. I can't remember if they offered any kind of MMS support. - Voice commands (they didn't work terribly well but had been a feature of Nokia phones for ages) - Third party apps - Text copy/paste - About a week of battery charge, depending on use. So I bought an N95 instead, and had that for 8 years until it basically fell apart. Its original battery was still getting more life from a charge at this sorry stage than a new iPhone/Android replacement.
bko 3y ago
> Humane is trying to realize the promise of “ambient computing” — an artificial intelligence-driven computing experience that’s personal and contextual — by building a software platform and hardware line that doesn’t rely on screens. Sorry, I think that's too many buzz words for me to comprehend and I can't take it seriously. Phones provide us some utility. If you can make some other interface that helps me ask for GPS directions or check my emails, sure. But if you're lumping in all this other crap, I know you're just selling vaporware. > Based on Chaudhri’s explanation, Humane’s chosen path lies in artificial intelligence. Building experiences around interactions with AI that fit around someone's normal life instead of forcing them to shape theirs around another screen. In Humane’s words, the company is helping to build the “Intelligence Age,” a new paradigm of computing based on journalist Walt Mossberg’s idea of the “disappearing computer.” What does this mean? I'm bored for the 40 seconds it takes me to catch and take an elevator. So I look at social media. Or I'm riding a bus or train. Or I just want to take a break from work, or get GPS instructions. How does Humane solve my problem (is there a problem)? By showing me a social media feed on my wrist instead of a screen? Sounds like a privacy nightmare to try to use AI and constant feed to estimate my fiber intake and predict when I'm going to need to entertain myself for ten minutes for it to preload my social media feed.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago
  I think they're trying to play on the user experience revolution that capacitive touch and the iPhone brought to the world, hence framing themselves as "ex iPhone talent", and sell the idea that they can once again revolutionize UX into something more ephemeral. I remember when the first iPhone came out, people were like "a phone with one button? What the fuck am I gonna do with that?" And then we saw what can be done with that. I think there are still novel approaches to using computers in your personal life, but they're not readily apparent; truly novel things are never readily apparent. But if the stagnation and devolution of UX as it exists today is any indicator, I highly doubt they can pull it off. They'll either give us overpriced glasses and fake holograms for the flash factor or they'll deliver something none of us can envision, it's probably going to be the former.
- nico 3y ago
  It’s right under the title: > Humane, founded by ex-Apple talent, might be working on a laser projection system to that replaces our phones and tablets Laser projection system So either a projection on a surface, or maybe directly into the eye Either way, they probably end up displaying the same info as a screen
bilsbie 3y ago
I wish they’d pair with an ear piece and the primary interface is the Ai talking to you. Then projection would be secondary. Also It would be interesting for privacy if the Ai updates its weights from everything it sees and hears but there’s no way to get that data out of the device. You could still ask it to specifically take photos and recordings but that would be no different than a smartphone today.
- paxys 3y ago
  Ear pieces and AI computing devices (your cell phone) already exist. Humane is entirely unnecessary to get to the experience you are describing. The company's entire selling point is that projection thing.
  - sawert 3y ago
    I'm not defending humane but I think the main idea is that there's a camera always pointing where you're pointing that's feeding more context into the device. The projection is just one of the ways it can communicate back (with voice likely being the primary interface).
cookiengineer 3y ago
https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni So vague, too much buzz for me to understand...
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  This seems like a scam to me.
maxk42 3y ago
> Humane will reveal its first pass at its ambient computing idea in Spring 2023. Okay, so an outdated article that already shows the company is failing to keep its promises. These are a dime a dozen, I'm afraid.
- lgg 3y ago
  I find the whole idea unappealing, but they did keep their promise and show off a prototype back in spring://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
- spicybright 3y ago
  There's been at least 2 attempts on kickstarter for this same idea. One traditional projection which is bulky as hell, really bad brightness drop off, and you can't see it in the light. Another was some kind of laser based thing that had the same issues. Oh, and a very old one, probably 2009 from MIT or something. It's a projector you wore on a long necklace that would project stuff on your arms and hands. That one actually worked decently in tech demos they showed. It could track your hands and arms so you could gesture out stuff. Still, I have very little hope this will pull through. Not sure how the iPhone devs can help much with the main hurtle being the hardware that doesn't exist or have a working proof of concept. Edit: I'm going to put my foot in my mouth on this one, I just say the ted talk in the adjacent comment and it seems to actually work. Smart they went with chest mounted vs bulky wrist watch.
