Is OpenAI hardware, the Apple of tommorow? | Hacker News Reader

Is OpenAI hardware, the Apple of tommorow?

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3 pointsTaikhoom108 comments

Linux phones are the future, since the software more or less exists it does look like a low hanging fruit, someone just needs to reach out and make it a proper consumer product.

A company with a 40 year track record vs a company that hasn’t released any hardware… this speculation is getting out of hand.

OpenAI hardware could be the next Humane or Rabbit.

All trillion-dollar hardware businesses start without releasing any hardware. Even Apple and Nvidia.

Yes, and we usually don't start comparing them to the market leader before they've even said what they're going to make. A lot of companies have hired ex-Apple engineers, have tried to emulate Apple's designs, and have tried to capture whatever it is Apple captured to get where they are... so far none of it has really worked. Why we'd assume OpenAI will be any different, when they haven't even showed anything to the public yet, is beyond me.

They hired Jony Ive... but so did Ferrari, and people seem to hate that design. So he alone clearly isn't the key.

Is Apple a market leader, in terms of AI? OpenAI still has plenty of places they can one-up Apple, the iPhone is not any more inevitable than the Nokia or the Blackberry was as a form factor.

Apple is a market leader in hardware, that’s why the article is using them as the company to beat.

The thing is, Apple doesn’t have to have the best in-house AI when all the apps from all the various players can run on their devices. We’ll have to see how the new Siri with Gemini goes this fall, but even with Siri still being behind, an iPhone user can use whatever AI they want. Apple desktops also seem to be the go-to for a ton of people looking to run things like Claude Code or local models.

So from a hardware perspective, OpenAI would have to come up with something so novel that it was worth not just being an app on an existing device. What can AI enable, that is worth being its own device, that consumers will actually buy and use? That’s the question OpenAI has to answer and they’ve yet to show what they think the answer is. It’s a very hard question and I don’t think ChatGPT is capable of providing an answer for them.

Yeah look I am not really part of the hype, but a AI first hardware consumer product is much more logical product then a new AI enterpise startup which is structurally doomed.

I’m not saying it will never happen, but there have been several AI-first hardware companies already and so far all the products were DOA. Teenage Engineering couldn’t even save the Rabbit R1, and their designs can usually sell just about anything.

OpenAI needs to do something a phone, smartwatch, or smart speaker can’t already do with an app or software update.

I’m skeptical that OpenAI is going to come up with a new magic form factor that will be good enough to replace something people already have or be better enough to make an extra device worthwhile just for the AI experience.

There is also the trust issue. Your phone already has all your info, so an integrated AI can do more. A 3rd party AI will need to connect to everything to be as useful as a phone/watch AI. Do people trust OpenAI enough to link their contacts, calendar, email, etc? Should they?

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