I think if Google/Apple/Microsoft/OpenAI released this product it would be panned for being too slow, inaccurate, possessing a grossly unintuitive UI and having a dismal battery life (even before being used in the cellular mode). I think it has so far dodged the worst criticism because there are no competitors, it's not priced like the Humane AI pin, and wasn't excessively oversold in the launch marketing.
As it stands the device still lacks a unique "killer app" that a smartphone can't already deliver. A device like this should be more than a sum of its parts, and right now it seems to be many features that stand side by side rather than leveraging each other, because of that I believe the entire product can be out-manoeuvred with a single smartphone app. Indeed most of the gen1 experience just seems to be implementing things we already ask AI assistants on our smartphones.
As for the design, on initial glances I thought I was looking at a new version of the Playmate. I squarely blame Teenage Engineering here for being a one-trick pony with their design language.
However despite my largely negative review, I like that natural human interaction is a product focus, and I like that chances are being taken on new concepts rather than the endless me-too'ing of established electronic products.
The problem I see for businesses entering this market is that they have no moat. They aren't the best designers, nor the best manufacturers, nor the best coders nor the best at AI, nor do they possess a unique combination thereof. Similarly they're not using any technology which is uniquely theirs, and as such I expect that if the category becomes important, a company with more resources will trivially disrupt them.
tl,dr: It seems one Google Assistant update away from making this product irrelevant.
totally get it - teenage has a design language and that is what is getting this clout since otherwise the system has long way to go to getting to the current speed expectations.
google or amazon would definitely enter the market especially since they've more or less set themselves up with home devices.
As it stands the device still lacks a unique "killer app" that a smartphone can't already deliver. A device like this should be more than a sum of its parts, and right now it seems to be many features that stand side by side rather than leveraging each other, because of that I believe the entire product can be out-manoeuvred with a single smartphone app. Indeed most of the gen1 experience just seems to be implementing things we already ask AI assistants on our smartphones.
As for the design, on initial glances I thought I was looking at a new version of the Playmate. I squarely blame Teenage Engineering here for being a one-trick pony with their design language.
However despite my largely negative review, I like that natural human interaction is a product focus, and I like that chances are being taken on new concepts rather than the endless me-too'ing of established electronic products.
The problem I see for businesses entering this market is that they have no moat. They aren't the best designers, nor the best manufacturers, nor the best coders nor the best at AI, nor do they possess a unique combination thereof. Similarly they're not using any technology which is uniquely theirs, and as such I expect that if the category becomes important, a company with more resources will trivially disrupt them.
tl,dr: It seems one Google Assistant update away from making this product irrelevant.