vcg3rd 3y ago
As powerful as the Internet is, there has been fewer transformative technologies developed from 1950 to now than from the steam engine to 1950. Just a few: radio, radar, penicillin, automobiles, telephone, refrigeration (huge), air flight, train transport, x-rays, and much much more. Rewrite the headline to "make phone calls obsolete" and it'll give you 1) an idea of how transformative voice transmissions were (and still are for families) and 2) an idea of how people forget what phones are actually good for. If I had to give up everything on my smart phone except one function I would keep the ability to speak to my mother, children, and grandchildren. Yes, I could use VoIP on my desktop if I wanted, but I don't want and I can't take my desktop with me. I can buy a GPS, radio/mp3 player, camera,e-book reader and more to replace those functions. I would retain voice calls and give up only what? Social media? I don't use any. Email when not at home (yawn)? Surfing the Web?
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Losing the camera function would be annoying, as would the ability to use it as a credit/travel card etc. - I'd have to go back to using dedicated devices for that. Whereas you're right - the ability to talk (/communicate) with people virtually wherever you (and they) are in the world is still what makes it a truly transformative technology with no adequate replacement.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    > if only I could buy a modern phone without cameras. It's a travesty these things don't even have shutters. Taping over them works but is very inconvenient. They also tend to stick out of the chassis. It's boggling my mind they keep adding more cameras. I really have lost almost all touch with the world.
    - aners_xyz 3y ago
      Genuinely curious how phone cameras not having physical shutters is a travesty. Wouldn’t it take up a lot of space? Either making the camera bump even bigger or shrinking the lens elements. Shutterless shooting has its faults that necessitate a physical shutter when shooting professionally on dedicated cameras. Outside of those circumstances shooting shutterless on modern mirrorless ‘pro’ cameras has few drawbacks. I could see flickering with some light sources being annoying at times but if you’re running into it as annoyance often a dedicated camera is always an option. Even 10 year old digital cameras wipe the floor of any phone
w-m 3y ago
Earlier this year we built a live depth estimation system in our research lab. It uses a small laser projector with visible light and an event camera to estimate the depth of the projected points. You get a point cloud of whatever surface or object you’re projecting on, while being free to project any content [0]. Also it’s fast enough to process 1280x720 points at 60 Hz with a laptop CPU. Explaining this work and use cases can sometimes be a bit of a struggle. Maybe if “ambient computing” is established as a widely known buzzword, imma have to steal it to make that part of the job a little easier. Until now I was mostly going with mixed reality. [0]: https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/X-maps/ https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/X-maps/
- raphman 3y ago
  Cool research that seems quite relevant for my own research. Thank you for sharing!
alpaca128 3y ago
Countless smartphone users like to use Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, mobile games, and so on, all things only possible with a screen. Meanwhile nothing could prevent Google and Apple from implementing the same kind of AI controls on their phones. The only thing that remains is the laser projector and it doesn't seem like people are excited about it. Many don't actually want a "world without displays", and goals like a better "human experience" look vastly different between different people. I'm guessing those startup founders like interacting with people and want tech to be in the background, meanwhile I'm the opposite. The smartphone in its current shape happens to be the compromise most users find good enough, and it doesn't involve a lot of voice-based commands even though they've been supported to some degree for years. Maybe this device is good, but it's not made for the mainstream user of 2023.
zie 3y ago
I'd rather the Apple Watch replace the iPhone. Apple doesn't seem totally against the idea, but they don't seem to be in any hurry either.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  An Apple Watch with cellular capabilities is that? I presume they want it connected to an iPhone at least to maintain iPhone sales, but you can leave the iPhone at home.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    That's somewhat true, but not reflective of reality. Most third party apps are interfaces to the phone app. Very few use local storage. Many restrictions exist on the assumption you also use a phone (iMessages only showing last 24 hours, unable to set as primary Find My device, etc).
