Just want to point out that I saw the headlines from the Verve bashing the Humane AI pin as universally terrible before I saw MKBHD’s video. He’s far from the only person with a giant megaphone bashing this device. Dave2d has even suggested he thinks these devices are a scam before they even came out as they essentially avoided reviewers and didn’t allow anyone to purchase the devices.
It was really just their number score which doesn't seem to be in-line with what the article/video said, which was probably even more damning than Marques' video.
If "I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription" is a 4/10, I would hate to see the chaos that a Verge 1/10 would wreak across society.
They discussed that in the podcast and the dude who gave the score took a lot of flack for it from his co-workers, said something along the lines of "I gave them an extra point to be nice because they tried a hard thing", so it should have been a 3. Personally, I'd have given it a 1 with a nice guy point. 2/10.
People are upset at a product reviewer for reviewing a product.
Classic example of why "Person On Twitter Is Angry" being considered newsworthy, or even faintly noteworthy, is one the worst things that has happened to modern discourse.
I mostly blame people who take the angry Twittersphere to share it elsewhere, making it spread. Journalists of any niche are particularly good at it, and in this case the author.
I don't read Twitter, because I do not care of its drama, but the author did its best to spread it and stoke the fires thanks to their blog.
Eh. I blame Twitter. They didn't have to take something dumb that should have been left to immediate obscurity, and show it to thousands of people in the first place as if it had any authority. But clearly, they gained some reach and revenue by doing so, or else we wouldn't be talking about it.
Thanks to the character limit (no longer technical, but still cultural) and the algorithmic feeds, the "discourse" on Twitter is entirely synthetic. In real life, the equivalent would be like if somebody were to interrupt you every five seconds, then take the various sentence fragments you managed to get out in between, and stitched that together with random other sentence fragments from hundreds of strangers in a grotesque attempt to manufacture a coherent interaction. Oh, and everybody's screaming all the time, all at once, of course, and the messages you try to say about the Blottinghamville Games Club keep being sent to members of Bunny Murderers for National Unity, and vice versa… All while the giant blue bird-thing keeps trying to tell you about its sponsors.
And yet, this mutilation of human thought and conversation itself is presented as if it's just a venue for normal discussions. It's not; The "interactions" on Twitter are interrupted, chopped up, and stitched together. I think it preys, basically on our social instincts, on the desire to assume good faith and perceive an organic conversation happening because it tries really hard to make that seem like the case.
Especially given that I'm not sure there's really any comparable dynamic that's ever existed before in all of human history, I don't know how useful it is to blame individuals for falling for that. Twitter monetized a random message and amplified it as if it's important, so the author of the linked article responded, because that's what you do if you assume good faith when somebody else presents something as important… Though at this point we should probably know better.
Everything about that product and its price tag screamed whatever he put up in the title and I'm glad he went ahead so that the average joe doesn't get scammed into getting this garbage.
There's clickbait and there's the plain and simple truth.
The Humane couple were interviewed on “How I Built This” last month. The interview has the “I worked at Apple” vibe because both husband and wife did work at Apple.
They and the startup seemed to give classic cringe wannabe Steve Jobs vibe. Its not very uncommon to find such people at Apple. They often miss the most the important thing that Jobs was good at, i.e. making things that are actually useful and does its job much better than anything else out there.
This is one of the most pointless products out there that is being marketed with the confidence based on I don't know what.
They were copying the Apple playbook without actually having the history and reputation to back it up, which made them look ridiculous. On their first announcement video the first thing they tell you is that the device comes in a few colors. This strategy might make sense for a product with which you're familiarized, but this is supposed to be a new product category without any prior history. If you're going to introduce a new product, you should start by saying what it is and what it can do. After watching that video I was convinced that the company was run by midwits destined to fail.
I should've been clearer. When Apple announces a new laptop or phone, you already know about macOS or iOS and their capabilities, so you can focus on other details. For example, I wouldn't find it surprising if a new Apple Watch announcement focused a bit on the bands and look of the device, since the capabilities of the device itself are fairly well known at this point. When announcing a new product that people don't recognize, you don't start the presentation by focusing on peripheral details (e.g. device color) before explaining the core functionality.
But yes, the focus should always be primarily on solving problems better than the competition and communicating this clearly to potential buyers.
I think they missed some of the more important pages in the Apple playbook. Imagine someone presenting Steve Jobs with this product and claiming that it was ready to be released to the public.
Whenever I was in a meeting with a former Apple employee who wanted to win quickly. Their next sentence always started with “when I was at Apple…” and ended with “Steve” yelling at someone or proclaiming “this better not break or everyone here is fired”
Oh man this whole worked at Apple vibe is so off putting. I am sure he is very talented but somehow VCs think working at a company = being able to make a similar company which is absolutely false.
similar in some superficial way? sure, especially with enough VC money to burn.
Theranos' Holmes also successfully copied the plain black turtleneck part.
VCs got bamboozled into this whole unicorn hunt during the big SaaS boom (when everything was the Uber of some sector), but the low hanging fruits are mostly gone.
But it's their (mostly the limited partners') money, and there's usually enough fools to offload stuff so that even the clueless funds survive a decade.
MKBHD posts a fair and thorough review of a shitty product, which is exactly in line with what every other reviewer has said about it as well.
One guy tweets about how he wasn't fair, and how he has a responsibility to not write bad things about companies because of the size of his viewer base (wut??)
Now the entire internet feels the need to come defend MKBHD, thus amplifying the other side even more.
Defend him from what exactly? There was literally no controversy until people started defending him from the controversy.
The only person who won here is Daniel Vassallo, whose low effort post went viral because people kept sharing it to show how stupid it was, thus drawing more eyeballs to his $400 "I will teach you how to be a successful entrepreneur" course on X (because of course he has one).
> thus drawing more eyeballs to his $400 "I will teach you how to be a successful entrepreneur" course on X (because of course he has one).
Just a voice in support of Daniel here as this is a bit of a mischaracterisation.
He’s a really nice, gentle guy, who runs a small online community called Small Bets which I would characterise as the opposite of a “I will teach you to be rich” course. (I’m a satisfied paid member).
I don’t have an opinion on his tweet but both he and MKBHD are equally entitled to share their (strong) opinions on things.
Likewise, here. He's one of the most genuine and authentic folks out there, and the community is simply awesome.
It's not a "get rich quick" scheme by any stretch of imagination, because they teach how to grow your wealth slowly over time, in opposition to those who prefer to invest in uncertain stocks or go to a VC-backed startup.
Seems like Daniel’s making the HN rounds these days. I’ve known him for a long time before he started working for himself. He’s a kind man that enjoys mentoring people and has insightful if almost intentionally contrarian views. However in my experience he’s more often right than wrong and when he’s right it’s often by observing some more simple truth than convention wisdom dictates. I’ve no relationship to his current work with his side projects and community but he’s absolutely no grifter.
> Right, a person running a group called "small bets" has no relation to people getting simps to gamble their money away.
I don't see a button to reply to your comment below, but I'd suggest going to smallbets.com to actually see what this is all about, instead of random guesses about gambling.
Also, calling someone a "simp" is a sign of immaturity, just so you know.
Right, a person running a group called "small bets" has no relation to people getting simps to gamble their money away. I'm sure you're right, you are not a simp after all!
Btw, ever heard of the duck test?
> If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
He doesn't sell snake oil at all, what he teaches works, is down to earth and pragmatic. He also has amazing guest lectures from folks highly regarded in the community.
