6 ms·

If you go back to Steve Jobs' original iPhone speech, the crux of it was: revolutionary user interfaces (mouse, click wheel, multi-touch) enabled revolutionary

by chx 3y ago

If you go back to Steve Jobs' original iPhone speech, the crux of it was: revolutionary user interfaces (mouse, click wheel, multi-touch) enabled revolutionary products (Mac, iPod, iPhone). And while we know the LG Prada shipped with a capacitive touchscreen that's a technicality: LG took the UI of a feature phone, minimally adjusted it for touch and that was it. Meanwhile Apple took their desktop OS and shrunk it to the phone. This is to say, if Apple is working on something big, we can't predict it. To quote David Pogue's first iPhone review > The iPhone is revolutionary; it's flawed. It's substance; it's style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones. Even if we had an inclination of what they are cooking, figuring it out is near impossible. And we don't. Of course, as a person who lives with T2 diabetes, I'd love an Apple Watch with a noninvasive glucose sensor. But while I have no doubt it costs dearly to develop and most importantly, validate that, I would guess it costs like 9 figures total (which is enough for most companies not-Apple not to be able to crack it). These numbers here are 11 figures. Yearly. Not even close.

MBCook 3y ago
I’m really hoping they crack that nut. I’m not diabetic, but I do wonder what would happen when someone figures it out. All of a sudden you could basically put real time glucose monitors on a huge chunk of the population with all sorts of medical conditions or none at all. What could we accidentally learn from that that no one was ever looking for? The benefits to diabetics are obvious and life changing unless you already have a CGM. And if we never learn anything we didn’t already know it would still be a fantastic improvement. But what if there is more?
- chx 3y ago
  Trust me my friend, even if you have a CGM the benefits would be gigantic. I can't speak for T1 people who spend their entire lives like this and maybe it gets easier but inserting the CGM sensor, even if you use a local anesthetics is unpleasant and psychologically taxing. Then it interferes with your daily life and more importantly, it interferes with your mental health. Do you need a visual, can-be-felt reminder every second of your life you have a disability? I thought not. I have worn one and made my own meal plans while doing so and then stopped wearing them and I am fine, I can control my own blood sugar fine with just eating well, I am now down to six month blood sugar checks just to make sure I do not relapse. Still, having a non-invasive check so you can more easily test new stuff would be more than welcome.
  - user_7832 3y ago
    (T1 here) I agree that applying a CGM is nerve-wracking for a few moments, and can hurt if you accidentally hit a nerve. But I really don’t notice it (much like my spectacles or watch) in everyday life. However, I’ve been using a CGMS for years now, so it’s likely I’m “used to it” by now. I guess as a T1 it’s much nicer to not poke your finger every few hours which is probably why I love CGMS’es, but if you’re not diabetic I totally get why a non invasive watch would be lovely. Heck, I’d very likely buy an Apple Watch if they actually do it. However I haven’t heard great things with non invasive measuring accuracy unfortunately.
    - MBCook 3y ago
      I do wonder if it would be accurate enough. Maybe it would be useful to type two diabetics who have their blood sugar under decent control. I’m not expecting true CGM level accuracy. Still whatever they could get if it was reasonable enough to be useful I’m sure insurance would much rather give people an Apple Watch for a relatively low price then pay for expensive one time use medical supplies over and over. I mean how long would it take before just the price of test strips would add up to the cost of a fancy Apple Watch?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  My understanding is that different people react differently to the same foods. For example, some people's glucose spikes after eating bananas, other people's doesn't. It would be great to know this, and other things, about one's self. I've considered doing a trial for a couple days with the foods I normally eat, just to know if any of my common foods are especially bad or good for my particular body.
sho_hn 3y ago
> Even if we had an inclination of what they are cooking, figuring it out is near impossible. And we don't. This is some sort of strange myth-making. Making a touchscreen phone had been the writing on the wall and pretty obvious to many. Having a company set up and willing to do it and do it well is another matter. But it doesn't mean you can't see things coming. Ideas and execution are not the same.
- chx 3y ago
  > Making a touchscreen phone had been the writing on the wall and pretty obvious to many. Really. This reminds of this discussion https://reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wdp6n/what_makes_the_oculus_different_from_previous_vr/ https://reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wdp6n/what_makes_the_o... I opened a decade ago asking "What makes the Oculus different from previous VR?" and the winning answer was pointing out how much the 1994 IBM Simon Smartphone feature list resembled on the surface the iPhone feature list. In other words, still watching the world through my own eyes, I have been a columnist of the largest computer monthly in Hungary from 1993 to 2001. Yes, the IBM Simon, the Nokia Communicator, the Palm, the Pocket PC, yes those were there But none of that meant anyone could have foreseen the iPhone. Android history articles often mention how Google essentially needed to restart because of how revolutionary it was! https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d... if there was a prophet who could foretell the iPhone their words didn't register in Mountain View, that's for sure. If you think anyone did, the Internet does not forget, link it.
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    I'm not talking about columnists. Journalists are not people who build things. I'm talking about people who build things and think about what to build next. The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point. Lots of devices already worked like this outside of phones, for example a lot of touchscreen kiosk hardware (e.g. ATMs). It's just not a particularly big leap of the imagination to do this in a phone form factor. It was also present in mobile form in plenty of media and scifi, e.g. 2001's tablets. What matters is whether you think you can pull it off, and whether you're willing to try, and whether you are able to identify the right moment to try. A lot of companies were not willing to try (e.g. out of fear of cannibalizing existing product lines or rejection by the customer). Others didn't have the tech stack necessary to do so. What Apple did right is to have the good sense (or luck) to try it when the technology supply chain to back it was there, and not do it too early. Other phone makers wrote their tech stacks for much lower-power devices, and really struggled to scale their existing operating systems, dev community, etc. up to making a richer device, and didn't have the ambition to push for it. Apple started, as OP pointed out, by scaling down a desktop-class OS at a point where the hardware had just made it possible, and this worked out well. What made the iPhone a success wasn't just the form factor, it was also e.g. having a proper web browser (which Apple didn't even write themselves). This pattern replicates in a few other aspects of the device (supply chain for capacitive touch, batteries, etc.) The iPhone is a fantastic success story of a good product concept, waiting for the right moment, sensible tech choices, solid tech asset management by a software company, very good industrialization, and great execution and integration. It's not a magic fairy-tale unicorn idea that no on else could think of. It's annoying because it misrepresents and misunderstands what it takes to make a good product, and leads to internalizing the wrong lessons and values. It's one of the subtle reasons why there aren't more Apples.
ramesh31 3y ago
>If you go back to Steve Jobs' original iPhone speech, the crux of it was: revolutionary user interfaces (mouse, click wheel, multi-touch) enabled revolutionary products (Mac, iPod, iPhone). This was specifically called out in the Vision Pro announcement. They are completely ditching controllers for VR/AR, and going full hand/finger tracked gesture control. It's why I think Vision will be the first device that people actually end up using in mass. The display fidelity is one thing, but interaction control is the number one reason why VR has failed. People (average normal people) really have no idea how to use game controllers if they didn't grow up as gamers. The platform will never take off until fully intuitive controller free interaction is acheived, and Apple knows this. Ambient computing is the next step, and keyboard/mouse will be a small footnote from the early history of HCI years from now.

