It's the “hardware”, stupid

The problem is that consumers aren't paying enough for AI nor are they providing enough sweet, sweet monetizable data to mine.

I don't think that passes the toothbrush test. I don't need to survive a zombie apocalypse every morning.

> An "AI Hardware" device that needs a network connection, and makes API calls to the mother ship, in order to accomplish anything, is not interesting. It's a Raspberry Pi.

Kind of an unnecessary dig at the Raspberry Pi, no? Modern Pis and SBCs in general are good at lots of things. I use mine for self-hosting some apps I use, and I've definitely seen them used in little compute clusters for AI inference.

> On the other hand, a device that could work offline is interesting. One that could work in a zombie apocalypse is even more interesting. Especially if it was solar powered and contained the knowledge needed to rebuild society.

This is kind of interesting in an abstract sense; it's fun to imagine burying a solar-powered oracle in a hardshell case in a bunker somewhere so that some hypothetical person can use it to bootstrap civilization after the end, but that's all it really is: hypothetical. Fun to imagine. A project for hackers or maybe a non-profit. It certainly fails the "toothbrush test" mentioned in the article; no one will be consulting their doomsday box once or twice a day (absent a doomsday, anyway).

If I can be really reductionist for a second, I think there's a lot of AI cart-before-horse happening with these hardware products. Smartphones changed the world a decade and a half ago because they took something that people wanted--the internet, but mobile--and finally made it work. Since then they've dramatically changed the landscape of the internet and social media etc, but the idea--that people already had the internet but wanted to interact with it in a different way--should probably be the foundation for how we think about AI hardware products. What can they do for people better than what they already have? We should not need the benefit of hindsight to see why something like the Human AI pin, that doesn't really do anything and does it badly, failed.

Yeah, that's the kind of things monopolies create.

Why is that interesting in why would it matter. Many competitors to Google use Android on their devices. Why would this be different?

Well, I wouldn't put it past that. It could literally feed Android into an llm context window and probably redesign it to be even better and it already is.

Android still has weird laggy jumps and just is not that smooth. Even on the new pixel devices.

I had the OG iPod Touch, which had the same software (minus the phone, camera, and GPS parts).

It did web browsing very well.

And it came with Maps (which, at that time, used Google's data).

It was initially amusing back then when the world was commonly filled with wide-open 802.11 networks to pull out that little pocket computer, connect to a nearby network (if it hadn't already connected to "Linksys"), and browse an online map -- from about anywhere with a building nearby.

Wifi-based geolocation was also spooky-good at that time.

Anyway, it didn't do much else that I found useful. It was generally lacking features that I'd been using for years with a Handspring Visor (which itself ran on a pair of alkaline batteries for months).

Early IOS didn't even have a clipboard to cut and paste with.

So I jailbroke it. I added multitasking, an app "store," a clipboard and a bunch of other fun stuff long before Apple allowed those functions.

I think I even had a good bit of the Debian userland installed at one point.

After that, I used it all the time for stuff (until the OG Motorola Droid replaced it in 2009, which was easy as pie to root: just dump a special su on there and run it).

When Jobs first announced the iPhone, he really sold the idea that it was running a real web browser like on a desktop. Up to that point, there was a special mobile internet that really sucked.

It had internet, back then one of the big bits of news tangential to the iphone releasing was how Jobs decided on no Flash player on their mobile devices, which was the mortal wound to official support of that format. More generally though, I think the iphone (or smartphones in general) work as a good example of bundling capabilities and doing it well. Phones before then could do many of the things smartphones could, some could play games, could play music, some had cameras, and there were separate devices that specialized in those and did them better, but smartphones collected them all up and started an arms race in doing them great.

> I don't recall if the iPhone actually even had internet and maps at launch

It did. Jobs famously said on stage [0] "An iPod, a Phone, and an Internet Communicator. An iPod, a Phone... are you getting it? These are not 3 seperate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it iPhone" at the launch. It also did come with maps that used Google Maps.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK55ElsVzxM

> Other phones had internet and other features, sure, but their "home" screen, so to speak, was a phone UI. You had to hit "Menu" or something else to see the other apps, which were clearly secondary to the primary phone function.