MKBHD posted an IMO unnecessarily clickbaity title to his review. I watched the review and thought that he was mostly on the ball except for the once again exaggeration that it's the worst product ever (for the views). In a way, it seems that the recent scathing review for Fisker and the views generated might have gone to his head somewhat.
Given that the Rabbit R1 is coming out soon (which he will likely review), I am curious to see if his reviews becomes a pattern of rage farming.
On the other hand, the video spends a significant amount of time explaining how the product is well super well designed and comes with a lot of features.
It is just completely and utterly useless for its intended purpose with no redeeming qualities in use whatsoever. The title is clickbaity, but you get the same conclusion from watching the video and seeing the product in action. Other review sites seem to agree.
You can argue that this indeed means that the company will sell fewer of this generation of product, which might make them unable to develop the next generation... But giving a favorable review to make people buy 700 USD paperweights in order to sponsor development would be deceit and wrong.
Some ideas look good on paper and are interesting to make, but fail catastrophically when confronted with real users. Nothing new about it.
It didn't say that it is the worst product ever. Only the worst product he ever reviewed.
of course I don't know every product he ever reviewed, but it seems plausible that a 700$ product that is extremely bad at everything it is supposed to do is actually the worst one.
Agree. The review was fine, but the optics of the title are bad because he makes $$$$ from the clickbait. Even if the title was accurate (I don’t think it’s likely to be literally accurate).
Of the products he’s reviewed (it’s the worst product he reviewed he said), how many others are even half as expensive as the Pin? And what percentage of them almost completely fail to achieve their intended purpose?
I’d bet the answer is indeed none other than the Pin.
You’d just be wrong. Because the title isn’t clickbait at all. It’s accurate.
If anything, most other media writers have correctly been even more harsh on it.
If you wanted to give Humane a ridiculous amount of leeway you could argue it’s a good concept but in Beta form but that’s not how they’re selling it to the general consumer. They’re charging them $700 and telling them it’s a consumer ready product.
By that standard it’s absolutely failed and if anything, the title could be far harsher.
I somewhat agree that it's __somewhat__ clickbaity, but the other important part of something being clickbait is "being typically deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading". [0]
I'm sure there are some definitions of clickbait that don't require that, but at least colloquially with people I talk to, it's assumed that clickbait necessarily engages in deceptive behavior where the content is not aligned with the title / thumbnail.
In this case, it's certainly designed to draw attention and get a viewer to click, but it's also the thesis of the video. He literally considers it to be the worst product he's ever reviewed, and thinks that they may iterate on it to improve the functionality in the future.
The guy was specifically talking about the video's headline, which was written to be clickbait like everything else on YouTube because that's how MKBHD pays his bills.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> 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.
The video title is "the worst product I've ever reviewed" and the thumbnail is the product with its $700 price tag. What exactly is the "clickbait" here?
regardless of your original point, which I happen to agree with, that title is as clickbait as it gets. it is a title designed to make you click to find out what product he's talking about. pretending it's not clickbait is disingenuous.
I don't even care that it is clickbait. that's the game every YouTuber is playing. but, it is unashamed, by the book, clickbait.
We have different views of what clickbait is. Clickbait, in my view, is writing checks that your content can’t cash. MKBHD didn’t do that. He plainly said this was the worst product and then calmly explained why it was the worst product. The content completely fulfilled the promise of the title. No hyperbole, no exaggeration, just an honest review based on his weeks worth of use.
He clearly says in the review that it’s the worst product he’s reviewed. So what other possible title could he have chosen?
If your objection is that it’s an interesting title that many people will click on … there’s nothing wrong with that. This is a guy with 15 years experience reviewing products, of course I want to know what he thinks is the worst. That isn’t clickbait though!
Do you have an issue with the fact that he didn't put "AI Pin" in the title or that he called it the worst product he has reviewed? Because the "outrage" is very clearly about the latter.
Heck if anything not putting the company and product name in the title actually helps them in this case.
I think there are two different definitions of clickbait that people are operating with.
One definition (maybe close to what your definition might be) is "a title written with the intent of getting people to click on it".
I think the other definition that many people hold would be something like: "a *misleading* title with the intent of getting people to click on it".
So, if someone thinks of clickbait as requiring some element of deception, misdirection, or other very mild fraud, then this wouldn't fit that category. I think that's why people are talking past each other a bit.
"A title written with the intent of getting people to click on it" describes every title ever. What professional whose livelihood is dependent on people interacting with their work would possibly ever title their work in a way that dissuades people from interacting with it? Clickbait needs to be something more than simply "an interesting title" for the term to have any meaning at all.
Clickbait describes the replacement of traditional news headlines (a summary of what happened, e.g. "Tulsa high school student defeats chess grandmaster at tournament") with mystery lead-ins designed to leave you wanting to know what thing happened (e.g. "What this high school student did will SHOCK you", or "This high school student just changed EVERYTHING about chess").
For the YouTube video in question, I guess it hinges on whether you recognize the device in the thumbnail you're looking at. If you do, then the title is giving away the lede and letting you have the takeaway if that's all you're looking for. If not, then you could argue that leaving out the product's name is clickbait-y.
What's interesting is that that's basically the opposite of Vassallo's argument. He argues on X that it's not the video that's the problem; it's the meanness of the title that might effectively kill the product. He even says that the same video posted on X has a different title, and he has no problem with that.
So he's claiming that the title is in effect anti-clickbait. That by itself, regardless of the video content or whether or not people watch the video even, it could potentially cause harm to the product. I mean, he's not entirely wrong. It wouldn't be unsurprising if more people saw the title, and said to themselves, "Well, that sounds like a shit product, no need to even waste time watching the video," than actually watched the video.
That seems like a poor definition of "clickbait" in the context of YouTube, as that definition would effectively apply to every video being put on the platform these days and as such makes the label meaningless.
It would be a comment on the state of YouTube. Also Clickbait is a spectrum. On one end there are disingenuous titles (1) on the other are academic titles (0). A typical book of fiction title would be somewhere in the middle of the scale. But we do judge fiction and other artistic efforts differently.
There are Channels I subscribe to, that do not use titles like those too much. You can find examples from those channels that are clickbait from my perspective, but that is a general feeling I have.
I would also say that for complex stuff covered by a video you can't give a simple purely descriptive title and then my Clickbait detector allows some leeway. Just don't rely on terms, that almost automatically put a question in minds. Like: weird (weird, how?), the worst/best product (which product? - is it something I know of?).
You are really reaching. I wasn't expecting a MKBHD review of the Humane Pin just yet, but it showed up in my feed. I saw the title, and I knew exactly what he was reviewing without watching it (I watched anyway and found the content to be in line with the title 100%). On a side note: I knew these things (Humane Pin, Rabbit R1, etc.) were going to be borderline useless, but definitely redundant as mobile phones will very soon make them obsolete.
The YT title was 'The worst product I've ever reviewed...for now.'
It doesn't mention Humane or the AI Pin, there's also no brand logo in the thumbnail. Just a pic of the device itself. If you had no foreknowledge of the video or device itself, or what he was talking about, you'd have to watch at least 1 minute into the video itself to know the company and device name. The YT video title on its own can't possibly 'kill someone's nascent project' or 'cause harm' on its own.
It's not clickbait. It is the worse product ever reviewed at that price point because it solves nothing. For now.
