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This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done o
by danpalmer 3y ago
This and the Rabbit R1 are both trying to reduce the amount we use our phones, but I think this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of the jobs to be done on phones and how we actually use them.
There are broadly two use-cases of phones: content consumption, and utility. The former sucks time to increase "engagement" and has a bunch of social issues around it, the latter does not.
Both of these devices are trying to reduce the time we spend on our phones by addressing the utility aspect, but that's the wrong piece to focus on. The utility aspect is things like checking the time or calendar, booking an Uber, getting food delivered, etc. Many of these utilities however are essentially very optimised checkout funnels. Booking an Uber is really easy, because Uber are incentivised to make it easy. Same with ordering pizza. Taking a highly optimised flow and sticking voice on top isn't going to save time and is going to cause issues. These devices solve the wrong problem.
If a company really wants to improve the world by reducing phone usage (rather than just build their own platform to rent-seek on), maybe they should be looking at social networking, communication, federation, etc.
- tomgp 3y agoI think there's something in this. Watching the video made me realise that my main irritations with my phone are born of the bit where I have to navigate through a minefield of distrations to add an item to my todo list, or check my calendar, or send a text message. All the "what bridge am I looking at stuff" is cute but feels like solving a problem I never really encounter. Anyway, I'm guess I'm going to try and use Siri more, ubnlock my phone less.
- invig 3y agoI don't want to unlock to the home screen, I want to unlock to Apple Notes or Notion or whatever your favourite flavour of notes app is. Being allowed to replace the home screen with some app would be game changing for making the device feel helpful rather than like the little universe of chaos that is is. Let me access other things from the app switcher. Alas, we will never be allowed to do that.
- balls187 3y agoYou don’t unlock to the home screen, at least on IOS 17. You unlock to the last app you had open. And while not exactly what you were advocating for, you can add Apple Notes to control center which you can unlock to. There are also shortcuts you can automate and use your voice to open apps from the lock screen.
- whywhywhywhy 3y ago> because Uber are incentivised to make it easy Yep you nailed it with that, however what do you think incentivizing success on "social networking, communication" looks like? Because it looks a lot like finding ways to increase engagement and scrolling. I left out federation because normal people don't even know what it is and if they did they wouldn't care about it.
- danpalmer 3y agoI don't know exactly what success looks like in social networking and comms. I suspect it looks a lot less like Facebook/Instagram, and a lot more like WhatsApp/Telegram, anecdotally, I enjoy chatting with friends and family on WhatsApp because the conversation is the whole product. I enjoyed Path too when it was around, although never got enough of my family on it for it to properly stick. The problem with social networking is that the only viable business model so far has been ads, and without the high-intent you get from (e.g.) search engines, you have to instead optimised for engagement and keeping people around to make it up in volume of ad delivery. At least with services the revenue isn't ads based, or is less so. There are some things in the middle like Netflix/Spotify who want you to consume more, and have some ads, but I suspect most people don't want to reduce their music listening, and are happy enough with the amount of TV they watch (at least relative to social networking where I think it's very common for people to want to consume less).