by chx 3y ago

MBCook 3y ago

I’m really hoping they crack that nut. I’m not diabetic, but I do wonder what would happen when someone figures it out. All of a sudden you could basically put real time glucose monitors on a huge chunk of the population with all sorts of medical conditions or none at all. What could we accidentally learn from that that no one was ever looking for? The benefits to diabetics are obvious and life changing unless you already have a CGM. And if we never learn anything we didn’t already know it would still be a fantastic improvement. But what if there is more?

chx 3y ago
Trust me my friend, even if you have a CGM the benefits would be gigantic. I can't speak for T1 people who spend their entire lives like this and maybe it gets easier but inserting the CGM sensor, even if you use a local anesthetics is unpleasant and psychologically taxing. Then it interferes with your daily life and more importantly, it interferes with your mental health. Do you need a visual, can-be-felt reminder every second of your life you have a disability? I thought not. I have worn one and made my own meal plans while doing so and then stopped wearing them and I am fine, I can control my own blood sugar fine with just eating well, I am now down to six month blood sugar checks just to make sure I do not relapse. Still, having a non-invasive check so you can more easily test new stuff would be more than welcome.
- user_7832 3y ago
  (T1 here) I agree that applying a CGM is nerve-wracking for a few moments, and can hurt if you accidentally hit a nerve. But I really don’t notice it (much like my spectacles or watch) in everyday life. However, I’ve been using a CGMS for years now, so it’s likely I’m “used to it” by now. I guess as a T1 it’s much nicer to not poke your finger every few hours which is probably why I love CGMS’es, but if you’re not diabetic I totally get why a non invasive watch would be lovely. Heck, I’d very likely buy an Apple Watch if they actually do it. However I haven’t heard great things with non invasive measuring accuracy unfortunately.
  - MBCook 3y ago
    I do wonder if it would be accurate enough. Maybe it would be useful to type two diabetics who have their blood sugar under decent control. I’m not expecting true CGM level accuracy. Still whatever they could get if it was reasonable enough to be useful I’m sure insurance would much rather give people an Apple Watch for a relatively low price then pay for expensive one time use medical supplies over and over. I mean how long would it take before just the price of test strips would add up to the cost of a fancy Apple Watch?
gnicholas 3y ago
My understanding is that different people react differently to the same foods. For example, some people's glucose spikes after eating bananas, other people's doesn't. It would be great to know this, and other things, about one's self. I've considered doing a trial for a couple days with the foods I normally eat, just to know if any of my common foods are especially bad or good for my particular body.