You cannot just slap together a bunch of tech for no reason and then price it like Apple and pretend you're Apple. The fact that they received $240 million funding needs to be investigated in itself. Such terrible VCs need to be publicly humiliated.
I do wonder what would have happened if Humane would have launched the product as an invitation-only beta with a different pricing-scheme.
The hardware is good enough to test it. Power-consumption, projector and voice-cloud-voice latency is too high.
But that's probably all forgivable if it's a "public beta" with the clear statement that this is not a final mass-product...
I think reviews would have been much better (for the SAME product), with a "curious how it evolves!" verdict cutting Humane some slack for walking new grounds...
Overall it might have been the hubris of Humane to "end Apple" which harmed them more than anything else
Humane has raised $230 million dollars in funding. It was obvious from their rushed launch and last minute pivot to "AI" that this was a desperate attempt to cash out. A product operating in a niche category with a small but dedicated userbase is useless for a VC who is looking to 10x their initial investment. They'd much rather risk it all for explosive growth.
That’s an interesting thought, I think it certainly would’ve helped if they took a more “we build it as we go if you believe in the vision” approach. Reminds me of tesla and it’s approach, though that’s a pretty polarizing example.
It feels like some folks have a sense of entitlement for customers and success and for some reason they project it on companies they like. Maybe they feel like someone from the pack was attacked?
If you're in it for the mindless entrepreneur mindset and vc-backed openai-api wrapping bullshit, your pack definitely got attacked by MKBHD. Folks assumed that everything associated with AI will turn into gold.
Yeah, I don't see the point of the drama except for the amount of interaction this exchange got in Elon's bot swamp. If anything it seems more like the other dude was gunning for attention by taking a ludicrous position and backfilling arguments for it.
One thing I love is that Twitter has made logged out accounts so useless, when I clicked on his profile it was just random tweets and I saw nothing about his course.
Twitter doing a great job at promoting its paying users. Ridiculous.
Because he's like the 1000's of other "growth hacking" scam artists who's selling courses about his own company that sells courses, and tweeting about building a twitter audience. It's completely ridiculous circular nonsense.
Take advice from people who actually made a company and actually built stuff that served users, not people who sell courses about selling courses or whatever, or making a splash about making a splash. I don't care he claims he was an engineer at some point, that's basic stuff.
Speak for yourself. I read someone tweeting stuff like that, and the last thing I want is to find out more about them or pay any attention to other things they have to say.
The problem is nobody is saying the product is good. I remember when the iPhone was launched. Many people hated it but there were also millions who loved it.
If your product has only haters, then ya, your product sucks.
The CEO also has a strange, what comes off as egotistical "I worked at Apple" vibe which is very off-putting. Maybe he didn't listen to feedback etc to make the product better?
Also who funds these things. 240 million dollars in funding. This should have been a Kickstarter.
I'm probably breaking HN etiquette here because this is only barely related but your comment reminded me of the time that Gayle King asked Ron Johnson, who had taken over as CEO at JCPenney after building the Apple retail store network, if he was wearing JCPenney clothes. He was not.
It really made an impression on me how mundane and basic so much of leadership is, and on how a thing like that could quickly undermine so experienced a leader. If you lead a store selling clothes ... you should really wear those clothes. I'm sure at Apple he used an iPhone, but it didn't carry over. Anyway, here I am 12 years later dunking on the guy, but he did build one of the most profitable retail businesses ever.
I read some old reviews of the iPhone recently and they seemed mostly positive but with some minor gripes about the software and bits that were not as good as existing smartphones. All small stuff that could be fixed up.
The problem with this AI pin is that the entire concept seems bad and unfixable. Their whole product is just “your phone, but the only interface is Siri”. For one, you can already do exactly that with a smart watch or phone.
That this could happen is one of the most underrated aspects of the original iPhone.
In June 2007, the iPhone launched without a way to buy music on the phone and download it yourself, without copy and paste, and without a way to install any Apps. The app story was this little shit sandwich that Steve Jobs sold as a sweet solution called web apps announced earlier in the month (Web 2.0 and AJAX! No SDK!).
By the end of the first model’s life, it had the full iTunes Store, it had the App Store full of native apps, and it had cut, copy and paste. Any other phone that launched in 2007 did not see this level of improvement just through software updates in 2008 or 2009.
Was there ever any doubt the product was… frivolous. It was a last minute Hail Mary from a startup and the end of its rope. God bless them for trying, but there should be no surprise here.
The only argument against MKBHD could be the YouTube title he chose. But if a "company" with many hundreds of people can't handle a title and goes under, it never deserved to exist.
By the time MKBHD is dunking on your product, your company has already made a significant number of errors along the way. Enough to sink you if you’re still working in the proving grounds.
>The only argument against MKBHD could be the YouTube title he chose.
I clicked through to that Vassallo guy's twitter and that is exactly the argument he is making. He isn't defending the product, which he admitted he has never actually used. He isn't defending the company. He isn't even arguing against a single thing said in the body of the video. He is solely objecting to the title for being "sensationalized" as if it is impossible this product is the worst one MKBHD has ever reviewed. It is fundamentally, to use Vassallo's own words, a "distasteful, almost unethical" argument to make because it is attacking someone's character rather than a product that seemingly everyone agrees is at best half-baked.
That's a pretty bizarre take on Vassallo's part. I have no idea what kind of ethics he's thinking of. Or whose character is being attacked.
And even wilder to me was this bit: "If a single person can affect the stock price of a company, we usually restrict what they can say or when. MK should be cognizant of the unconstrained power he has (for now)."
That's just wildly untrue. For example, John Carreyrou absolutely destroyed Theranos. Nobody restricts what he says in the sense Vassallo appears to mean here. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal is successful as a business precisely because their journalists see getting the truth to their readers as core to their jobs.
Clickbait titles are part of the medium of YouTube and any regular user will recognize it as such. And frankly, having watched the review, I can easily believe this is literally the worst product he’s ever reviewed; it’s a product that costs as much as a smartphone that does a tiny subset of what any smartphone already does, extremely poorly.
But let’s talk about the clickbait. The full title of the video is, “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now”. If it was just “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed”, that would be a perfectly fair summary—maybe a little clickbaity, though it doesn’t seem like MKBHD’s style to go on a rant and completely tear a product apart for the amusement of the audience, and that’s not what he does in the video, either. The “…For Now” vaguely implies that maybe, somehow, in the future, it will improve to the point where it is no longer quite so terrible, and there is some sort of hidden nuance to the otherwise strident tone of the first part of the title, that maybe there is some hope of the product one day, in the future, having some redeeming quality perhaps delivered via OTA update. You don’t know! It’s a mystery! And that mystery—the hope that maybe this piece of junk isn’t totally pointless after all—that’s the clickbait. You want to know what he means by “for now”! The most sensational, clickbaity part of the video title isn’t the negative part, but instead the part that implies the product might be of any value!
Ikr? I'm more inclined to agree with this ellipsized note in the fine article:
> Actually, the deference Brownlee gave the vision and the potential of future upgrades was arguably generous
But of course, pointing that out would be a red herring, because I don't believe the original tweet was made in good faith in the first place. Vassallo sounds like the sort who would be satisfied only if nobody is allowed to criticize something he likes (and ideally if at some point you click through and pay money for his… Influencer newsletter? Idfk).
I watched the review and then saw the tweet (or a response to it) later in the day.
The main takeaway I had was "who the hell is this guy telling Marques what he can or cannot think about this product?"
