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- Hacker News
- why doesnt OpenAI use Fuchsia OS if Android is a competitor? maybe build something like Rosetta 2 for porting Android apps and running it over Fuchsiaby vivzkestrel
- Well, "the hardware" is also so locked down that even if a third party has a great idea of something to do with it, they won't be able to.
- Off topic, but why does the site load a gazillon different fonts?
- I don't wear glasses but that's the primary form factor I can imagine. Already socially and legally acceptable, non-audible communication channel plus low-volume audio, points in a direction that generally matches attention. And pre-AI investment in augmented reality has given it a head start.
- Maybe, but plenty of people are prepared to poke their fingers in their eyes every morning in order to avoid wearing glasses, so it can't be all that popular a form factor.by zelos
- What's happened between the failure of Google Glass and now? People not wanting to be creep shotted in public was one of the major reasons it got pulled, as far as I recall. Have people just gotten over it or what?
- > Ultimately, the answer is simple: reinventing AI is essentially reinventing the smartphone.
I don’t think this is true at all. The smartphone is not some kind of endgame device after which there is no future. No more so than the train was the endgame of transportation. Why are we limiting our imagination about the future to only include what is true today?
by overvale - On the other hand, a mobile AI device will only become really successful if it can replace the smartphone, and we aren’t anywhere close to that.by layer8
- Kind of weird that nobody's talking about getting rid of the hardware? An ESP32 that streams compressed audio over a mobile connection is all you should need to replace the "smarts" in a cellphone. Have a remote server do it all, and the local device is just a glorified mic and earbud. Give me a clickwheel and an audible user interface and I can do 90% of what I use a computer for.by 0xbadcafebee
- Because that sounds terrible? What would I use this for? Reading email or browsing the internet? I can read faster than an AI can dictate to me. Though I'm sure I could adapt somewhat, as I understand that people using screen-readers are already able to use them quite quickly, I don't really want to. I can't play my favorite games via an audio interface, I can't watch a movie, and just about any attempt at using such a device for work would be compromised by the knowledge that I'd be able to do the same thing more efficiently with a keyboard. Heck, just the idea of verbalizing commands means I probably can't use it for work outside of an office, because I can't exactly go around in public verbalizing company information every time I need to get something done on the go.
- I wish more people pointed out the obvious when the Vision Pro hype was everywhere on HN.
> The crux of the problem was clear: these devices were captivated by "technical possibilities," but failed to address "user problems."
Hmm.
by rs186 - To me, the wild part is the Vision Pro has the hardware to be something people could potentially use daily, especially with the new M4 update. Someone might prefer working in a virtual space rather than on a physical display depending on their situation.
But it seems high cost, the walled garden, and inability to compute directly on the headset limits its appeal. It needs a Mac tethered to it despite its powerful SoC.
by accrual - I would love to know if Ives was truly foundation to the iPhone, or if he was more given the overall idea and polished it with the final look/feel (which is also important).
Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll).
Perhaps the team just sat around a table and came up with the vision. Or maybe it was Jobs, but clearly there were some good visionaries in the company.
I think the proof of Ive's excellence will come out of this next OpenAI project. If it's something lame, then I will assume his impact at Apple was overrated. If it's a jaw-dropper, then maybe he really is the cat's meow.
by proee - Did iOS actually invent the idea of scrolling with a gesture? I could have sworn it already existed at the time. Like panning over a map on a GPS…
The momentum on iOS is nicely tuned though.
by bee_rider - Back in 2006 I saw this demo video from Jeff Han https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcKqyn-gUbY so when the iPhone came out I really wasn't surprised by the multi-touch part. And, as others have pointed out, scroll inertia wasn't a new concept - I also remember a Flash website (or demo) from yugop (Yugo Nakamura) or Tokyo Flash (I really don't remember whom) that had it in the interface, all very fluid.
Was the iPhone revolutionary? Absolutely!
But, imho, it was built on evolutionary advancements.
by tagyro - Jobs and Ive were at the core of all the product design.
There were multiple articles about Jobs spending most of his day with Jony looking at prototypes Jony's team had devised and giving critiques and feedback. Then they would iterate on what Jobs said.
Of course the engineering team had to figure out how to make Jobs suggestions real within the physical and technological constraints they were working with.
> I think the proof of Ive's excellence will come out of this next OpenAI project.
I think Ive's lack of high profile success since Jobs passed away shows Jobs true talent. He was a taste savant. A genius for figuring out what people would like and building a team capable of building those things at scale.
Ive could take Jobs ideas and come up with a concrete design for making them real. But he doesn't have that instinct for figuring out what kinds of products people want in the first place.
I would love to know what Jobs would have done with AI to make it into something people want to use, instead of being terrified it's just going to put them out of work.
by jimbokun - I think he could have been instrumental to the iphone (not saying he was or wasn't) and whatever he tries next is a complete flop. The ability to be successful is contextual, and great artists can produce mediocre art.by gmm1990
- > Who was the exact individual that had the vision for glass multi-touch screens and sick gesture like effects (scroll).
