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Comment by al_borland | Hacker News Reader

It’s the opposite of clickbait. The title saves the viewer from having to watch the video at all, as it says everything someone really needs to know in that single line. It’s a bad product.

I find it silly that people are pointing at MKBHD for the downfall of a company, instead of the people who ran the company and decided to launch when the experience wasn’t good and the value proposition was poor. Releasing early to ride the AI hype train was a risk, and this time it didn’t pay off.

People are also still free to try it for themselves if they were excited for the product and think MKBHD is wrong. While Marques doesn’t call the iPhone a bad product, he is very clear that he prefers Android, yet the iPhone is still outselling Android in the US, his prime market. That’s at least some proof that the market doesn’t blindly follow him and appreciates the perspective, without taking it as gospel.

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It’d say the thing that pushes it (“The Worst Product I've Ever Reviewed... For Now”) over the clickbait line is that it doesn’t mention what is being reviewed, so you still have to open the video to learn what that the product in question actually is. Otherwise, yes, it would merely be reasonably hyperbolic.

(The actual review is good though.)

Fair enough. Although I will say that titles seem to work in concert with thumbnails these days (for better or worse). Based on the thumbnail, I knew what it was about before I started watching. Of course, this assumes the viewer was previously aware of what the thing is; anyone who wasn’t wouldn’t be helped by a name either.

I personally have never once seen evidence that he "prefers" Android in any capacity. He has voiced opinions on things Android does well, and he has done the same for iOS. Anyone who thinks he has a personal preference one way or the other is very likely projecting.

He carries both, because he needs to stay familiar with both, and there are some things that the iPhone does better (in his opinion), like video, and of course there is iMessage.

He has said countless times that his main phone, and primary number, is on whatever Android phone he is currently carrying.

I’m an iPhone user, so I’m not projecting, trying say he prefers my preferred platform.

Here he is talking about using 2 phones, with his main number and 75% of usage being on the Android. That seems like a preference to me. That doesn’t mean he thinks the iPhone is bad, but it’s his special purpose phone, not the ‘default for everything else’ phone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=QGbfOd_pVvc

My work happens to require my primary computer to be a Windows machine, and there are many functions Windows provides that the Mac equivalent cannot compete with, when it comes to the work I need to do. Does that mean I "prefer" Windows? I don't think so.

You work for someone else, he works for himself. He can do what he wants, you can’t. Apples and oranges.

He still has to provide a service to his "customers", and must do what it takes to accomplish that. Obviously, he could not choose to not make videos and still have a job, even if that was 'what he wants'.

To that end, if the Android operating system is better suited for the business needs he has as a video creator, he would be incentivized to choose that platform even if it isn't what he "prefers" all else being equal.

Not that I particularly care about this topic... good day.

At one point he tried making an iPhone his main phone and gave up after 2 weeks because he couldn’t figure out how to use shortcuts. He made a whole video about it.

I hate iOS shortcuts as well, I think they're one of the worst designed features on the phone and they have put some idiot PM's definition of "safety" as a direct obstacle to every user experience with them imaginable. I could see how if my job required them I might use android. But I don't think we could take that data point and extrapolate out that I "prefer" android.

It seems every time Apple tries to makes some kind of automation tool for the every-man it’s difficult to figure out for people who know how to write actual code, because none of the normal conventions are there. I ran into this with Automator as well as Shortcuts.

I don’t care enough about Shortcuts to get good at it, but would probably use it more if the learning curve wasn’t so steep. It seems odd to me that I need to put more effort into learning Shortcuts than a programming language.

It's not that it's difficult to set up, it's that they actively put restrictions in place to completely hamstring the usability. The only shortcut I have is a geofence to automatically text my GF when I am near her house so I don't need to use my phone when I'm driving and I don't need to wait out front for an excessive amount of time. But get this: you can't actually make a shortcut that runs on a geofence, the best you can do is get notified when you're in the target area, at which point you must manually unlock your phone and trigger the event.

It has to be some boneheaded attempt at "Privacy", to that end they also force you to accept a notification saying that there are N shortcuts running on the phone Every. Single. Time. you restart your phone.

They destroy everyone's UX (and force a non-0 number of folks to unnecessarily use their phone when driving) in order to kinda-sorta-maybe prevent some corner case where a stalker had access to your phone and wants to notify themselves whenever you're around a specific location? Except they could just enable the always-on location sharing feature to get precise location data at every moment?

It boggles the mind.

To be fair, the Shortcuts app is a hot mess. Not only is the UX trash, it can't to basic things like trigger Siri.

but to be fair the ability to schedule texts and messages in other apps is fantastic and much better than android which still doesn't have a native orchestration tool that apps can build against.

I'll also add that Shortcuts can do a lot of really cool stuff, but one major problem I've found is that sometimes it just... doesn't work. Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason for why the same shortcut fails one time, but works another (Nothing complicated either, just launching an app). No explanation other than the failed error message.

This was a bigger problem in earlier versions of iOS, I've found them to be a lot more reliable lately, I have a shortcut that takes a sms reminder and converts it into a calendar event, (bec that healthcare provider EMS doesn't support sending calendar invite emails) back on iOS15 it would work intermittently, but ever since iOS17 it's been rock solid.

It is clickbait. And people who think the product is shitty seem numb to that point because they're like "yeah it is shitty, just like I thought!"

The actual video is way more balanced. Why not call it "Humane AI Pin: Pretty Bad" or something? But the worst...? There are waaay shittier products he's reviewed.

MKBHD is a millionaire... why clickbait?

People are like "Honest reviews are important"... yeah, exactly and we're saying the same thing. the concern is about dishonesty for clicks.

All sides in this argument have a kernel of truth that is being exaggerated somewhat.

That being said I trust him, just think he was off on the clickbait-iness.

>There are waaay shittier products he's reviewed.

Genuine question: Are there?

anything old https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k5bdedDPPs

> This has been a really great webcam so far

That's your candidate for "worst ever"?

How many frames a second does this webcam do? What's the quality like? Shit.

> How many frames a second does this webcam do? What's the quality like? Shit.

A product isn't bad just because it's old and has obsolete specs. That webcam review is 14 years old and has to be interpreted in the context from that time, just like the Humane Pin will inevitably be compared to current smartphones and obviously looks inferior in almost every way.

I agree but "worst ever" still feels off for this reason

Any review has to be evaluated based on when it was released. Sure, it’s bad today, but was it bad in 2010?

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