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Comment by _bxg1 | Hacker News Reader

I personally love weird single-purpose hardware. Unfortunately it tends not to do very well commercially.

Anybody remember this guy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

When hardware is increasingly becoming just a way to interface with a larger platform (IoT, game console subscription services, etc.), I think there will be a certain nostalgia for more static, tactile and analog hardware. I collect records, own a couple pocket operators, and buy physical books for similar reasons.

Single-purpose hardware has identity. It has explicit purpose. If it is well-designed, it has an interface that is intuitive while encouraging a limited amount of experimentation. I think a lot of good software emulates these properties, but often with the tradeoff of being less extensible/integrable/power user friendly.

> I think there will be a certain nostalgia for more static, tactile and analog hardware

There already is, for me. I'd imagine a product like this depends on that nostalgia to a degree.

After entertaining the idea of getting a smartwatch for years but always feeling unimpressed, I started carrying a dumb casio. There's something great about machines that only do one or two tasks but do it very well. Look at ebook readers. They are not super popular, but they have a solid market.

On this point, I just got a Withings Steel HR [1]: It's a classic analog watch, with a sole extra function of measuring heartbeat and exercise on a tiny LCD in the back of the watch face.

I love that it's purpose-specific and isn't gimmicky like smartwatches. This also means the battery lasts about a month. Plus, it looks good.

[1] https://www.withings.com/ca/en/steel-hr

In my experience, single-purpose hardware also lasts longer because it isn’t as reliant on software updates and maintenance.

Same! In fact there's an entire subreddit devoted to the idea of very specialized tools [0].

There is one example that is still firmly lodged in my head from the labs in my electonic engineering degree. It was this big box with a nice keypad, a screen that could display a few characters, and a big handle to lock in place the integrated circuit you wanted to test. You would slot it in, pull the handle, then type the ID numbers of the particular IC. If it was functioning as expected, the screen would say something like "OKAY" and that was all this thing did. Truly magical! On further googling and reflection I'm now not so sure about how big the handle was, but the machine was something like [1].

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/specializedtools/top/ [1] https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Digital-IC-tester-digital-in...

I had a lot of fun hacking with these: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Wikireader-Adventures

I love single purpose hardware on an ideological level.

On a more pragmatic level, it feels more and more like companies creating semi-disposable toy electronics should be held to extremely high standards when it comes to how they source their components and the environmental impact of the lifecycle of their device, because this is ultimately cheap junk that’s hurting the environment.

"[C]ompanies should be held to extremely high standards when it comes to how they source their components and the environmental impact of the lifecycle of their device, because [it] ultimately [ends up as] junk that’s hurting the environment."

FTFY

All products should be held to that standard, not just "semi-disposable toy electronics", which it's not even clear applies to this.

If we're talking single-purpose gaming devices that failed, there's always the Gizmondo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gizmondo

I don't think Panic is involved in organized crime, though.

Gizmondo is such a crazy story, LazyGameReviews did a 30 minute video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv6UaHZxUys

And now I know what a Ferrari Enzo is. Yeesh.

https://www.xkcd.com/214/

I miss the GP2X and related...

I remember hacking my gp2x adding an USB port, plugging a gps on it, porting driver and a gis/map lib.. so much time to waste and learn new things!

I remember someone back then wrote a script to scrape Google Maps data and make it viewable on the GP2X, so you'd have offline portable maps. This was in 2007 or so, before smartphones became mainstream (not that as a student I could have afforded one anyway, or a data plan for that matter).

Ah those were the good old days! I wish I'd spent more time actually getting code up and running on those and the Dingoo A320 but it really was way over my head at the time.

Still contemplating a Dragonbox Pyra. The OpenPandora, despite a rocky start, played host to some incredible things.

This is one of my most prized possessions: http://www.fm3buddhamachine.com/v2/

I have several of them, and love each of them. My phone has far more capacity, and could stream effectively unlimited music from Spotify, but there's something unique and special about the Buddha Machine.

I have loved Panic’s focused software for many years, and have several Teenage Engineering single-purpose hardware devices too (especially love my OP-1).

I have never typed my email into a signup form so fast.

Oh yeah, those were fantastic little devices. It's a shame that it wasn't popular enough to warrant successors. The OpenMoko people did some really innovative stuff back in the day, but hardware is tough.

The problem with single-purpose devices is they're a frivolous cost. When your phone can do everything, buying a separate dedicated device is inherently impractical. Of course, impracticality is also what tends to give things charm.

Put differently, limitations create interest, but they're also the opposite of cost-effective.

Touchscreens can’t [yet] replace a dedicated keypad for games.

That’s why you don’t see many platformers for mobile. The ones that do exist auto run for you or put virtual buttons on the screen, which I haven’t found to work well.

Still, even a mainstream game console is far less specialized than this one

Not even digital controls could really replace analog controls. While as impressive as the Pubg controllers (essentially a gamepad with a dock) are I'm still amazed there is still no "the one mobile analog input" device is out yet.

I'm OK with five devices that do five things well instead of one device that does a poor job at five things.

I've never heard of that, but would've loved one. Kinda useless with cellphones, but I could see that being nice for backpacking if the battery lasts long enough.

I've actually ordered one from ebay last week. Looking forward to it.

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