  - zie 3y ago
    Right, when they first came out, they were severely tethered to your iPhone. Now you can do quite a lot from the watch itself, and the phone is mostly needed only for setup. So you can't quite replace your phone with your watch, but Apple might make it possible someday.
emadabdulrahim 3y ago
Wouldn't bet a dollar on this company's vision. Smoke and mirror. They claim to obsess over design with their overly designed website, but the presmise and vision of the product seem so out of touch with reality. Also they've been around for a long while now and haven't shipped a thing except their laughable merch products with their obnoxious and trite slogans on them
- 15457345234 3y ago
  It's one of those cases where the more (of this article/press release) you read, the less you understand about what it is they actually do and what any of their products would actually look like. > haven't shipped a thing except their laughable merch Yeah that's a big tell
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I think pervasive ubiquitous & ambient computings are all in early phases, but have a long-run massive impact. We're in a lull, where the big players are realizing conversational chatbots for example aren't going to be a major profit driver anytime soon, but they also kind of know that there's existential risk to having nothing on this part of the platform map. But we're also seeing a world where multi-device control is expected, where we have expanded our computing horizons well past the single system single display model. And where new modalities like voice control and watch control are growingly expected. It makes sense for groups to pioneer here, for advanced players to try hard. Rather than cloud my mind with negativity - and yes I have plenty of doubts - some of the hints here have some promise. They seem to have a lot more respect for personal data, and the tech scene desperately needs some less shady players to redeem it's image & help us compute & connect. Their tech looking to use a laser projector for overlaying information seems like an interesting idea. VR and AR (XR) have been a major fixation for tech for a while, but wearing a display keeps having downsides, and the promise here of combining digital augmentations atop the real world, without so big a downside, seems promising to me. It would be cool to lookup weather or recipes or get other infographics quickly. I could totally see kit-ing out a room with a couple moderately priced projects for this purpose. There's a long proud history of post-display ubicomp in general. The Nomad wearable comes to mind as a prominent early device. There's some low-effort negative swipes sayiny 'if I can't teleconference on it it's no good to me' but we are surrounded by screens. Most of them aren't ours don't do our will, but part of the pervasive/ubicomp dream has always been to make these ambient peripherals more broadly available. Even if you do have such a hard fast need, I could imagine a world where it didn't necessarily have to be my own device that I carry that I needed to teleconference. I can imagine ubicomp winning, advancing enough, such that I would be well setup everywhere. Further, it's not hard for me to imagine a device which is mostly not screen oriented, which is mainly about other modalities, but which indeed does have a small screen to fallback on.
latchkey 3y ago
This thing? lol. https://twitter.com/88Stash/status/1708284463271342113 https://twitter.com/88Stash/status/1708284463271342113
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
likeclockwork 3y ago
They're going to get so much VC money.
fidotron 3y ago
This looks like an attempt to commercialise the ideas in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg Projectors have a killer problem which is they aren't very bright, and those that are bright enough to be useful are dangerous to everyone nearby.
- usrusr 3y ago
  And even if you ignore the danger, battery draw would just kills all non-stationary applications.
Probiotic6081 3y ago
I'll sell my Cicret Bracelet for one of those when it comes out.
crooked-v 3y ago
This really reminds of the buzz around the original Segway release.
ellis0n 3y ago
The film “In Time” showed this feature back in 2011.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  No it didn't. The laser wasn't projected from a device, nor was it functional beyond financial transaction and counting.
RockRobotRock 3y ago
Wish I could get funded with a shitty BLE wearable with a microphone that talks to ChatGPT API
altacc 3y ago
Link is to a puff piece from Dec 2022. What was announced by Humane last week was what the wearable looks like https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni The information is vague and I'm made more dubious by it being shown as part of a fashion show, the epitome of hype fueled vaporware. It seems to have a camera and the patent hints at a projector, which on a wearable is problematic if you don't have a perfect solution for stabilising projection as the body and clothes move (and most people spend a lot of time interacting with devices whilst moving).
smnrg 3y ago
$30k/yr. (or so, I don't remember exactly) on their hu.ma.ne web domain and nothing concrete in half a decade. Must be nice.

