Brilliantly Bad Weekend Edition
Apple's Vision Pro popcorn feature; AI meeting stand-ins; Phones that tell how hot you are; folding, telescoping screens gone wild and more!
Mike’s List of Brilliantly Bad Ideas
1. Apple ad says you can catch popcorn in your mouth wearing Apple Vision Pro
An Apple Vision Pro ad hit today, and during various depicted scenarios of use, some couch potato is watching a movie and casually tosses popcorn into his mouth — and catches it. Now that’s low-latency pass-through video. (We’re going to be testing this use case here at Mike’s List Labs.)
2. Lenovo’s AI literally replaces you in meetings
Geniuses at Lenovo have come up with a way for you to step away from those annoying work meetings without anyone noticing. A new service uses AI to represent you with a kind of deepfake, which nods and blinks just like you would while the boss is yammering on. The downside is that if you’re called upon in the meeting, you’ll just keep nodding and blinking, and everyone will think you had a stroke. (Small price to pay…)
3. Google’s Pixel phone now doubles as a thermometer, for some reason
Google rolled out its infrared thermometer feature for Pixel 8 Pro phones. To take your temperature, simply move the phone all over your face as close as you can without touching. (Don’t do this in public or others will think you’re nuts.) The feature is for US users only. What’s next, the use of the Google Pixelbook Pen as a rectal thermometer?
4. How many screens is too many screens?
Motorola filed a patent for a weird phone that starts out rectangular, then opens like a book with screen real estate on both sides, then two additional screens telescope out the top like rabbit ears for an even bigger screen. Somebody stop this before it becomes a product!
5. Innovators dare to dream: What if your phone was a Kindle?
A minimal company called the — wait for it! — Minimal Company, launched a minimal phone called the… er, “Minimal Phone,” that’s basically a phone in Kindle form — e-inc display, slow rendering and less! The idea is to protect you from yourself, because you can’t be trusted with a full-color, full-resolution, full-power smartphone. On the plus side, the battery lasts four days.
Mike’s List of Shameless Self-Promotions
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Read ELGAN.COM for more!
Mike’s Location: Silicon Valley, California
(Why Mike is always traveling.)
Great issue. Can’t wait to take my temp next time!
The apple vision pro goggles: See another apple hype blitzkrieg herding the sheeple into an alternate reality that really doesn't exist. Nobody knows the end evolution of this product, the hardware is obviously not ready, yet the hype is no doubt working on this facade of functionality. I'm Still waiting for real miniaturized non-obtrusive smart glasses that could easily be a decade away. Definitely not a public product category at this time.
Big tech needs in-the-wild-data from the masses to further the development of this kind of product, yep, as always, once again they need other people's data, so launch a pricy data collection device that also collects face scans?
We might conjecture that standard glasses already exist and they need to be upgraded with tech that doesn't yet exist for the masses. As tech improves our retro-concept of eyewear or even more miniature tech evolves, then maybe we can go get fitted for the next information-communications devices, but we could be a few decades from that reality. (roadblocks for future product development are pre-built into our capital system of economics and it acts like a gigantic braking system to future tech.)