Like almost all new products later thought of as 'visionary' innovations, the first iPhone built on pre-existing ideas but integrated them particularly well and added some excellent new refinements. It's easy to forget that the prior five years had been a crucible of in-market experimentation between companies like Nokia, Palm, HP, Sony, Ericsson and Blackberry with platforms like Pocket PC, Palm OS, Windows CE and Windows Mobile.
The iPhone was announced in Jan 2007 at MacWorld (and shipped in July), I was there and played with it extensively in the Apple booth. I remember thinking it had some especially clever ideas and was a very nice implementation. It advanced the "premium pocket phone" bar up to a new level but I didn't see it as unusually visionary. It was definitely significant but still a (large) step in an ongoing progression of refinement, integration and search for product/market fit. There were already large color touchscreen devices which integrated a phone, messaging, camera, music player, Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS. Here's an article looking at a few pre-iPhone devices: https://www.phonearena.com/news/6-great-smartphones-from-10-....
The iPhone 1's design was uniquely simple and svelte but I was immediately concerned about it having enough battery to support that screen. The choice to go with just "One Big Button" and no physical keyboard or navigation keys was bold, weird and also a bit concerning. The on-screen keyboard-only and gesture nav-only choices did feel a bit like two steps forward, one back in iOS 1. It felt like they made a 'purist' design decision and had to make it work as well as it could. That worked out to be "well enough" but sometimes similarly bold but risky choices can fail when they sacrifice too much. However, the battery life did become a very serious issue for active users when the first iPhone shipped and limited the success of the device. It's also worth remembering the usability of iOS 1 was pretty clunky. I played with most of these early phone devices and owned several but didn't adopt an iPhone as my primary device until the iPhone 3G shipped 18 months after the iPhone launch. The 3G was significantly better, different and more refined than the iPhone 1.
by mrandish - > No matter how beautiful its design, it's meaningless without the software to back it up.
Word.
I worked as a software developer, for hardware companies, most of my career.
Most of the upper management came from hardware, and consistently treated software as an afterthought.
That may change, this time. Different breed of top managers.
- It’s weird because in a hardware company the software becomes a cost.
In a software company the software is a magical money printer with zero unit costs.
by bee_rider - Apple's success is largely a function of being a hardware company that put software first.by jimbokun
- > iPhone wasn't successful because of its beautiful design
Relatively speaking I think that gave it an edge which helped make it successful.
I don't think Apple products in general have the best most usable designs, but they do have the most beautiful, most stylish most sophisticated-looking designs. People want that because a device like phone is part of their identity.
by galaxyLogic - Totally. In a world of pretty ugly flip phones and Blackberries, the minimalist early iPhone designs definitely looked cool at the time, and were attention grabbing to a degree. I think it definitely kept that edge for some time against early Android phones, which weren't necessarily as attractive.by macNchz
- yeah, the Macbook for example, looks pretty, but its sharp aluminum edge cuts into my palm when I use the track pad, so I have black electrical tape on it so that it is functional. Which destroys its beauty. I'd take an aluminum router to it if I could, but it is a work laptop (on lease). And unfortunately I can't use a Linux laptop here otherwise I would...by ElijahLynn
- > The iPhone wasn't successful because of its beautiful design. It was because it packed everything we needed every day—phone calls, music, internet, photos, maps—into a single device.
Have to disagree here. There were many devices before (and after) the iPhone that offered this package but it stands above the rest because of its design and polish.
by _vaporwave_ - I think it was mostly the marketing.
- Its the screen (size) that mattered. While screens make terrible input devices, for content consumption they are king. And that is the dividing line between blackberry/iphones. An argument can also be made for "boring business blackberry" vs "fun" iphone.
The apps were worse, but you had that HUGE screen to look at. And compared to other non-blackberry phones where you were limited to T9 text input, it was a game changer.
by UI_at_80x24 - Imho the iphone could have been a literal stinking 1kg brick and as long as it kept the same UI people would carry them around on a carrying handle and it would still have been a success.
It's the usefullness, not the hardware.
by PeterStuer - Case in point, Safari. I used Blackberry before the iPhone as well as multiple other "mobile browsers" on PocketPC, Palm, and even WAP browsers on flip phones (maybe also Opera Mini? My memory is fuzzy on when that came out).
Nothing, and I mean nothing, compared to Safari on the iPhone. It was in a league of its own. It was dog-slow over Edge but it was a _real_ browser instead of what had come before.
by joshstrange - When I first saw the iPhone I remember thinking how silly it was that a device calling itself a "phone" only had the phone function as of many apps. 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.
The iPhone felt more like a general portable computing device that happened to also function as a phone.
Even the Blackberry up to that point still felt more like an "email/phone device" primarily (though funny enough, I never had a Blackberry myself until after the iPhone came out).
The irony now, and I suspect many people are like this, is my "phone" is barely ever used as an actual phone. It's a computer with a data plan. I am way more likely to use some kind of internet-based voice/video chat than make or take a phone call.
My phone icon is still on my home screen, but only because it is something I want to be able to get at quickly in an emergency. I'm certain it's the least-used icon on the screen, though.
by gregmac