71 points by bilsbie 3y ago

hackideiomat 3y ago

[flagged]

averageRoyalty 3y ago

Ok. It's currently Spring 2023. What is it?

camillomiller 3y ago

Until they show us something more than a boxy little calculator with clever product placement and an Aliexpress-sourced laser beamer, I claim vaporware.

amelius 3y ago
What do you think the first iPhone prototypes looked like?
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  They didn’t talk about them on any stage at that stage

pazimzadeh 3y ago

Sorry for being negative, but Humane as-is is going nowhere. It can’t do video calls, it sucks. You’d have to have an iPhone and one of these. AirPods Pro 5 will do 99% of what this can do through voice. Sorry for saying something irrelevant, but I wish Apple would put e-ink (or equivalent) displays on the back of iPhones and iPads.

concinds 3y ago
I have no idea how they manage to recruit talent. They're trying to generate hype, yet there's no hype, just universal criticism. See here, see Twitter, see the comments on that TED Talk speech. No one's buying into it. Plus, I really hate how "we used to work at Apple" is their main marketing strategy. They wouldn't need to do that if the product was any good. Which it's not, because the concept is a gimmick. It's supposed to be "more humane" and blend into the background, yet palm projection and voice interaction are incredibly invasive and socially awkward. So is having a camera attached to your chest at all time. So again, how do they recruit? It's like watching a slow-motion trainwreck.
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  I guess the British accent + ‘we worked at Apple’ goes a long way It also seems like a mobile version of what Bret Victor is working on. Could use that to hype it up.
amelius 3y ago
The iPhone 1 wasn't a very capable phone either.
- pazimzadeh 3y ago
  It wasn’t too shabby
- p_l 3y ago
  the 3G upgrade that also introduced app store felt positively clunky compared to some phones then in use. Arguably explosion of the App Store quickly turned into major differentiator
- paxys 3y ago
  Compared to its competition? It absolutely was.
  - m463 3y ago
    People don't remember it didn't have any apps.
    - Someone 3y ago
      It had apps (Maps, Contacts, Safari, to mention a few), but no third party ones (Maps used Google data, but AFAIK, was 100% written by Apple, and certainly was installed by Apple in the firmware image)
  - andrensairr 3y ago
    Nah. I was using a cheap Nokia 3230 in 2008 when looking for a replacement. the iPhone had just been released and it could not offer me a number of features I had been used to for years: - Video calling (they didn't get front facing camera for ages) - Video recording. Of any kind. - Picture messaging. I can't remember if they offered any kind of MMS support. - Voice commands (they didn't work terribly well but had been a feature of Nokia phones for ages) - Third party apps - Text copy/paste - About a week of battery charge, depending on use. So I bought an N95 instead, and had that for 8 years until it basically fell apart. Its original battery was still getting more life from a charge at this sorry stage than a new iPhone/Android replacement.

