Humane, the secretive startup founded by ex-Apple software design chief Imran Chaudri, finally went public with Chaudri showing off their device for the first time at the TED conference last week…
Chaudri’s talk is centered on the premise that technology (mainly through the smartphone) has invaded all of our lives too much. The idea is that personalized artificial intelligence can be used to dramatically change how we interact with technology. Rather than proactively opening an app to do something, AI can be an ambient thing that is there when you need it, works in the background of your life, and mostly stays out of your way.
To make this a reality, Humane is introducing a new product: a wearable that resembles a rectangular pin badge. Chaudri is wearing one on his jacket pocket during the presentation. He sets out the vision of their product as something that is “screenless, seamless and sensing”.
There is something that is just fundamentally cool about Humane’s product—it just feels like a device from the future.
The problem is Chaudri’s insistence that their device is a replacement for smartphones. John Gruber recently wrote a great piece about this:
So far, it feels like Humane’s entire premise is founded on that same mistake: building a new device intended to replace our phones, without that new device being able to do any of the dozens of things we love to do on our phones that require a display. Apple Watch and AirPods thrive because they’re satellites to our iPhones, not ostensible replacements… Anything that attempts to establish a post-phone beachhead has to do the things we love to do with our phones, or entertain us in new ways that make us forget about them. I don’t see how a laser projector on a chest badge does that.
Humane is so close to building the product I have been dreaming of. But for them to succeed, they first need to accept that, until their device is ten times better than the smartphone, it won’t supersede smartphones as the center of personal computing.
Honestly, Humane should consider scrapping the whole projector idea and focus their efforts on making an incredible app. But if Chaudri really wants to build a viable hardware project, it must be an accessory to the smartphone.
There is a sense in which any hardware project is doomed from the start, though. If Humane were to ever create a wearable that sees widespread success, Apple will undoubtably sherlock the technology and incorporate it into a “next generation” Apple Watch—I am sure they already have a similar R&D project on the back burner, just in case.
At the end of the day, I am rooting for Humane but that doesn’t mean I am optimistic.