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I saw this news and my reaction was, "Of course it is, doing anything else would be stupid." But that on its own doesn't mean it could just be a phone app if th

• fennecbutt 2y ago
  Because we need advances in material sciences, optics etc to build anything new. Devices will stay the same until we invent new technologies. We've certainly progressed semiconductors a lot, but it's still just the same old process for the most part. I think it's areas other than semiconductors that will drive innovation, new optics/displays (foldable, holographic, wide fov ar on a contact), solid state batteries, etc. Would sure be nice to have properly 3d semiconductors tho. As many transistors as there are across x and y, there should be across z too.
• personjerry 2y ago
  > It feels like we need to wait for the underlying technology to advance before we can get to the next set of interesting products. I think it shows a lack of creativity to say this, because existing technologies can definitely be used in novel ways to create value. Perhaps we just love to imagine new technologies as engineers. But for example, the iPhone was nothing "new" in terms of hard tech but it definitely changed the world.
  • starky 2y ago
    Even if that is the case, it is more of a commentary on how companies have overall failed to come up with anything creative for quite a few years. All of the products that are the "next big thing" currently are hampered by the current state of technologies that they use. The iPhone is a great example of technology catching up to make a product viable. Between phone networks, display technology (especially touchscreens), SoC efficiency, etc. the iPhone only became possible when these could integrate together in a practical package along with the vision to bring it to market.
• nkozyra 2y ago
  > It feels like we need to wait for the underlying technology to advance before we can get to the next set of interesting products. Probably. I think we've hit a plateau with user interfaces for most connected gear. Sticking a physical scroll button on what is essentially a phone buys me nothing but annoyance. Phones just kind of do what we want and have an acceptable enough interface that the alternatives get in our way. The Humane Pin added the laser display but ... nobody wants it? This is starting to feel like sticking a spoiler on a phone and pretending it adds value. Maybe VCs are impressed by this stuff, I don't know. If there were a magic version of this it would have the model and processing onboard. That's obviously extremely cost prohibitive right now, but that's what it's going to take to create a real AI-powered assistant: * I need it to work without network latency. * I need multiple forms of input/output depending on the context. * I don't need Teenage Engineering's usual form-over-function design. I need the form to be out of my way most of the time. It's great that people are experimenting in this space. It's less great that people are getting multiple millions in funding and selling a phone and web service as an "AI device." This will hurt future development.
  • fennecbutt 2y ago
    Because the implementation of the laser display sucks (imo) bc we need better technologies for it. So more waiting. Same thing for ultra wide fov ar glasses, I'd kill for those.
  • anonymoose33282 2y ago
    > It's great that people are experimenting in this space. It's less great that people are getting multiple millions in funding and selling a phone and web service as an "AI device." This is the best two-sentence summary I've seen so far. People tend to forget just how many wacky flip phones and PDA-type devices had to come and go before the touchscreen smartphone as we know it came into being. Which is what these new AI gadgets remind me of. However, the difference I see now versus 20 years ago is that companies today are just trying to get the most cash and deliver the cheapest product (and pocket the difference), rather than stick with their product and reinvest into R&D.
  • fragmede 2y ago
• graypegg 2y ago
  I feel similarly hopeful actually! I think people do seem generally annoyed by the scroll wheel, but I think that's just a bad implementation in this case. I don't think that means that all physical controls (meaning: not a touch screen) are just pointless gimmicks. It's a bit myopic to think we've hit some perfect un-challengable UI paradigm with flickable scrolling and sheets of software buttons and fields that you tap.
• WeylandYutani 2y ago
  There was an attempt with folding phones. Is that taking off beyond the "I have too much money" crowd?
  • dmsayer 2y ago
    what are you implying here? that folding phones are simply a money thing, and have no actual value?
    • _heimdall 2y ago
      I'm not sure if I'd get behind that take, but folding screen phones are horribly impractical if you are even a little hard on your phone. The screens and hinges are fragile, I've yet to see one that feels like it'd last more than a year at least for me. I actually have a first gen Surface Duo and it's held up, though its been relegated to the second device role since it stopped getting updates. Anything with an actual folding display has seemed weak IMO, I'd be afraid of breaking it or finding weird distortions in the screen after a bit of use.