The video was not a bait-and-switch. He was generous with criticism but fair in describing how it was supposed to work and what he wanted from it. So for this random Tweeter to suggest that Marques was being either dishonest in his "unofficial mental ranking (the worst)" or should have been dishonest in minimizing his critique is so patronizing and itself dishonest.
MKBHD has a finite and countable number of reviews. One of them has to be the worst. Even if this wasn't the worst product he ever reviewed, so what? He wasn't saying it's the worst product in the history of products, or that it ran over his dog and spread lies about his sister.
"The worst product I ever reviewed", even for MKBHD, is drawing from a pretty small set. Big deal, Humane. Take your lumps, fix the criticisms, and move on.
Sorry but that’s bs. The title of the video is “The worst product I’ve ever reviewed… for now”.
That is not a personal attack on someone’s character. And it leaves the door open for the product to improve in the future, which he also suggests in the video.
The worst you can say is that it’s clickbait-y but mkbhd doesn’t usually use such extreme titles.
I think you misread. slg was saying that that the Twitter user was attacking MKBHD's character, not that MKBHD was somehow attacking the product's character.
Vassallo: It’s distasteful (and maybe unethical) to use a sensational title like that when you know millions of people will only see the headline and never watch the full review.
Yeah, that's what I personally got on my second reading of your comment. Though I did skim the first time.
The transition from explaining Vassallo's argument to explaining the problem with Vassallo's argument is a bit abrupt. It's not immediately clear whether you're referring to Vassallo or MKBHD at that point.
I think maybe a line break around "It is fundamentally", or switching the pronoun to a proper noun, might help it parse better. Overall I liked the way you worded it.
I think also part of what makes it so bad is the mismatch between expectations, price, marketing, and reality. If you bought a pair of $10 headphones from ebay and they suck, it's not shocking.
But when you have a $700 device, with hundreds of millions in funding, and a ton of marketing about it being the smartphone killer and the future of computing, yet the device is total junk, that makes it worse in a way than other junk marketed as junk.
If you filter through his videos, there are plenty of reviews of stuff that he rips that aren't Apple products. Even his review of the Cyber Truck was brutal. And there very clearly are reviews of emerging products they rip like the crypto phone.
I don't think that means he isn't careful about what he reviews - just that his selection criteria is not "I expect this to be good". Rather it's, if I had to guess, "this is part of or illustrates an interesting story in the world of technology."
> But as many videos as I've made about products, there are way more products out there in the world that exist. So the process of selecting which products to even review in the first place is like an art form to itself. Most products are just, meh, they're fine. Like they exist, they get made, they're fine, whatever. So they have to reach a certain level of interest or being really good to even be considered for review. Or sometimes really, really bad.
"The worst product he has ever reviewed.. for now" is an apt title though. If you create a useless product for 700 plus a subscription, for now it is a terrible product and that's what the title said.
MKBHD's review made me build a prototype mobile app with neck band / chest mount. Hope I have a usable prototype for friends and family in another 2 months .
Journalists (and I'd argue that MKBHD falls under that even) definitely have responsibility in their reporting.
Apart from the hypocratic oath, there are also the 4 pillars of journalism, one of which is "minimize harm". Bringing that one up feels like a recent trend whenever people see legitimate criticism that they can't really argue with, and it's an easy one to bring up as in every truthful reporting about people that have being lying there is at least the lier being "harmed".
Having actually watched the video which seems to be rare in this debate there was really nothing bad or misleading about the content. He genuinely reviews the product and shows it working without any editing or magic. It's an exploratory product that just doesn't work that well and as others have said if it had redeeming aspects surely the fanboys would be jumping to the product's defence. The people criticising MKBHD seem to be upset he would not blindly support the company rather than providing anything good about the product. New products get dragged all the time, it's part of launching in the modern world but it's up to the business to prove them wrong.
100% spot on. What I gathered from the review was that the tech itself is really cool but usability was bad (faster to pull out your phone, take a pic and google it vs the image recognition, battery life of 2-4 hrs, etc.) I also found the reviewers tone to be very mild, it's definitely not outrage-driven.
I also applaud the efforts of the aipin folk to try to build something new. They probably raised too much for it to be true but maybe if they fixed the fatal UX flaws they could regain some momentum.
Altogether it's just a bit puzzling why this whole outrage has manifested itself
I look at the company Humane which has raised $230 million and I think, maybe some of the people who say we’re in a bubble have a point.
I have a ChatGPT pro subscription, I do machine learning professionally, and I am pretty bullish on the long term benefits of automating a lot of things we waste our time on now. But that is a lot of money for a company which doesn’t seem to deserve it. VCs should be putting money into AI research to build the next DeepMind.
It's just a very new market we're all figuring out and more than ever it is hard to understand what lies ahead. I think we barely know what we have for right now. It's understandable this sort of obviously stupid products getting money, just like how a lot of world changing inventions seemed utterly nonsensical at the time of its first development.
This thing is obviously not that though. but that's just my two cents.
I follow @dvassallo for a long time. Everything start making sense once you realize that he his using his twitter as a way to funnel customers to his other ventures.
I love a lot of his takes because they make me think but it is clear that he is trying to find some edgy takes that will make people react.
Curious article. But I wonder if the problem lies elsewhere. The tweet caught my attention.
The author seems to be using outrage and dramatic words to get engagement. Based on this article and the views the tweet got, it looks like it is working.
The curious thing is that there is a reply from MKBHD in the thread and the tweet author highlights how MKBHD used a more dramatic title on Youtube and that is the authors gripe.
It it possible that all the only way to get engagement(the author is doing the same thing on his primary social media channel i.e. Twitter and MKBHD on his i.e. Youtube) now a days on your primary social media platform is with dramatic words/titles? Which is what is causing all this friction?
The key conclusion of this article lies in the last section, "AI and the Sovereign Individual," which argues that AI will significantly expand the power of certain individuals in many other industries, similarly to how the internet enabled figures like MKBHD to extend their reach and influence in the media.
Interestingly, none of the top 10 top-level comments in this thread discuss this point.
Ah, finally, someone talking about the crux of the article! Everyone talks about AI up-leveling everyone's skills, and I'm honestly excited to see more MKBHDs. Just read another article about how AI is "only sorta useful" but what's it's "sorta useful" at is accelerating your learning curve with just about everything! Since it up-levels every rookie and amateur, I can't wait to see what unfolds from here
You don’t even need to watch the review to deduce that the AI pin is an inherently flawed product for what it is trying to do; Which is to be the start of new a mobile computing paradigm. The problem with that plan is that we spent decades integrating cell phones into our lives, is there any real appetite to change that after putting in so much work?
Smartphones have become this immovable rock which our lives revolve around. I love that hu.ma.ne, the rabbit R1, or any other brand like them are trying to challenge the status quo, and I wish they can achieve some kind of success quickly; I say quickly because Apple will one day knock on the AI door, and when they do they will most likely slay the competition like they’ve done time and time again with Tablets, Watches, Wireless headphones, professional computing, smartphones, and the slew digital services that power them.
Vassallo fundamentally sees MKBHD as "punching down", whereas I think the general consensus, and why this is controversial at all, is that MKBHD was not "punching up".
I've watched his videos for many years. I can't imagine him doing a video like this for Pinephone, or another smaller company. But a company founded by 2 ex-Apple execs, with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and the sort of marketing Humane have come out with... that's a fair target.
