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Why is everyone so negative on here? This is totally kickass, and could create a physical marketplace along the same lines of what we currently know as an "app

Why is everyone so negative on here? This is totally kickass, and could create a physical marketplace along the same lines of what we currently know as an "app store". What's so "this is impossible" about this idea? We live in the 21st century, and we're trying to do things like send people to Mars and cure cancer. We've got cars that run exclusively on electricity, and potentially a propellent-less way of producing thrust -- why is "a modular mobile device" (it doesn't even have to accept phone calls, does it) beyond the realm of possibility? Just seems super negative, for absolutely no reason.

grecy 12y ago
> Why is everyone so negative on here? It's a very common trend on HN to nay-say anything that changes the status quo. Rather than looking at all those cool things you listed and saying "wow, this has great potential, I hope x,y&z..." It's much more popular on HN to say "This will never work, it's a stupid idea to change the status quo". It's like HN'ers are afraid of change, or afraid of trying something new.
ecopoesis 12y ago
Because it's easy to see the shortcomings of something, and hard to see the potential, especially the potential for sea-change products. If it was easy to create or see the potential of universe denting products, then everyone would do it. But it's hard. This is so common, not just amoung the HN crowd, that the proverbial phrase "missing the forest for the trees" exists to describe it. Of course, we could just also say "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."
- simi_ 12y ago
  I don't think Project Ara be a major breakthrough of any kind, yet I'm still very excited about it. This (hacking for hacking's sake) is exactly what I imagined HN would get excited about, but instead I only hear some obvious arguments and negativity. Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?.
  - jshevek 12y ago
    >> Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?. Yes. Hackers may be practical and honest about limits, but they focus more on potentials, possibilities. Hackers get excited about projects like Ara. Hackers ask: what can be done with this? Rather than say foolish things like "this is a solution seeking a problem".
jshevek 12y ago
Its really funny to read all the criticism against ara over the last year. People keep saying X is impossible. Y will never happen. They are not going to be able to do Z, and this will thwart the whole project. And yet that ATAP group working on ara has ploughed through X, Y, and Z; and they keep going. The real question is: what will consumers do? I think most consumers are going to turn up their noses to this. But if there is just enough of a community to motivate hardware makers.... then its going to be f'ing awesome.
ravingraven 12y ago
I don't think that a lot of people are saying that it can not be done. What I hear people saying is that it is a bad idea. Sure, you can make a modular phone -that will be (de facto) technologically worse or more expensive than its non-modular counterpart. But does it make any sense to do that? The question is not how many variations of a phone we can have, the question should be how many variations of a phone we need. And I do not think that every customer needs its own variation or that it is worth developing for that one person who needs a phone with a weak processor and a super strong camera.

grecy 12y ago

> Why is everyone so negative on here? It's a very common trend on HN to nay-say anything that changes the status quo. Rather than looking at all those cool things you listed and saying "wow, this has great potential, I hope x,y&z..." It's much more popular on HN to say "This will never work, it's a stupid idea to change the status quo". It's like HN'ers are afraid of change, or afraid of trying something new.

ecopoesis 12y ago

Because it's easy to see the shortcomings of something, and hard to see the potential, especially the potential for sea-change products. If it was easy to create or see the potential of universe denting products, then everyone would do it. But it's hard. This is so common, not just amoung the HN crowd, that the proverbial phrase "missing the forest for the trees" exists to describe it. Of course, we could just also say "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

simi_ 12y ago
I don't think Project Ara be a major breakthrough of any kind, yet I'm still very excited about it. This (hacking for hacking's sake) is exactly what I imagined HN would get excited about, but instead I only hear some obvious arguments and negativity. Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?.
- jshevek 12y ago
  >> Let's rename this site to Serious Business News, shall we?. Yes. Hackers may be practical and honest about limits, but they focus more on potentials, possibilities. Hackers get excited about projects like Ara. Hackers ask: what can be done with this? Rather than say foolish things like "this is a solution seeking a problem".

jshevek 12y ago

Its really funny to read all the criticism against ara over the last year. People keep saying X is impossible. Y will never happen. They are not going to be able to do Z, and this will thwart the whole project. And yet that ATAP group working on ara has ploughed through X, Y, and Z; and they keep going. The real question is: what will consumers do? I think most consumers are going to turn up their noses to this. But if there is just enough of a community to motivate hardware makers.... then its going to be f'ing awesome.

ravingraven 12y ago

I don't think that a lot of people are saying that it can not be done. What I hear people saying is that it is a bad idea. Sure, you can make a modular phone -that will be (de facto) technologically worse or more expensive than its non-modular counterpart. But does it make any sense to do that? The question is not how many variations of a phone we can have, the question should be how many variations of a phone we need. And I do not think that every customer needs its own variation or that it is worth developing for that one person who needs a phone with a weak processor and a super strong camera.