bko 3y ago

> Humane is trying to realize the promise of “ambient computing” — an artificial intelligence-driven computing experience that’s personal and contextual — by building a software platform and hardware line that doesn’t rely on screens. Sorry, I think that's too many buzz words for me to comprehend and I can't take it seriously. Phones provide us some utility. If you can make some other interface that helps me ask for GPS directions or check my emails, sure. But if you're lumping in all this other crap, I know you're just selling vaporware. > Based on Chaudhri’s explanation, Humane’s chosen path lies in artificial intelligence. Building experiences around interactions with AI that fit around someone's normal life instead of forcing them to shape theirs around another screen. In Humane’s words, the company is helping to build the “Intelligence Age,” a new paradigm of computing based on journalist Walt Mossberg’s idea of the “disappearing computer.” What does this mean? I'm bored for the 40 seconds it takes me to catch and take an elevator. So I look at social media. Or I'm riding a bus or train. Or I just want to take a break from work, or get GPS instructions. How does Humane solve my problem (is there a problem)? By showing me a social media feed on my wrist instead of a screen? Sounds like a privacy nightmare to try to use AI and constant feed to estimate my fiber intake and predict when I'm going to need to entertain myself for ten minutes for it to preload my social media feed.

friend_and_foe 3y ago
I think they're trying to play on the user experience revolution that capacitive touch and the iPhone brought to the world, hence framing themselves as "ex iPhone talent", and sell the idea that they can once again revolutionize UX into something more ephemeral. I remember when the first iPhone came out, people were like "a phone with one button? What the fuck am I gonna do with that?" And then we saw what can be done with that. I think there are still novel approaches to using computers in your personal life, but they're not readily apparent; truly novel things are never readily apparent. But if the stagnation and devolution of UX as it exists today is any indicator, I highly doubt they can pull it off. They'll either give us overpriced glasses and fake holograms for the flash factor or they'll deliver something none of us can envision, it's probably going to be the former.
nico 3y ago
It’s right under the title: > Humane, founded by ex-Apple talent, might be working on a laser projection system to that replaces our phones and tablets Laser projection system So either a projection on a surface, or maybe directly into the eye Either way, they probably end up displaying the same info as a screen

bilsbie 3y ago

I wish they’d pair with an ear piece and the primary interface is the Ai talking to you. Then projection would be secondary. Also It would be interesting for privacy if the Ai updates its weights from everything it sees and hears but there’s no way to get that data out of the device. You could still ask it to specifically take photos and recordings but that would be no different than a smartphone today.

paxys 3y ago
Ear pieces and AI computing devices (your cell phone) already exist. Humane is entirely unnecessary to get to the experience you are describing. The company's entire selling point is that projection thing.
- sawert 3y ago
  I'm not defending humane but I think the main idea is that there's a camera always pointing where you're pointing that's feeding more context into the device. The projection is just one of the ways it can communicate back (with voice likely being the primary interface).

cookiengineer 3y ago

https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni So vague, too much buzz for me to understand...

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
This seems like a scam to me.

maxk42 3y ago

> Humane will reveal its first pass at its ambient computing idea in Spring 2023. Okay, so an outdated article that already shows the company is failing to keep its promises. These are a dime a dozen, I'm afraid.

lgg 3y ago
I find the whole idea unappealing, but they did keep their promise and show off a prototype back in spring://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMsQO5u7-NQ
spicybright 3y ago
There's been at least 2 attempts on kickstarter for this same idea. One traditional projection which is bulky as hell, really bad brightness drop off, and you can't see it in the light. Another was some kind of laser based thing that had the same issues. Oh, and a very old one, probably 2009 from MIT or something. It's a projector you wore on a long necklace that would project stuff on your arms and hands. That one actually worked decently in tech demos they showed. It could track your hands and arms so you could gesture out stuff. Still, I have very little hope this will pull through. Not sure how the iPhone devs can help much with the main hurtle being the hardware that doesn't exist or have a working proof of concept. Edit: I'm going to put my foot in my mouth on this one, I just say the ted talk in the adjacent comment and it seems to actually work. Smart they went with chest mounted vs bulky wrist watch.