> I can't imagine him doing a video like this for Pinephone
Especially because they set realistic expectations - last time I saw their Pinebook product page it basically said "if you expect no dead pixels and a perfectly smooth experience please don't order this". They make it clear what their target audience is and aren't even trying to do the shiny Apple-style marketing seen from Humane.
This AI pin's marketing set high expectations and the review should take that into account.
I found the article long winded and a bit unfocused.
But what appears to be one of the main points is that stratechery and MKBHD are both successful because they speak the truth, and they can speak the truth because they are online.
I quite disagree. MKBHD is more dependent on corporate sponsorship than reviewers were back when consumers had to buy a magazine in order to get access to a review.
I agree. There is zero upside in Marques and his crew lying about a product for backchannel sponsorship dollars; only downside. Make bad products, get bad reviews. I especially love how he obliterated Fisker for putting out an incomplete product (Fisker Ocean) at Model Y prices.
although things changed afterwards because of the product quality improved for the money. yet nobody batted an eye back then and Beats only grew bigger.
while i personally think that he has always been soft towards the apple ecosystem, he has been consistent and reviewed things as he would like them.
this entire debate could be summed to him giving his opinion and should be removed from his success.
Aside from the tweet controversy, I think the article has a point.
It is true that AI is providing even more leverage than the other tech layers before it. Probably the same for VR, if it gets adoption. However, the question is :
Will this leverage be concentrated to the point that a few will have control and everyone else will happily comply and execute ?
Or is it the other way around, allowing everyone more freedom and power to create and grow independent wealth, companies or ideas ?
I would love to think the latter but the experience since the dawn of the technology is more the former.
How could we ensure that we are on the path toward 7 billion companies more than the one toward even a fewer number of big companies that control the last layer of tech ?
This is a bizarre article, and feels like an example of that weird phenomenon where tech people believe they've discovered something new and noteworthy, but in reality they are just so deep into their bubble they are out of touch.
MKBHD is a tech critic / reviewer / nerd, like Ebert was a movie critic / reviewer / nerd, or Kermode is now. A thing got released, and he's talking about it, and his opinion is his value.
> Vassallo is touching on something profound about Brownlee, that I myself understand intimately: what the Internet has made uniquely possible is total loyalty to your customers, and that is threatening.
What? Threatening to what? Your ability to hoodwink people? Is the implication that because we're all in tech we should make sure to say everything's awesome all the time as some form of truth collusion, so that when we end up releasing our shitty product hopefully everyone will say nice things too?
> MKBHD is not the market. He significantly influences the market. If a single person can affect the stock price of a company, we usually restrict what they can say or when.
I’d agree with that sentiment if mkbhd was spreading misinformation; to my knowledge, he isn’t, his influencing is based on good reporting. I see nothing wrong with that.
It’s never irresponsible to tell the public the truth. One might even argue that it’s irresponsible to suggest that people get in the habit of self-censorship simply because they have an audience.
There are reviewers I stopped following, because it became obvious they were just reading whatever a company’s PR team sent them. They never had anything critical to say, it was a paid spokesmodel position. There is no value in that.
The one thing any reviewer has is their credibility. Without that, they have nothing. MKBHD retained his credibility here, and no one should fault him for that. If he compromised on that, why would anyone follow him? His alliance should be to his viewers, doing right by them, not the companies. It’s up to the companies to make a good product that someone like Marques can confidently recommend and say good things about.
So many people think people should change once they have a large platform, but they got that platform because of who they are, why would they change?
Not everyone is part of the same herd. The author could have done a good job at spending two words expanding this acronym and who's behind it. It is referred prominently in the title, and then assumes you know who Brownlee is, as he is mentioned with his last name.
A person that never heard of him would not be able to equate MKBHD with the name Brownlee.
Many are negative but clickbait is rampant on youtube. There's a habit of exaggeration to get views to make money. It is a predator-prey bloodbath where the audience is prey.
Products are reviewed based on their current capabilities, not their future potential. Having watched the review video, I don't think any of the points he brought up were unreasonable. It's not expecting perfection, it's just explaining what state the product is in.
While a different caliber of a device, it does remind me of Apple Vision Pro, which is also carving out a new device category. In its case many reviewers were more receptive to the potential it promises, rather than just a set of provided features.
I don’t think the pin is a good product to buy right now. At the same time I believe that in 5 years that style of UI will be more prevalent than whatever AVP tries to push.
> This product is building a NEW CATEGORY, of course it is not going to be perfect on first itteration.
Oh man you're right. It's a NEW CATEGORY which means the product deserves softball reviews if not just thinly veiled advertisements. Since it's a NEW CATEGORY everyone should buy maybe two or three of them, you know since it's a NEW CATEGORY. We want to support NEW CATEGORIES because reasons.
A bad product isn’t going to build a new category. Windows tablets had a 20 year history in one form or another before the iPad walked in and put tablets on the map.
If there’s a new product category to be had here, Humane aren’t the ones building it right now.
I honestly watch almost all his videos but I was kind of surprised on how he handled the Humane AI pin. He basically shit on it for not being perfect. Remember, this is a product in a NEW CATEGORY. Of course it is not going to be perfect. But saying it is the WORST PRODUCT EVAH, is really shitty and way in the clouds (not down to earth).
Anyway, I will continue to watch his videos because they are informative and entertaining. Of course I will decide for myself on what I buy and why, because I have a brain and my own agency AND can assess things using my own logic and values.
And please don't tell me you don't notice how a sweetheart he is to Apple and Tesla...
> Remember, this is a product in a NEW CATEGORY. Of course it is not going to be perfect.
Okay. We're tech-people here so let's be straight. Software can be improved upon even after purchase. If the company gains sufficient momentum they could address some issues and make it better.
But the AI pin is a product which depends on:
#1 A projector which consumes too much power yet is too weak to be visible in daylight
#2 A voice-cloud-voice roundtrip which is not fast enough to feel instant, especially because there's no display to entertain the user while waiting.
Apart from anything else, these human interface issues cannot be fixed after purchase.
So cutting as much slack for them as I can, my verdict is still "don't buy"
A disruptive product doesn't have to be jack of all trades, it usually excels in 1-2 areas while being weak in others.
--> in which area will the AI pin be able to excel?
I find it hard to trust any of these reviewers. You can't become a popular reviewer without having massive conflicts of interests. I could never understand why MKBHD was a thing, for example.
He is a thing because he is not afraid to say that a $700 pin that's less convenient and clunkier than the phone in your hand is a waste of your money, for example.
"Why is he a thing"... Does people have to justify their existence to operate?
If "I can’t think of anyone to whom I’d recommend spending the $699 for the device and the $24 monthly subscription" is a 4/10, I would hate to see the chaos that a Verge 1/10 would wreak across society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WGFAfirMO4
Classic example of why "Person On Twitter Is Angry" being considered newsworthy, or even faintly noteworthy, is one the worst things that has happened to modern discourse.
I don't read Twitter, because I do not care of its drama, but the author did its best to spread it and stoke the fires thanks to their blog.
Thanks to the character limit (no longer technical, but still cultural) and the algorithmic feeds, the "discourse" on Twitter is entirely synthetic. In real life, the equivalent would be like if somebody were to interrupt you every five seconds, then take the various sentence fragments you managed to get out in between, and stitched that together with random other sentence fragments from hundreds of strangers in a grotesque attempt to manufacture a coherent interaction. Oh, and everybody's screaming all the time, all at once, of course, and the messages you try to say about the Blottinghamville Games Club keep being sent to members of Bunny Murderers for National Unity, and vice versa… All while the giant blue bird-thing keeps trying to tell you about its sponsors.