sho_hn 3y ago

> Even if we had an inclination of what they are cooking, figuring it out is near impossible. And we don't. This is some sort of strange myth-making. Making a touchscreen phone had been the writing on the wall and pretty obvious to many. Having a company set up and willing to do it and do it well is another matter. But it doesn't mean you can't see things coming. Ideas and execution are not the same.

chx 3y ago
> Making a touchscreen phone had been the writing on the wall and pretty obvious to many. Really. This reminds of this discussion https://reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wdp6n/what_makes_the_oculus_different_from_previous_vr/ https://reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1wdp6n/what_makes_the_o... I opened a decade ago asking "What makes the Oculus different from previous VR?" and the winning answer was pointing out how much the 1994 IBM Simon Smartphone feature list resembled on the surface the iPhone feature list. In other words, still watching the world through my own eyes, I have been a columnist of the largest computer monthly in Hungary from 1993 to 2001. Yes, the IBM Simon, the Nokia Communicator, the Palm, the Pocket PC, yes those were there But none of that meant anyone could have foreseen the iPhone. Android history articles often mention how Google essentially needed to restart because of how revolutionary it was! https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-day-google-had-to-start-over-on-android/282479/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/12/the-d... if there was a prophet who could foretell the iPhone their words didn't register in Mountain View, that's for sure. If you think anyone did, the Internet does not forget, link it.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  I'm not talking about columnists. Journalists are not people who build things. I'm talking about people who build things and think about what to build next. The option of doing away with the hardware keyboard and going touchscreen-only was always there and always up for discussion, but for the longest time not easy due to the power and performance envelope at the price point. Lots of devices already worked like this outside of phones, for example a lot of touchscreen kiosk hardware (e.g. ATMs). It's just not a particularly big leap of the imagination to do this in a phone form factor. It was also present in mobile form in plenty of media and scifi, e.g. 2001's tablets. What matters is whether you think you can pull it off, and whether you're willing to try, and whether you are able to identify the right moment to try. A lot of companies were not willing to try (e.g. out of fear of cannibalizing existing product lines or rejection by the customer). Others didn't have the tech stack necessary to do so. What Apple did right is to have the good sense (or luck) to try it when the technology supply chain to back it was there, and not do it too early. Other phone makers wrote their tech stacks for much lower-power devices, and really struggled to scale their existing operating systems, dev community, etc. up to making a richer device, and didn't have the ambition to push for it. Apple started, as OP pointed out, by scaling down a desktop-class OS at a point where the hardware had just made it possible, and this worked out well. What made the iPhone a success wasn't just the form factor, it was also e.g. having a proper web browser (which Apple didn't even write themselves). This pattern replicates in a few other aspects of the device (supply chain for capacitive touch, batteries, etc.) The iPhone is a fantastic success story of a good product concept, waiting for the right moment, sensible tech choices, solid tech asset management by a software company, very good industrialization, and great execution and integration. It's not a magic fairy-tale unicorn idea that no on else could think of. It's annoying because it misrepresents and misunderstands what it takes to make a good product, and leads to internalizing the wrong lessons and values. It's one of the subtle reasons why there aren't more Apples.

ramesh31 3y ago

>If you go back to Steve Jobs' original iPhone speech, the crux of it was: revolutionary user interfaces (mouse, click wheel, multi-touch) enabled revolutionary products (Mac, iPod, iPhone). This was specifically called out in the Vision Pro announcement. They are completely ditching controllers for VR/AR, and going full hand/finger tracked gesture control. It's why I think Vision will be the first device that people actually end up using in mass. The display fidelity is one thing, but interaction control is the number one reason why VR has failed. People (average normal people) really have no idea how to use game controllers if they didn't grow up as gamers. The platform will never take off until fully intuitive controller free interaction is acheived, and Apple knows this. Ambient computing is the next step, and keyboard/mouse will be a small footnote from the early history of HCI years from now.