vcg3rd 3y ago

As powerful as the Internet is, there has been fewer transformative technologies developed from 1950 to now than from the steam engine to 1950. Just a few: radio, radar, penicillin, automobiles, telephone, refrigeration (huge), air flight, train transport, x-rays, and much much more. Rewrite the headline to "make phone calls obsolete" and it'll give you 1) an idea of how transformative voice transmissions were (and still are for families) and 2) an idea of how people forget what phones are actually good for. If I had to give up everything on my smart phone except one function I would keep the ability to speak to my mother, children, and grandchildren. Yes, I could use VoIP on my desktop if I wanted, but I don't want and I can't take my desktop with me. I can buy a GPS, radio/mp3 player, camera,e-book reader and more to replace those functions. I would retain voice calls and give up only what? Social media? I don't use any. Email when not at home (yawn)? Surfing the Web?

wizofaus 3y ago
Losing the camera function would be annoying, as would the ability to use it as a credit/travel card etc. - I'd have to go back to using dedicated devices for that. Whereas you're right - the ability to talk (/communicate) with people virtually wherever you (and they) are in the world is still what makes it a truly transformative technology with no adequate replacement.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  > if only I could buy a modern phone without cameras. It's a travesty these things don't even have shutters. Taping over them works but is very inconvenient. They also tend to stick out of the chassis. It's boggling my mind they keep adding more cameras. I really have lost almost all touch with the world.
  - aners_xyz 3y ago
    Genuinely curious how phone cameras not having physical shutters is a travesty. Wouldn’t it take up a lot of space? Either making the camera bump even bigger or shrinking the lens elements. Shutterless shooting has its faults that necessitate a physical shutter when shooting professionally on dedicated cameras. Outside of those circumstances shooting shutterless on modern mirrorless ‘pro’ cameras has few drawbacks. I could see flickering with some light sources being annoying at times but if you’re running into it as annoyance often a dedicated camera is always an option. Even 10 year old digital cameras wipe the floor of any phone

w-m 3y ago

Earlier this year we built a live depth estimation system in our research lab. It uses a small laser projector with visible light and an event camera to estimate the depth of the projected points. You get a point cloud of whatever surface or object you’re projecting on, while being free to project any content [0]. Also it’s fast enough to process 1280x720 points at 60 Hz with a laptop CPU. Explaining this work and use cases can sometimes be a bit of a struggle. Maybe if “ambient computing” is established as a widely known buzzword, imma have to steal it to make that part of the job a little easier. Until now I was mostly going with mixed reality. [0]: https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/X-maps/ https://fraunhoferhhi.github.io/X-maps/

raphman 3y ago
Cool research that seems quite relevant for my own research. Thank you for sharing!

alpaca128 3y ago

Countless smartphone users like to use Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube, mobile games, and so on, all things only possible with a screen. Meanwhile nothing could prevent Google and Apple from implementing the same kind of AI controls on their phones. The only thing that remains is the laser projector and it doesn't seem like people are excited about it. Many don't actually want a "world without displays", and goals like a better "human experience" look vastly different between different people. I'm guessing those startup founders like interacting with people and want tech to be in the background, meanwhile I'm the opposite. The smartphone in its current shape happens to be the compromise most users find good enough, and it doesn't involve a lot of voice-based commands even though they've been supported to some degree for years. Maybe this device is good, but it's not made for the mainstream user of 2023.

zie 3y ago

I'd rather the Apple Watch replace the iPhone. Apple doesn't seem totally against the idea, but they don't seem to be in any hurry either.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
An Apple Watch with cellular capabilities is that? I presume they want it connected to an iPhone at least to maintain iPhone sales, but you can leave the iPhone at home.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  That's somewhat true, but not reflective of reality. Most third party apps are interfaces to the phone app. Very few use local storage. Many restrictions exist on the assumption you also use a phone (iMessages only showing last 24 hours, unable to set as primary Find My device, etc).
- zie 3y ago
  Right, when they first came out, they were severely tethered to your iPhone. Now you can do quite a lot from the watch itself, and the phone is mostly needed only for setup. So you can't quite replace your phone with your watch, but Apple might make it possible someday.