And yet, this mutilation of human thought and conversation itself is presented as if it's just a venue for normal discussions. It's not; The "interactions" on Twitter are interrupted, chopped up, and stitched together. I think it preys, basically on our social instincts, on the desire to assume good faith and perceive an organic conversation happening because it tries really hard to make that seem like the case.
Especially given that I'm not sure there's really any comparable dynamic that's ever existed before in all of human history, I don't know how useful it is to blame individuals for falling for that. Twitter monetized a random message and amplified it as if it's important, so the author of the linked article responded, because that's what you do if you assume good faith when somebody else presents something as important… Though at this point we should probably know better.
There's clickbait and there's the plain and simple truth.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-built-this-with-...
This is one of the most pointless products out there that is being marketed with the confidence based on I don't know what.
If Apple gave this demo, they would have received the same backlash.
But yes, the focus should always be primarily on solving problems better than the competition and communicating this clearly to potential buyers.
Is this a well-known meme? or just the general vibe of the Apple Store, calling the employees "geniuses", etc
Theranos' Holmes also successfully copied the plain black turtleneck part.
VCs got bamboozled into this whole unicorn hunt during the big SaaS boom (when everything was the Uber of some sector), but the low hanging fruits are mostly gone.
But it's their (mostly the limited partners') money, and there's usually enough fools to offload stuff so that even the clueless funds survive a decade.
MKBHD posts a fair and thorough review of a shitty product, which is exactly in line with what every other reviewer has said about it as well.
One guy tweets about how he wasn't fair, and how he has a responsibility to not write bad things about companies because of the size of his viewer base (wut??)
Now the entire internet feels the need to come defend MKBHD, thus amplifying the other side even more.
The only person who won here is Daniel Vassallo, whose low effort post went viral because people kept sharing it to show how stupid it was, thus drawing more eyeballs to his $400 "I will teach you how to be a successful entrepreneur" course on X (because of course he has one).
Just a voice in support of Daniel here as this is a bit of a mischaracterisation.
He’s a really nice, gentle guy, who runs a small online community called Small Bets which I would characterise as the opposite of a “I will teach you to be rich” course. (I’m a satisfied paid member).
I don’t have an opinion on his tweet but both he and MKBHD are equally entitled to share their (strong) opinions on things.
It's not a "get rich quick" scheme by any stretch of imagination, because they teach how to grow your wealth slowly over time, in opposition to those who prefer to invest in uncertain stocks or go to a VC-backed startup.
Btw, kinda on-topic: did you notice this discussion yesterday?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40051597
I don't see a button to reply to your comment below, but I'd suggest going to smallbets.com to actually see what this is all about, instead of random guesses about gambling.
Also, calling someone a "simp" is a sign of immaturity, just so you know.
Btw, ever heard of the duck test?
> If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
You sound like the guy standing next to the street hustler telling you about how he actually got paid.
Think before you make public accusations.
MKBHD posted an IMO unnecessarily clickbaity title to his review. I watched the review and thought that he was mostly on the ball except for the once again exaggeration that it's the worst product ever (for the views). In a way, it seems that the recent scathing review for Fisker and the views generated might have gone to his head somewhat.
Given that the Rabbit R1 is coming out soon (which he will likely review), I am curious to see if his reviews becomes a pattern of rage farming.
It is just completely and utterly useless for its intended purpose with no redeeming qualities in use whatsoever. The title is clickbaity, but you get the same conclusion from watching the video and seeing the product in action. Other review sites seem to agree.
You can argue that this indeed means that the company will sell fewer of this generation of product, which might make them unable to develop the next generation... But giving a favorable review to make people buy 700 USD paperweights in order to sponsor development would be deceit and wrong.
Some ideas look good on paper and are interesting to make, but fail catastrophically when confronted with real users. Nothing new about it.
Of the products he’s reviewed (it’s the worst product he reviewed he said), how many others are even half as expensive as the Pin? And what percentage of them almost completely fail to achieve their intended purpose?
I’d bet the answer is indeed none other than the Pin.
Glad you pointed it out and his crappy course.
You’d just be wrong. Because the title isn’t clickbait at all. It’s accurate.
If anything, most other media writers have correctly been even more harsh on it.
If you wanted to give Humane a ridiculous amount of leeway you could argue it’s a good concept but in Beta form but that’s not how they’re selling it to the general consumer. They’re charging them $700 and telling them it’s a consumer ready product.
By that standard it’s absolutely failed and if anything, the title could be far harsher.
I have no idea about Humane’s product or whether MKBHD’s review is accurate.
I’m simply making the point that “The worst product I’ve reviewed… For Now” is a bit clickbaity.
Ie it is specifically worded in a way that encourages clicks.
I'm sure there are some definitions of clickbait that don't require that, but at least colloquially with people I talk to, it's assumed that clickbait necessarily engages in deceptive behavior where the content is not aligned with the title / thumbnail.
In this case, it's certainly designed to draw attention and get a viewer to click, but it's also the thesis of the video. He literally considers it to be the worst product he's ever reviewed, and thinks that they may iterate on it to improve the functionality in the future.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait
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.
(The actual review is good though.)
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
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.
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 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.
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.
Genuine question: Are there?
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.
That's your candidate for "worst ever"?
$$$$$$$$'s in the thumbnail
Youtube sad face thumbnail - youtube open mouth face thumbnail has been retired by the pro level influencers.
All classic youtube algorithm optimisation for clicks tricks - aka clickbait.
I don't even care that it is clickbait. that's the game every YouTuber is playing. but, it is unashamed, by the book, clickbait.
He clearly says in the review that it’s the worst product he’s reviewed. So what other possible title could he have chosen?
If your objection is that it’s an interesting title that many people will click on … there’s nothing wrong with that. This is a guy with 15 years experience reviewing products, of course I want to know what he thinks is the worst. That isn’t clickbait though!
Heck if anything not putting the company and product name in the title actually helps them in this case.
Clickbait does not mean bad. It does not mean I don't like it. It doesn't mean evil. It means it is bait designed to make you click.
And clearly, if you look around you, it's working.
One definition (maybe close to what your definition might be) is "a title written with the intent of getting people to click on it".
I think the other definition that many people hold would be something like: "a *misleading* title with the intent of getting people to click on it".
So, if someone thinks of clickbait as requiring some element of deception, misdirection, or other very mild fraud, then this wouldn't fit that category. I think that's why people are talking past each other a bit.
For the YouTube video in question, I guess it hinges on whether you recognize the device in the thumbnail you're looking at. If you do, then the title is giving away the lede and letting you have the takeaway if that's all you're looking for. If not, then you could argue that leaving out the product's name is clickbait-y.
So he's claiming that the title is in effect anti-clickbait. That by itself, regardless of the video content or whether or not people watch the video even, it could potentially cause harm to the product. I mean, he's not entirely wrong. It wouldn't be unsurprising if more people saw the title, and said to themselves, "Well, that sounds like a shit product, no need to even waste time watching the video," than actually watched the video.
There are Channels I subscribe to, that do not use titles like those too much. You can find examples from those channels that are clickbait from my perspective, but that is a general feeling I have.