      • giaour 2y ago
        Your intuition about screen fragility is right. I recently switched from a Samsung Flip 4 to a non-folding Pixel 8. While I liked the idea of it, in practice it was pretty chunky (twice the thickness of a normal phone when folded, too tall for my pockets when unfolded), and I damaged the screen twice in a year via normal use.
      • mrlkts 2y ago
        I used to own a Fold 4 and it's a wonderful device, I really loved it (mostly the multitasking, stylus support, small outer screen for one-handed use). Unfortunately, the design is truly fragile and I sold mine after I got it back from the repair shop for the second time (and got a boring iPhone). I truly hope newer generations will be better and I can purchase one that will last at least 3-4 years.
      • addicted 2y ago
• makeitdouble 2y ago
  "Giving order to one's assistant" is a class of interaction that some people desperately want, and I expect we'll see these kind of devices being made until it works, even if it's in two decades from now. Fundamentally it's the model of the boss giving orders to its secretary, and people dream of it as some pinnacle of evolution (perhaps it is, I don't have a paid secretary to assess the point). That's actually pretty close to the concierge services offered by phone for instance, and some people with enough money seem to enjoy it, so why not (try to replicate it, even if it miserably fails for a while) ?
  • TaylorAlexander 2y ago
    Yes it’s a very hierarchical way of thinking. I’d much rather imagine a world with more collaboration between peers than every person having a servant, but it seems those that run tech companies prefer the latter.
    • makeitdouble 2y ago
      Totally agree. I also think that there might be a fundamental divide with people in our line of work (programming), as by definition we've decided to learn how machines talk and think, to address them in their language and understand what they're telling us. Someone choosing this career path expecting to throw around vague orders and have them resolved exactly as they expected has probably already quit the first week on the job.
      • TaylorAlexander 2y ago
        Well ostensibly the Rabbit is produced by software people. I’m generally skeptical of claims “our people think differently.” There’s loads of people in the world that understand the importance of meeting people where they’re at. An obvious example is nurses and therapists, but there must be loads of professions like that. Just not CEO, since it seems many people in that position want to give orders.
        • makeitdouble 2y ago
• fnordpiglet 2y ago
  To be frank, it’s sort of hard to see many devices that could be more useful than the modern “phone,” which btw the phone part is almost superfluous at present. Now the an always connected general purpose compute device with a nearly complete environmental sensor array, extraordinarily high resolution screen, integrated multilens camera array, capable of doing AR with LIDAR, etc etc. It’s difficult to imagine a more capable device. These “new” devices are reductionist and trying to tackle the non-problem of carrying these wonderful tricorders of 2024. Converging devices has been a theme for the last 20 years, and now it’s almost entirely been achieved. There may very well not be another class of devices forthcoming if you factor in the connected wearables with bio monitoring that are essentially extensions of the “phone.”
  • int_19h 2y ago
    There was a sci-fi story written in 1960s which described pretty much what smartphones ended up being: > The remote-access computer transponder called the "joymaker" is your most valuable single possession in your new life. If you can imagine a combination of telephone, credit card, alarm clock, pocket bar, reference library, and full-time secretary, you will have sketched some of the functions provided by your joymaker. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_the_Pussyfoot) Interestingly, the author came up with the idea after he got acquainted with the details of time-sharing mainframes common of his time. Consequently, the devices themselves are actually mostly hollow, just processing input and output, and all actual smarts are done on central servers elsewhere - which becomes a major plot point eventually. It even got the social aspects of it - i.e. it being a standard device that people carry around them everywhere, it's used for most day-to-day communication etc. Just about the only thing about it that feels off from a modern perspective is their size - they are large enough to require carrying them on the belt (like 90s cellphones) rather than in the pocket. Now, one thing that is still missing compared to the model is the "pocket bar" part (which in the novel also includes recreational drugs). Now that would actually justify a new device like Rabbit. ~
  • starky 2y ago
    I didn't say anything about it being more useful than a phone, but the next big thing would have to solve problem(s) that a phone (and other existing devices) cannot solve to the same degree.
• numpad0 2y ago
  I don't think Sony mirrorless ever ran Android, they always ran proprietary Linux distro(MontaVista or Linaro or one of those) and for brief moment they bolted on Android 2.2 userland on it as an experiment.