emadabdulrahim 3y ago

Wouldn't bet a dollar on this company's vision. Smoke and mirror. They claim to obsess over design with their overly designed website, but the presmise and vision of the product seem so out of touch with reality. Also they've been around for a long while now and haven't shipped a thing except their laughable merch products with their obnoxious and trite slogans on them

15457345234 3y ago
It's one of those cases where the more (of this article/press release) you read, the less you understand about what it is they actually do and what any of their products would actually look like. > haven't shipped a thing except their laughable merch Yeah that's a big tell

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

I think pervasive ubiquitous & ambient computings are all in early phases, but have a long-run massive impact. We're in a lull, where the big players are realizing conversational chatbots for example aren't going to be a major profit driver anytime soon, but they also kind of know that there's existential risk to having nothing on this part of the platform map. But we're also seeing a world where multi-device control is expected, where we have expanded our computing horizons well past the single system single display model. And where new modalities like voice control and watch control are growingly expected. It makes sense for groups to pioneer here, for advanced players to try hard. Rather than cloud my mind with negativity - and yes I have plenty of doubts - some of the hints here have some promise. They seem to have a lot more respect for personal data, and the tech scene desperately needs some less shady players to redeem it's image & help us compute & connect. Their tech looking to use a laser projector for overlaying information seems like an interesting idea. VR and AR (XR) have been a major fixation for tech for a while, but wearing a display keeps having downsides, and the promise here of combining digital augmentations atop the real world, without so big a downside, seems promising to me. It would be cool to lookup weather or recipes or get other infographics quickly. I could totally see kit-ing out a room with a couple moderately priced projects for this purpose. There's a long proud history of post-display ubicomp in general. The Nomad wearable comes to mind as a prominent early device. There's some low-effort negative swipes sayiny 'if I can't teleconference on it it's no good to me' but we are surrounded by screens. Most of them aren't ours don't do our will, but part of the pervasive/ubicomp dream has always been to make these ambient peripherals more broadly available. Even if you do have such a hard fast need, I could imagine a world where it didn't necessarily have to be my own device that I carry that I needed to teleconference. I can imagine ubicomp winning, advancing enough, such that I would be well setup everywhere. Further, it's not hard for me to imagine a device which is mostly not screen oriented, which is mainly about other modalities, but which indeed does have a small screen to fallback on.

latchkey 3y ago

This thing? lol. https://twitter.com/88Stash/status/1708284463271342113 https://twitter.com/88Stash/status/1708284463271342113

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

likeclockwork 3y ago

They're going to get so much VC money.

fidotron 3y ago

This looks like an attempt to commercialise the ideas in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrtANPtnhyg Projectors have a killer problem which is they aren't very bright, and those that are bright enough to be useful are dangerous to everyone nearby.

usrusr 3y ago
And even if you ignore the danger, battery draw would just kills all non-stationary applications.

Probiotic6081 3y ago

I'll sell my Cicret Bracelet for one of those when it comes out.

crooked-v 3y ago

This really reminds of the buzz around the original Segway release.

ellis0n 3y ago

The film “In Time” showed this feature back in 2011.

averageRoyalty 3y ago
No it didn't. The laser wasn't projected from a device, nor was it functional beyond financial transaction and counting.

RockRobotRock 3y ago

Wish I could get funded with a shitty BLE wearable with a microphone that talks to ChatGPT API

altacc 3y ago

Link is to a puff piece from Dec 2022. What was announced by Humane last week was what the wearable looks like https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni https://hu.ma.ne/media/humanexcoperni The information is vague and I'm made more dubious by it being shown as part of a fashion show, the epitome of hype fueled vaporware. It seems to have a camera and the patent hints at a projector, which on a wearable is problematic if you don't have a perfect solution for stabilising projection as the body and clothes move (and most people spend a lot of time interacting with devices whilst moving).

smnrg 3y ago

$30k/yr. (or so, I don't remember exactly) on their hu.ma.ne web domain and nothing concrete in half a decade. Must be nice.