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So I had one of these and loved it so much, but then I switched to an, early-ish, iPhone, perhaps the 3G one, after playing with a couple early-ish androids. Th
by zoeysmithe 2y ago
So I had one of these and loved it so much, but then I switched to an, early-ish, iPhone, perhaps the 3G one, after playing with a couple early-ish androids. The iPhone was just so much better, generally, even if I lost the parts of the Treo that appealed to the more "nerdy" or tinkerer parts of me.
I think this was a lesson for me on how important UI is to mass-market devices. The Treo had so much going on for it, but most of the things you describe, most people would describe as awkward to use. Worse, the hardware keyboard meant the screen would always be smaller than an iPhone. I think the earliest Androids were marketed as "still has a keyboard" and that didn't really last. No one cared other than die-hards.
Downloading apps from random websites wasn't fun either. The app stores make a lot of sense in general, but moreso in mobile.
I also learned most times I'm forced to be a "tinkerer" by the industry, when most times I just want stuff to "just work" so I can choose what to tinker with. Oh, my win10 wont update to win11 because I need to redo the boot type and install a TPM chip on my old motherboard? That's not fun tinkering, that's annoying. The same way all the little things about the Treo or other less polished tech were like that. The game or novel I'm writing? That's fun tinkering.
It was also a lesson for me on how if you want to sell a mass-market product, the geeky, super-efficient, nerd-culture wisdom, etc stuff is a liability, not an asset. A lot of Apple wins is because someone said "this is too nerdy, get rid of it, abstract it away, make it easy, pretend you're a stressed out executive in a hurry." That model just gets sales and then that becomes our new default.
Apple is trying this in VR too, but Meta seems to already Apple-ized its current gen of headsets. Its a very Apple-like experience. I think that's hurting it. Ignoring the price issues, I can get "apple" from Meta already. They're several years too late. Apple, reportedly or rumored, cancelled its electric car program probably because groups like Tesla and others have already "Apple-ized" the car.
I'm not sure what areas Apple can attack now. We've all learned Apple's lesson.
- philistine 2y agoI don't think Apple agrees with you that Meta has made headsets Apple-ized. Apple's idea with headsets is that you're basically never in a black VR void. Nobody has done that except Apple. You're probably right about cars to a point, but I believe there the main problem is that Apple no longer believes self-driving cars under all situations that are safer than humans are achievable with current tech.
- zoeysmithe 2y agoI think there are creature comfort areas Apple can work on, definitely, but I was very surprised at how Apple-like the experience of the Quest was, from unboxing to the UI. Especially coming from a Vive/Steam combo which is a bit of a technical Rube Goldberg machine and expects a certain amount of technical skills on top of owning a gaming PC, which is its own barrier to entry, both financially and technical skill-wise. The bigger issue is that the Meta is just a gaming device while the Vision Pro is being marketed as a productivity device. I think this is where Apple can have success. They could, predictably, be the Apple // to Meta's Colecovision.