I think it would be really cool if it worked like they wanted us to believe it would. Like, it could be one of those “change the way we live our day to day lives” events to the like of of smartphones becoming mainstream.
This device was never going to live up to that or get anywhere close to it, but I can’t blame people for really wanting to believe.
Huh? What do you think they promised that wasn’t delivered that would’ve made this anything that a phone app couldn’t do better? Fundamentally, talking to things sucks, but phones support that anyway. The gimmicky interface is worse than just a touch screen. You have to wear the fucking thing which makes it useless if I’m in bed or whatever. The AI was shit but could just as easily be integrated into an app. It was a shit product from design to execution.
A device that can do all of the things a phone can do without needing to find and install apps, that can learn from your usage patterns in effective and practical ways, and is unobtrusive to wear all the time sounds pretty fucking cool to me.
That is the promised future that AI devices are selling; I thought I was pretty clear that this device was never going to deliver on it.
The thing is, even if the device was doing what they said it would do… It could be an app. In fact it makes more sense. No double network subscription, no need for expensive hardware on top of the one you already carry, expanded acess to the user’s data, better hardware in some case (camera for example), more efficient, more integration with other tools (from basic stuff like a calendar to gps etc), and so on.
If AI was a juice the humane pin would be it’s juicero.
The subscription makes sense for having LTE access. That’s not really a problem nor hard to justify. Even the concept sounds pretty solid overall. But everything from price to execution was just wildly bad.
And my 5G unlimited plan is $70/mo, but can go as low as $20/mo for 4G prepaid on my network. Seems reasonable to me.
For clarity, the reasonable part is that the pin network subscription is ~$20 here. Not that $20 for 4G is reasonable but that’s a different issue than what we are discussing specifically.
I don’t get it. It was so easy to call this, Rabbit, home 3D TVs, the Fire Phone, etc.
What do we see that these execs don’t? Why can I call flops 5 seconds after hearing them but they go on to spend millions to develop products which go nowhere?
When asked how many customers would be affected, the company said that while precise numbers are not yet available, up to four customers may be impacted. “I would like offer our sincere apologies to Aunt Sue, Uncle Frank, Mike, and Jodi.”
They’ve got a really active and dedicated community on discord. I returned mine before this story broke for unrelated reasons but it really is a neat little device that fits a very specific niche. Outside of that bubble though, almost no one gets it and that’s their biggest problem.
I had never heard of Humane until I read this article. After also reading Engadget’s review of the thing, it sounds like an absolute nightmare to use.
Maybe I’m too old-school and impatient, but I’ve never been able to make voice assistants work for me. It’s a feedback loop: the assistant fails to do a task, so I become resistant to using it in the future. Even the thing I’ve used an assistant for the most, playing music out of a Nest speaker, seems to still be hit-or-miss after years of trying, and in some ways seems to be getting worse.
The gestures also sound awful. As with voice assistants, I’ve never gotten comfortable with smartphone gestures beyond the most rudimentary. I strictly use 3-button navigation on my phone, and I use Connect as my Lemmy app of choice because it allows me to disable all the swipe commands for upvote/downvote.
I stopped all voice assistants when they started getting snippy with me for being rude to them. I don’t need a poorly design if statement snapping back at me for showing my frustration at its inability to do a basic task.
The problem is that creators aren’t getting paid their fair share, and these platforms leech off of their creativity. I hate to be “that guy”, but this is where NFTs actually have a use case. Give power directly to the creators of their music by allowing them sell directly to fans. This gives power to the creators and to the listeners who own the NFT. Embracing new technology is a way to break beyond corporate enshittification. We must break past “you will own nothing and be happy” and it seems like blockchain is one of the only ways to do it technologically.
The problem is that legacy rights holder (the middlemen) have no incentive to use blockchain to cut themselves out. They have the legal high ground and are not going to give it up.
Right, and blockchain/NFT have nothing to do with that problem. Xbox could have implemented the exact same program without a blockchain, they just wanted the buzzword in the headline.
“By implementing a blockchain-based network and streamlined royalty processing, game publishers and Xbox benefit from a more trusted, transparent and connected system from contract creation through to royalty settlements”
Trust is the key ingredient added by blockchain. Traditional databases couldn’t be trusted to be honest.
People have a negative image of NFTs because of the speculation and early (crappy) implementations of the technology. It’s just a technology. I think web3 will be the answer to a lot of the corporate enshittification issues we see today. Community owned and operated networks and organizations are the future.
Mostly Imran Chaudhri’s reputation, really. The guy created the user interface and interaction designs for the iPhone and worked on a bunch of other Apple stuff. Most of the press material i’ve seen before the release of the AI pin mostly concentrated on him.
You would have to be living under a proverbial rock to have no inkling that Spotify is a product still in use, or be willfully ignorant.
It’s like saying:
People still use Google?
People still drive cars?
People still use Windows?
People still go to churches?
…etc
Not that I agree that we should use Spotify. But playing pretend that they are small, irrelevant, and have no effect on the industry they are in isn’t doing us any favors when it comes to pushing back against it.
Don’t argue with morons. They will bring you down to their level and beat you with experience.
Instead of actually arguing the topic at hand you are trying to drag all repliers down to your level, act in bad faith, and beat them with personal attacks 🤣
Yeah. And it’s so bad that I feel like the functionality barely goes down.
They should release the following:
‘Out of an abundance of caution, we advise against any user charging this device and attempting to rely on it for communications or regular assistance. Fortunately, we’ve found a workaround and suggest customers looking to continue enjoying the benefits of the Humane pin consider wearing it down in an unpowered state. This will provide infinite battery life and a 100% reduction in unwanted heating while enabling users to continue to receive nearly all the same functionality to which they are accustomed.’
When you create a tidal account they tell you how to transfer your playlists automatically via a 3rd party service (Limited to 500 tracks, unless you pay). Qobuz does the same, but if I’m not mistaken actually partners with the 3rd party service to offer it for free without the 500 track limit.
I downloaded the app for a trial today. It’s already missing artist and albums that appear on Spotify for me which is a little upsetting. I was hoping a majority of the content was available on both platforms.
Take a look at Deezer, too. It’s what I went with because it offers high fidelity FLAC audio for paid subscriptions, and integrates with Google home voice commands, which Tidal didn’t when I was looking.
I went with deezer for this reason as well. But deezer has gotten really bad and the interface is just God awful. I recently moved over to tidal and love it. It’s way better than deezer at this point
Had issues downloading for offline. Recommendations are meh. Sometimes I can’t search. Sometimes the app won’t load when on cell data.
I never had issues like those before and then all of the sudden, it’s not even usable. I get having bad cell coverage somewhere, but I would have a strong signal and it will still do it. I had to uninstall and reinstall the app multiple times for it to work.
Tidal is now cheaper and it has everything I would listen to. Before they were missing some bands and deezer had them. Doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
Sounds like they missed some QA testing for your device or something. That sucks.
I do notice that the recommended music at the end of a playlist tends to skew more to whatever the last song was, rather than overall vibe of the playlist. Assuming it didn’t end on a really annoying song, though, I don’t personally mind changing directions a little. That said, can completely appreciate their algorithms not working for everyone.
I do think they’ve been working on improving the algorithms though, as they are definitely not as wonky as they were when I first joined a couple years ago. Nice to know at least some of my payment is going towards improving the platform, unlike Spotify, where it’s going towards buying podcasts I don’t want to listen to.
I pay for the annual subscription, so Deezer is still cheaper for me by about $2/month, but I’m glad you’ve found what you’re looking for in Tidal. And thanks for humoring my curiousity.
engadget.com
Active