I would also say that for complex stuff covered by a video you can't give a simple purely descriptive title and then my Clickbait detector allows some leeway. Just don't rely on terms, that almost automatically put a question in minds. Like: weird (weird, how?), the worst/best product (which product? - is it something I know of?).
> I find it distasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers.
> Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else’s nascent project reeks of carelessness.
> First, do no harm.
It's pretty clear they're not referring to JUST the headline/title of the YT video.
It doesn't mention Humane or the AI Pin, there's also no brand logo in the thumbnail. Just a pic of the device itself. If you had no foreknowledge of the video or device itself, or what he was talking about, you'd have to watch at least 1 minute into the video itself to know the company and device name. The YT video title on its own can't possibly 'kill someone's nascent project' or 'cause harm' on its own.
You cannot just slap together a bunch of tech for no reason and then price it like Apple and pretend you're Apple. The fact that they received $240 million funding needs to be investigated in itself. Such terrible VCs need to be publicly humiliated.
But that's probably all forgivable if it's a "public beta" with the clear statement that this is not a final mass-product...
I think reviews would have been much better (for the SAME product), with a "curious how it evolves!" verdict cutting Humane some slack for walking new grounds...
Overall it might have been the hubris of Humane to "end Apple" which harmed them more than anything else
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QztFpzKsdeA
It's clearly addressing this controversy.
Marques Brownlee ended his monologue with this pithy remark:
“My reviews just accelerate whatever was already going on.” :D
Twitter doing a great job at promoting its paying users. Ridiculous.
Ie. people shouldn't boost this.
On what specific basis?
Take advice from people who actually made a company and actually built stuff that served users, not people who sell courses about selling courses or whatever, or making a splash about making a splash. I don't care he claims he was an engineer at some point, that's basic stuff.
If your product has only haters, then ya, your product sucks.
The CEO also has a strange, what comes off as egotistical "I worked at Apple" vibe which is very off-putting. Maybe he didn't listen to feedback etc to make the product better?
Also who funds these things. 240 million dollars in funding. This should have been a Kickstarter.
https://youtu.be/VfZKntQZSbo?t=426
It really made an impression on me how mundane and basic so much of leadership is, and on how a thing like that could quickly undermine so experienced a leader. If you lead a store selling clothes ... you should really wear those clothes. I'm sure at Apple he used an iPhone, but it didn't carry over. Anyway, here I am 12 years later dunking on the guy, but he did build one of the most profitable retail businesses ever.
People were also begging Apple to make an iPhone for years before it was even announced. There were fan mockups.
Apple only made it when the engineering had caught up with the vision.
The problem with this AI pin is that the entire concept seems bad and unfixable. Their whole product is just “your phone, but the only interface is Siri”. For one, you can already do exactly that with a smart watch or phone.
That this could happen is one of the most underrated aspects of the original iPhone.
In June 2007, the iPhone launched without a way to buy music on the phone and download it yourself, without copy and paste, and without a way to install any Apps. The app story was this little shit sandwich that Steve Jobs sold as a sweet solution called web apps announced earlier in the month (Web 2.0 and AJAX! No SDK!).
By the end of the first model’s life, it had the full iTunes Store, it had the App Store full of native apps, and it had cut, copy and paste. Any other phone that launched in 2007 did not see this level of improvement just through software updates in 2008 or 2009.
The problem isn’t that a reviewer called it junk. The problem is the product is junk.
I clicked through to that Vassallo guy's twitter and that is exactly the argument he is making. He isn't defending the product, which he admitted he has never actually used. He isn't defending the company. He isn't even arguing against a single thing said in the body of the video. He is solely objecting to the title for being "sensationalized" as if it is impossible this product is the worst one MKBHD has ever reviewed. It is fundamentally, to use Vassallo's own words, a "distasteful, almost unethical" argument to make because it is attacking someone's character rather than a product that seemingly everyone agrees is at best half-baked.
And even wilder to me was this bit: "If a single person can affect the stock price of a company, we usually restrict what they can say or when. MK should be cognizant of the unconstrained power he has (for now)."
That's just wildly untrue. For example, John Carreyrou absolutely destroyed Theranos. Nobody restricts what he says in the sense Vassallo appears to mean here. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal is successful as a business precisely because their journalists see getting the truth to their readers as core to their jobs.
But let’s talk about the clickbait. The full title of the video is, “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now”. If it was just “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed”, that would be a perfectly fair summary—maybe a little clickbaity, though it doesn’t seem like MKBHD’s style to go on a rant and completely tear a product apart for the amusement of the audience, and that’s not what he does in the video, either. The “…For Now” vaguely implies that maybe, somehow, in the future, it will improve to the point where it is no longer quite so terrible, and there is some sort of hidden nuance to the otherwise strident tone of the first part of the title, that maybe there is some hope of the product one day, in the future, having some redeeming quality perhaps delivered via OTA update. You don’t know! It’s a mystery! And that mystery—the hope that maybe this piece of junk isn’t totally pointless after all—that’s the clickbait. You want to know what he means by “for now”! The most sensational, clickbaity part of the video title isn’t the negative part, but instead the part that implies the product might be of any value!
> Actually, the deference Brownlee gave the vision and the potential of future upgrades was arguably generous
But of course, pointing that out would be a red herring, because I don't believe the original tweet was made in good faith in the first place. Vassallo sounds like the sort who would be satisfied only if nobody is allowed to criticize something he likes (and ideally if at some point you click through and pay money for his… Influencer newsletter? Idfk).
The main takeaway I had was "who the hell is this guy telling Marques what he can or cannot think about this product?"
The video was not a bait-and-switch. He was generous with criticism but fair in describing how it was supposed to work and what he wanted from it. So for this random Tweeter to suggest that Marques was being either dishonest in his "unofficial mental ranking (the worst)" or should have been dishonest in minimizing his critique is so patronizing and itself dishonest.
"The worst product I ever reviewed", even for MKBHD, is drawing from a pretty small set. Big deal, Humane. Take your lumps, fix the criticisms, and move on.
He also a video about the worst car he reviewed recently, which somehow didn't get the same negative feedback.
That is not a personal attack on someone’s character. And it leaves the door open for the product to improve in the future, which he also suggests in the video.
The worst you can say is that it’s clickbait-y but mkbhd doesn’t usually use such extreme titles.
The twitter guy is saying mkbhd is attacking the creator of the product’s character.
MKBHD: This is "The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now".
Vassallo: It is "distasteful, almost unethical" to criticize a product like that.
Me: No, the way Vassallo challenged MKBHD's character is "distasteful, almost unethical".
If MKBHD’s title was Why you shouldn’t buy the pin, it would have been better.
But I accept this interpretation is subjective. That’s why I said “I find that…”
The transition from explaining Vassallo's argument to explaining the problem with Vassallo's argument is a bit abrupt. It's not immediately clear whether you're referring to Vassallo or MKBHD at that point.
I think maybe a line break around "It is fundamentally", or switching the pronoun to a proper noun, might help it parse better. Overall I liked the way you worded it.
99% of the junk that companies release he/his team simply won't waste time on.
So the title is probably true.
But when you have a $700 device, with hundreds of millions in funding, and a ton of marketing about it being the smartphone killer and the future of computing, yet the device is total junk, that makes it worse in a way than other junk marketed as junk.
The hardware is good enough to test it. Power-consumption, projector and voice-cloud-voice latency is too high.
But that's probably all forgivable if it's a "public beta" with the clear statement that this is not a final mass-product...
He is and he isn't. If he feels something is not worth it, he'll tell you.