There were also other “phones” that only had the phone function as one of many apps.

agree. as a heavy user of smartphones pre-iPhone, the actually usable browser was the biggest advantage the iPhone had at introduction. I'd even put it above the capacitive/multi touch capabilities, as these did not enable new functionality but merely made it a nicer experience.

I've seen this argument thrown around but I'm not sure I understand how it holds up. Why didn't android just completely copy apple's marketing, then? What did apple do differently,marketing wise, that android couldn't emulate?

The iPhone was the first really well done general purpose computing phone. It had a real web browser, a real music player, apps that didn't suck. Adoption was huge because the design was great, but we would have just seen the same thing transpire over a number of years if iPhone hadn't been created.

I know a lot of people basically who were basically saying "finally"

> It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary.

Have you ever encountered a product you saw as "unusually visionary"?

> The ability to be successful is contextual

Excellent point. I think most great creative work is due to a uniquely 'right' combination of people, problem, experience and environment being together at an opportune moment.

Yes, he could be a one-hit-wonder artist.

Maybe Altman will serve that taste savant role, and they will be a good combo. I'm optimistic they will produce something that: * doesn't have ads, (we are the customer, not the product) * makes our lives more fluid and easy * delivers on the vision for what computers always could be

Jarvis, please make me a sandwich.

I dont think jobs was necessary a taste savant as he was notorious for claiming other peoples ideas as his own. But he was willing to walk over anyone if he thought it would make a better product be they another company, his board, or subordinates. Nothing was sacred.

Ives is not that person he is too nice.

Touchscreen scrolling has been in consumer products since at least the early 1980s and inertial scrolling on a touchscreen has been around since at least the early 1990s with Sun's Star7[1].

(And I wouldn't be surprised if there are academic papers that predate the consumer products by a decade or more.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CsTH9S79qI&t=266s

The breakthrough aspect of the iPhone was enabling gestures and a very usable UI without having to use a stylus. This is despite the much lower precision of the capacitive touchscreen tech available in that era.

Other smartphones and PDAs back then used more precise resistive touchscreens that required an annoying pressure stylus because it was a way to get more usability out of the very small screens that devices were limited to.

Not necessarily the first, but the earliest that I can remember: Decades ago (before they were sold/bought/sold), Opera (web browser/suite) used gestures as a navigation tool with your mouse. I never could figure out how to get it to work, but it was a thing.

Adobe Illustator had a Hand tool already in 1987 that let you pan the canvas by dragging the mouse. Probably it’s older than that.

But adding the physical feel of momentum and inertia was Apple’s invention, AFAIK.

I know mouse gestures existed previously because I remember someone on /. talking about them circa 2000 and I had to look up what they were. But I don't remember what they were being used for.

Hardware companies treat software as if it were just another line item on the BOM: Like a screw or gasket. Just source this "software thing" from the cheapest bidder, and spoon it into the product on the assembly line somewhere towards the end. That's all hardware companies see. They don't see a software as an ecosystem, as an enabler, as a future way to deliver more and more value. It's just a costly part number that you assemble onto the product.

AI obviously doesn't need a dedicated hardware device to succeed. It's having massive success already as people access it from any of the devices they already own.

Smart phone, laptop, headsets, VR goggles, AI can work with all of these just fine.

I think part of Apple's struggles with AI is they can't find a way to tie it to their hardware in a differentiating way. Since it's so cloud based and there are few compelling use cases for running worse models locally, "AI" works just as well on any device.

I don’t agree with that. I see people carrying around iPads, clipboards, physical books, sheets of paper, paper notebooks, dedicated cameras, even walkie talkies. All of those people have smartphones in their pockets as well.

M5. And it’s still uncomfortable to wear for most people.

It was early. Social acceptance will happen like it did for phones (although I still get weirded out looking at a bus full of people all staring at a device).

Plenty, but not most. More and more people have accepted glasses now that they've become more fashionable. In fact, anywhere you go, the majority of people are likely wearing glasses if you take the time to notice. They pretty much blend right in anymore, so it's much less noticeable unless you're looking for it.

Probably because wearing eye glasses signals a handicap whereas this instead could signal being part of an in-group.

Kind of like torn jeans. Before the mid sixties torn clothing would signify economic disadvantage and you’d avoid it if possible but afterwards it signified rebellion and people wanted to signal rebelliousness with torn jeans or at least signal being part of an in-group however large and diluted it be.