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Comment by nbittich | Hacker News Reader

Same pattern over and over, futuristic hardware, closed source software. This looks boring to me. I don't expect anything ground breaking from it. It's gonna be an iphone sticked to your eyes. Those big tech companies remove all the fun and excitement we used to have with new hardware. We know how it's gonna behave and it's limitation before it's released to the public.

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You say you don’t expect anything groundbreaking and then compare it with arguably the most groundbreaking product ever

But the comparison is that it is "[arguably the most groundbreaking product ever] sticked to your eyes", and the property of groundbreakingness is not necessarily transitive.

If you make a list of groundbreaking products that would include the light bulb, the bicycle, the refrigerator, the radio, the car, printed books, the newspaper, the TV, personal computers, mobile phones... The iPhone is great, but I doubt it could even make it to the top ten.

This is what Apple really sells. I read parent's comment and was sorta nodding along, and then read yours and realized 1) it's kind of a ludicrous statement, and 2) it sounded reasonable to me.

Marketing works.

I feel like comparing categories of products to an individual make of product is a bit unfair.

Like, of course the car was a world-changing invention. And Ford's original model T remains a significant point of the history of automobiles.

The smartphone was certainly a world-changing invention, and it seems the iPhone was just as historically significant to it as a technology. I don't think the LG Prada is going to be so thoroughly remembered by history.

The things you list aren't products, they're the inventions.

The car is the invention, a car product is a Tesla. The TV is the invention, a TV product is the LG OLED CX.

I'm not saying the iPhone is the greatest invention ever (though the telephone might be).

I'm saying that it's one of the most groundbreaking and transformative products ever.

Hope that clears it up.

The things I listed are also products. I just didn't pick individual examples because for most of them I wasn't alive at the time and so I don't know what the equivalent "first mass produced model that popularised it" would be. For cars it would probably be the Model T, for example. The iPhone was a great product that sold very well, but it was more of an incremental improvement over mobile phones which had been a thing for a while. But I'm also not in the US, so maybe it doesn't seem that groundbreaking because it never was all that popular over here.

What does this level of reductionism get you? If you follow that to its logical conclusion then it's essentially "nothing matters, nothing is interesting, who cares about anything, it would have been invented anywhere, pyramids are more interesting".

It's just a deeply cynical point of view for cynicism's sake.

I don't know, it doesn't seem like that to me, I'd even say the opposite. There are plenty of groundbreaking and great inventions, so many that I think grandparents comment of calling the iPhone the greatest product ever is just biased due to it being a very recent product and very popular right now, and Apple being the most valued public company in the world at the moment. And also it's not that I don't think it's a great product and very innovative, I would definitely put it somewhere in the top 100, I just don't think it's the number 1 is all, so decided to argue that in the comments.

You mean more than the invention of fire or the printing press ?

When Apple does something new, everyone else generally has it in a few years.

There's gonna be Android for Eyeballs eventually and anyone will be able to make their app have virtual space widgets or something.

Of course that doesn't guarantee anyone will actually do anything cool with it, but they'll be able to.

I think with the Oculus, at least when developing with Unity, you target the Android platform. I'll admit I've never actually looked at what is under the hood in the Quest.

Yep, just Android. Uses the android SDK and tools.

>There's gonna be Android for Eyeballs eventually

Google glass?

Yeah, like that, but a version that people actually want!

Glass had the misfortune of a limited rollout and landed at exactly the wrong moment for people to lose their mind about a camera being "on".

Because fast forward to now and the horse has bolted into the glue factory.

It wasn't Android and not even more than a very simple hud.

> There's gonna be Android for Eyeballs eventually

How many Android for eyeballs has Google released already? I count at least 3.

- Whatever Cardboard was using (2013ish)

- Daydream platform (2016ish)

- Whatever Samsung Gear VR used (2018ish)

All of them nice gimmicks, but also commercial failures and abandoned.

You missed Showers for Glassholes.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/gear/robert-scoble-wears-goo...

Open source software developers could never approach the masterpiece of software craftsmanship is on display here. Only exceptional, highly paid professionals with intense focus can achieve this. Generally, those who can, do and get paid handsomely, those who can't, pretend by volunteering their open source. We're talking Hollywood composer vs. music teacher, here.

The best software I've ever used is git and it's FOSS. The closed source alternatives don't even come close, even on niche usecases.

You should try Google and Facebook's internal SCM tools. Better than Git by miles. Git itself was a copy of the real innovator in the space, BitKeeper. Git, being free, has undercut commercial solutions, and that market is now a wasteland.

Interestingly GitHub and GitLab have captured most of that market by plugging the gaps in the developer journey. I sometimes use git standalone for personal work but wouldn't dare for a bigger project.

What makes those solutions better?

don't check the license section of your latest iGizmo.

A polished UI is only what you are looking at, not what is underneath. You have failed to understand the years and years of hardwork poured by vast majority of OSS that helped building all the systems that underpin every single system out there.

Your comparison of OSS developers as tinkerers who can't reach the Megacorp scale is totally absurd. I've worked at these corporations, and out of 10 only 1 or 2 would reach a scale of a great developer. But, OSS developers innovations, contributions and impact surpasses any company out there.

Also, nobody in their right mind wants to work 80 hours a week competing with a team who's trying to better you, if you pit the developers against each other it doesn't matter how much you get paid, your time is owned by the large corp at the end of the day. Easy to undermine the work of OSS developers who go unappreciated and hail the rat racing corporations.

1) I'm sure there's a lot of open source software hiding in every apple device. 2) I know Facebook and Google contribute to open source, probably Apple does too? 3) Of course you can get a lot of well qualified people working on a project if you pay them.

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