Near the end of the article are executives salivating over the idea that because of AI people will upgrade their computers every two years and their phones every year, just like the good ol' days.
Meanwhile I still use a laptop from 2014 and I buy my phones based on how many years of support I get.
“Remember that generative AI is not once and done…You’re going to continue to push compute, and build models that are larger, and so you will have to continue to upgrade devices in order to keep up with the pace of generative AI.” 😩 www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-...
If you want to know why the tech sector seems to have lost its entire fucking mind in the last decade, the main factor for home user tech is commoditization.
People regard their smartphones the way they do their televisions or their microwaves: they're all more or less fast enough, so why upgrade?
Some people want the high end shit every year or so, true.
But most of us already balk at the idea of paying $1k for a cell phone, and the longer we can keep this singular expensive purchase functioning and viable the better.
There is no good compelling reason to upgrade so frequently anymore.
In the early smartphone era, the tech was advancing in leaps and bounds with every new release: better screens, better cameras, much faster, much improved battery life, etc.
That's all more or less plateaued now. Most people are fine with the "good enough" option because "good enough" is great.
Even compared to something like an iPhone 5, the cheapest Android phone today works like lightning, and the cameras are pretty stellar.
That's less than $200.
And that's what's causing the tech freakout: we have no *need* to upgrade. We *want* upgrades, sure, but there's no outright necessity.
When "good enough" wins the day, then that product sector slows down.
It's what made TV manufacturers lose their entire minds with 3D, because after the rush to upgrade to HD people were done. 4K moved the needle again, but now that upgrade cycle is largely over and done as well.
"AI" is the savior, because people will *need* AI so they'll *need* the best devices, right?
Well, no. People *want* "AI" in that it's a neat toy to screw around with, but it's useless for real work and doesn't provide much utility that isn't more easily obtained with other software.
Siri was a neat toy for most people, as was Alexa, Cortana and Google Assistant.
None - NONE - of those were profitable, however. They all lost money for their respective companies. They were cash sinks.
Why would a new, slightly shinier version of the same concept be any different?
And as far as buying a new computer every year - HA.
AMD stumbled into an amazing, accidental market segmentation: their AM4 platform that was only supposed to be in use for four years is now approaching SEVEN.
How? Well, it's easy and affordable to upgrade and it serves the budget sector.
I helped make games on Alexa. Some were just daily trivia. Others were Telltale-style radio dramas.
It’s been ~6 years and am still kinda bummed they never took off.
My sister in law got me an echo dot for Christmas one year. All I’ve ever done with it is play music at the office and play their Jeopardy game. That’s it. I have never once - and have no intention to ever- buy something with it.
What's funny to me is they lost money because people used them almost exactly as they were advertised: play music, check the weather, maybe look something up.
Yet for some reason all the execs assumed people would buy stuff with them. Honestly probably says more about them than anything.
When I decided I wanted what for sake of convenience I’ll call a smart speaker (really a wireless hifi system), I deliberately went with one that had no voice input or smart anything. It plays Internet radio, Bluetooth turntable, audio from phones and tablets. Nothing actually “smart”.
I work in retail electronics, and one thing we're absolutely not supposed to say is how little TV's actually change year-to-year. They slap new words on things all the time to make it seem new.
I remember seeing a thing a few years ago: "People who buy Android phones only do it to make a statement." It pissed me off for a minute, and then I realized that, yes, I AM making a statement: fuck you if you think I'm paying $1000 for a phone.
I worked with a team developing an app for (NDA). Our lead customer kept saying "no need for Android, all our people have iPhones."
One day in a meeting, the client contact saw my phone and asked which iPhone it was; I said it was a $200 Nokia. Next meeting, it was "How's that Android app coming?"
As near as I can figure, the client's CFO (not a techie) just assumed that smartphone=iPhone and "Android" meant old flip-phones/featurephones; none of his people had those, so they must all be on iPhone, right? Right?
After that meeting, he must have actually talked to his minions...
The same is true of apps. We're saturated, there's nothing left to sell us. That's why AI is being pushed so hard on that end, because they long ago ran out of things to sell us.
There is one type of app that no one, as far as I know, has successfully made yet: a personal assistant that does things accurately and well, and does NOT hand the user's information over to anyone else.
That's always an issue when a technology is kinda "solved"
We see this a lot with hygene products. There's only so much you can do with a toothbrush or razor blades.
"We put a small motor into the tooth brush so that it will vibrate. We will tell customers this generates sonic pulses."
Pretty much. The only thing I ask of my cell phone is that it have enough storage space in it that I can put the music I own on it, because I don't want to friggin' stream everything.
