Tech Used to Be Bleeding Edge, Now it’s Just Bleeding | After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.::After a decade of scandals and half-assed product launches, people are no longer buying the future Big Tech is selling.
I didn’t say it’s not useful, I said people are not buying products because of them. People are not running to the stores to get the new 5G phone. I remember 4G roll-out and it was a big thing. You suddenly could use the internet the same way you did at home. With 5G there are no new usecases. You’re not going to watch 4K movie on your phone. LLMs also don’t sell devices. Siri and Alexa were kind of interesting when they came out and sold many smart speakers but LLMs are a tool, not a gadget.
I also didn’t read the article but there is something to it. Are you exited about Threads the same way everyone was exited about gmail? Are you exited about Vision Pro the same way everyone went crazy for the iPhone? More and more often I’m searching for a product now and simply end up disappointed. There are no smart watches I would like to buy (the new features they have are all useless), new phones have less features (where’s my headphones jack? where’s my hardware keyboard?), the best new thing about laptops is flat RAM… Consumer products have stalled. It’s all gimmicks now instead of actually interesting features. I think it’s all good enough and we simply don’t have the tech to offer actual breakthrough in usability.
We thought that with the blackberry. We thought that with vacuum tubes. We that that with chip scaling.
Thinking that will make it true.
I didn’t say such breakthrough is not possible. Just that it didn’t happen yet so most new products are gimmicks. When they will come up with actual improvement we will know.