Oooff … I don’t think it’s like MKBHD to come down so hard on a product. But this thing seemed weird (and probably dumb) when it was launched and so I guess this lines up.
Not that a wearable assistant doesn’t make some sense, but some former Apple higher ups who think they’re good enough to disrupt the smartphone market by … checks notes … relying entirely on other companys’ new/untested/problematic/maybe-just-shit AI services and pretending that all of the other “smart” devices we have just don’t exist in some sort of volley in the ongoing platform wars … really does kinda epitomise all of shittiness of the current tech world.
haha, yea … for sure too long … but that’s kinda youtube these days right?
I’d add (having watching most of the video … at 2x) … that the complete reliance on cloud AI is prohibitively slow and often worse than just a Google (or other specific smartphone app) … and that its committed to being a standalone device and so doesn’t interact with your smartphone or smart watch. Also the battery life seems problematically bad as does the whole projector screen thing.
The thing that gets me … and I’m a little surprised MKBHD didn’t mention it … is how fragile an attempt at disrupting the personal smart-device market it is. It’s basically a smart watch on your chest that talks with cloud AI (with someone’s probably irrational love of tiny projectors as a UI). The moment it takes off, the big companies can make an accessory, just like the smart watches, just like it but which integrates with their existing ecosystems.
Now that level of monopolistic control is a problem, obviously, but it doesn’t detract I think from what looks like a fairly poor attempt from a strangely well and persistently funded “start up” (I’m not sure being former Apple execs counts as “start up”, which is really the problem here I think).
Someone posted on mastodon about this group (“hu.ma.ne” … cuz meaningless dots are cool?) and how the belief from big-tech-employees that they can transition to independent startup business models is probably a complete fallacy that they wish was true. Instead they’re so used to the safety nets, resources and platform security/monopoly of big-tech that they haven’t any idea what it takes to lead a startup to success … but they have the connections to procure funding, hype and attention.
They bought the ma.ne domain, then created a hu subdomain, so it’s actually a web address, which is kind of cool. But then it just redirects to humane.com, so… yeah.
ha!
Still … what’s wrong with “humane.com”? It’s a decent name for a tech company (if somewhat on the nose).
Nothing wrong with it, some people just think it’s cool to not have a .com adress.
I mean I guess I see that. But still, the use/abuse of country code TLDs has maybe gotten a bit much hasn’t it?
The hu.ma company from Nigeria?
My favorite is chewbac.ca
Ha!
Your comment is too long as well.
tl:dr: too long