Post by @zzt@mas.to

innovation is when you release ear cameras with a lower effective resolution than the original iphone whose only known use case is asking an LLM to inaccurately describe/remember what you’re looking at, a thing that’s done better in every way by the camera phone you already own, that’s required in order to use the ear cameras

the only argument I’ve seen for these things from Apple fans is accessibility but:

- they obstruct your ears and the AirPod transparency mode is uhh not great if you’re relying on your ears to make up for a missing sense
- if these were for accessibility, bone conduction would probably be better in almost every way because your ears won’t get obstructed and you can mount much larger, better-positioned cameras to a bone conduction headset clamp
- I really don’t think Apple is making these specifically for accessibility, they design all their products for mass market profitability
- I feel like Blind people deserve better than this crap https://circumstances.run/@davidgerard/117134928592586176

10 Replies

6 Boosts

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@zzt@mas.to 3 hr. ago

these are materially worse in every way than both Facebook’s perv glasses and every previous attempt at a physical AI assistant, and I realize the bar is in hell

this exact same type of product didn’t take the market by storm when it was a pendant or some other wearable shit with a much higher rez camera that could feed what you’re looking at into an LLM

I’m not sure making it smaller and worse will do much other than make the act of using them much creepier

TorontoWill

@TorontoWill@mastodon.social 2 hr. ago

@zzt Perv pods. A good way to tank the brand image of a product (AirPods) that everyone thought looked stupid at first, but that has become a quite enormous success for Apple, pretty close to the level of the iPhone (even though it’s never mentioned in the same breath).

David Gerard

@davidgerard@circumstances.run 33 min. ago

@TorontoWill @zzt airpods do $20b revenue on their own, jawdroppingly successful

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@zzt@mas.to 32 min. ago

@davidgerard @TorontoWill meanwhile if I sell substandard earbuds I’m told I’m doing “a bad job” and “I want a refund” and “why do these sound like the free ones, are you joking”

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@zzt@mas.to 2 hr. ago

also, can you imagine selling these to customers expecting to be able to do photos and videos with them? the pure fucking UX of a camera you can’t get pictures out of, just an LLM’s inaccurate description of the picture

maybe if you’re lucky you can have the horrid LLM version of siri do a lego cartoon of what it confidently asserts is in the picture!

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@zzt@mas.to 2 hr. ago

> The other plan that stays the same as my last report on the AirPods with Cameras: the lenses are for AI and visual intelligence only. They cannot take pictures or record video, so people need not be worried.

you need not be worried, they just actively and passively take photos you can’t see and upload them to a cloud that the company that can’t do anonymous email or a working VPN says is secure

and then they turn those photos into a gigantic set of data about exactly what you’re doing at all times

that’s the product

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@zzt@mas.to 2 hr. ago

do the Apple commentators not understand that the product as advertised is horrid? if it does what it says on the tin, I don’t want it

lizard appreciator

@bonzoesc@m.bonzoesc.net 2 hr. ago

@zzt apple commentators are the epitome of access bloggers, if they don't say everything is great suddenly they quit getting loaner iphones

Emelia/Emi

@becomethewaifu@tech.lgbt 3 hr. ago

@zzt But also, thank fuck they can't do high-res video like the Zuckerberg Pervert Specs can. That would be an even worse privacy violation in the making than "shitty still photos you have to individually trigger"

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@zzt@mas.to 3 hr. ago

@becomethewaifu that is true! the use case for the Facebook glasses is literally “you can upload hidden camera footage of women you’re harassing to your incel Instagram channel” and they’re not even subtle about that in the marketing

I feel like there’s still a fair bit of social revulsion in the ear cameras being surveillance devices too, and they’re supposedly planning both active and passive modes for the things. I can’t imagine using an over-loud voice command to take a picture or asking siri to recall a moment the other person thought was private will go over well in most circumstances, but my tolerance for this kind of crap is lower than most people’s.