Would that be this guy? I was laughing at his tweet yesterday where he asserts that all the negativity around their bad product is our lack of "optimism"
edit: not sure if the previous comment was edited or I imagined it said it was their marketing guy before, but I'm editing his name out of the comment to not potentially tarnish his search engine results
I feel for the guys at Humane, it was my first thought after seeing mrwhosetheboss and MKBHD.
It's probably terrible, but oh so hypocritical. I can think of many occasions in the last 15 years these reviewers have cited the potential of gimmicks and latched on to the manufacturers promise to improve.
Would you happen to have any examples showcasing their hypocrisy?
Though hyperbolic, I thought the reviews were balanced. Products shouldn’t primarily be built on hype and optimism, they should fulfill a job to be done. The software for AI Pin will improve but so will AI capabilities for smartphones in parallel.
I don't disagree with you on the review being balanced overall or having merit. It's more the framing, very hyperbolic as you say. They all have "worst product ever reviewed" in the title perhaps it's the only way to stay relevant to the algorithms these days.
Don't have time to go look for one. But can think of many occasions they'd mention the manufacturer has promised to update and improve this and then give them a free pass on whatever gimmicky aspect of the product they're looking at, usually software. Overlooking that aspect rather than lambasting them.
I mean perhaps a slight stretch, but their coverage of the Apple Vision Pro, have they had much reason to use it, aside from the demos? There's also some UX issues mentioned but they're given a free pass as they expect Apple to improve it with time.
They'll say "not there yet" rather than "worst product ever".
I returned my AVP but these things don’t happen in a vacuum. Humane is a company that might not exist in 6 months whereas Apple has a proven track record on iterating and improving on the devices they release. The Apple Watch Series 0 is a good example of this IMHO.
I’m not saying the AVP will fix all its issues but it is so much more impressive than a cellular device hooked up to OpenAi’s APIs.
Also, let’s not forget that Humane wasn’t even planing to use AI for their product until the last year or two when AI took off. Maybe you can say it was a smart pivot but to me to reeked of just jumping on the AI bandwagon (which, does make some sense I’ll grant you).
He seems like a guy super invested in changing our trajectory from techno-dystopia to techno-utopia. I really respect that shining optimism, but it may have gotten in his eyes a bit with Humane.
Charging customers full price, including a monthly subscription, for a product that he admits is "not where it needs to be — full stop" seems more techno-dystopian than techno-utopian to me.
Should a marketing person be “full stop”-ing the criticism of the product? Yes, I get it’s an affinity exercise, but one I don’t think marketing should be doing unless there’s something tragically wrong about it.
If I was working on the product, I’d probably feel okay full stopping. If I saw the person representing us full stopping Id probably think something like hey, nobody died here. And also I feel like a full stop is reserved for maybe one or two people at a company.
add to that, making an obviously inferior first gen product, so that they could sell you a "new and improved" second gen and get you on an upgrade cycle for this completely extraneous thing that costs as much as a phone (that it will never, ever get rid of)
https://twitter.com/samsheffer/status/1779854070372561184
edit: not sure if the previous comment was edited or I imagined it said it was their marketing guy before, but I'm editing his name out of the comment to not potentially tarnish his search engine results