Like the crypto phone: "This is a Crypto Phone. Don’t Buy It." with a photo of him face palming: https://youtu.be/hRSMJGs0YMg?si=_sD9MA7JLeDbI0f1
And who can forgot the famous "Escobar Folding Phone"? https://youtu.be/O8FJSjy3bXA?si=nfAe9tZniafBwDmc
And the follow up video when the company responded to his original video: "Escobar Responds! A PSA" https://youtu.be/Ns8ydpZ5-4o?si=3tppQYwiMbSVMfb7
If you filter through his videos, there are plenty of reviews of stuff that he rips that aren't Apple products. Even his review of the Cyber Truck was brutal. And there very clearly are reviews of emerging products they rip like the crypto phone.
> But as many videos as I've made about products, there are way more products out there in the world that exist. So the process of selecting which products to even review in the first place is like an art form to itself. Most products are just, meh, they're fine. Like they exist, they get made, they're fine, whatever. So they have to reach a certain level of interest or being really good to even be considered for review. Or sometimes really, really bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QztFpzKsdeA
> First, do no harm.
Brownlee's not a doctor. …He's not Spiderman, either, for the record, or at least that we know of.
And "Humane, Inc." isn't his patient, or even a person.
Yes, do not harm corporation. People that spend money on shitty product should be on their own.
Apart from the hypocratic oath, there are also the 4 pillars of journalism, one of which is "minimize harm". Bringing that one up feels like a recent trend whenever people see legitimate criticism that they can't really argue with, and it's an easy one to bring up as in every truthful reporting about people that have being lying there is at least the lier being "harmed".
Heh. "Hypocratic"… Appropriate.
I also applaud the efforts of the aipin folk to try to build something new. They probably raised too much for it to be true but maybe if they fixed the fatal UX flaws they could regain some momentum.
Altogether it's just a bit puzzling why this whole outrage has manifested itself
I have a ChatGPT pro subscription, I do machine learning professionally, and I am pretty bullish on the long term benefits of automating a lot of things we waste our time on now. But that is a lot of money for a company which doesn’t seem to deserve it. VCs should be putting money into AI research to build the next DeepMind.
This thing is obviously not that though. but that's just my two cents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QztFpzKsdeA
I love a lot of his takes because they make me think but it is clear that he is trying to find some edgy takes that will make people react.
The author seems to be using outrage and dramatic words to get engagement. Based on this article and the views the tweet got, it looks like it is working.
The curious thing is that there is a reply from MKBHD in the thread and the tweet author highlights how MKBHD used a more dramatic title on Youtube and that is the authors gripe.
It it possible that all the only way to get engagement(the author is doing the same thing on his primary social media channel i.e. Twitter and MKBHD on his i.e. Youtube) now a days on your primary social media platform is with dramatic words/titles? Which is what is causing all this friction?
Interestingly, none of the top 10 top-level comments in this thread discuss this point.
Smartphones have become this immovable rock which our lives revolve around. I love that hu.ma.ne, the rabbit R1, or any other brand like them are trying to challenge the status quo, and I wish they can achieve some kind of success quickly; I say quickly because Apple will one day knock on the AI door, and when they do they will most likely slay the competition like they’ve done time and time again with Tablets, Watches, Wireless headphones, professional computing, smartphones, and the slew digital services that power them.
I've watched his videos for many years. I can't imagine him doing a video like this for Pinephone, or another smaller company. But a company founded by 2 ex-Apple execs, with hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, and the sort of marketing Humane have come out with... that's a fair target.
Especially because they set realistic expectations - last time I saw their Pinebook product page it basically said "if you expect no dead pixels and a perfectly smooth experience please don't order this". They make it clear what their target audience is and aren't even trying to do the shiny Apple-style marketing seen from Humane.
This AI pin's marketing set high expectations and the review should take that into account.
But what appears to be one of the main points is that stratechery and MKBHD are both successful because they speak the truth, and they can speak the truth because they are online.
I quite disagree. MKBHD is more dependent on corporate sponsorship than reviewers were back when consumers had to buy a magazine in order to get access to a review.
And merch. He seems to have a thriving merch offering.
the OGs would know when Brownlee would openly criticize Beats headphones before they got acquired by Apple (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsxQxS0AdBY).
although things changed afterwards because of the product quality improved for the money. yet nobody batted an eye back then and Beats only grew bigger.
while i personally think that he has always been soft towards the apple ecosystem, he has been consistent and reviewed things as he would like them.
this entire debate could be summed to him giving his opinion and should be removed from his success.
It is true that AI is providing even more leverage than the other tech layers before it. Probably the same for VR, if it gets adoption. However, the question is :
Will this leverage be concentrated to the point that a few will have control and everyone else will happily comply and execute ?
Or is it the other way around, allowing everyone more freedom and power to create and grow independent wealth, companies or ideas ?
I would love to think the latter but the experience since the dawn of the technology is more the former.
How could we ensure that we are on the path toward 7 billion companies more than the one toward even a fewer number of big companies that control the last layer of tech ?
MKBHD is a tech critic / reviewer / nerd, like Ebert was a movie critic / reviewer / nerd, or Kermode is now. A thing got released, and he's talking about it, and his opinion is his value.
> Vassallo is touching on something profound about Brownlee, that I myself understand intimately: what the Internet has made uniquely possible is total loyalty to your customers, and that is threatening.
What? Threatening to what? Your ability to hoodwink people? Is the implication that because we're all in tech we should make sure to say everything's awesome all the time as some form of truth collusion, so that when we end up releasing our shitty product hopefully everyone will say nice things too?
Everything on the site is like that (I fell for it too) but it’s not obvious until you run across a topic where you are an expert. He blathers well.
I’d agree with that sentiment if mkbhd was spreading misinformation; to my knowledge, he isn’t, his influencing is based on good reporting. I see nothing wrong with that.
It’s never irresponsible to tell the public the truth. One might even argue that it’s irresponsible to suggest that people get in the habit of self-censorship simply because they have an audience.
The one thing any reviewer has is their credibility. Without that, they have nothing. MKBHD retained his credibility here, and no one should fault him for that. If he compromised on that, why would anyone follow him? His alliance should be to his viewers, doing right by them, not the companies. It’s up to the companies to make a good product that someone like Marques can confidently recommend and say good things about.
So many people think people should change once they have a large platform, but they got that platform because of who they are, why would they change?
They have a youtube channel: www.youtube.com/@mkbhd
Described as:
MKBHD: Quality Tech Videos | YouTuber | Geek | Consumer Electronics | Tech Head | Internet Personality!
A person that never heard of him would not be able to equate MKBHD with the name Brownlee.
Not everyone lives on social media like you or I.
Talk about glass roofs…
Also “glass roofs” isn’t a thing.
Frankly, I feel it did way more damage to him than what he did to Aipin or Fisker, which were already universally panned.
I don’t think the pin is a good product to buy right now. At the same time I believe that in 5 years that style of UI will be more prevalent than whatever AVP tries to push.
Oh man you're right. It's a NEW CATEGORY which means the product deserves softball reviews if not just thinly veiled advertisements. Since it's a NEW CATEGORY everyone should buy maybe two or three of them, you know since it's a NEW CATEGORY. We want to support NEW CATEGORIES because reasons.
You first.
If there’s a new product category to be had here, Humane aren’t the ones building it right now.
Anyway, I will continue to watch his videos because they are informative and entertaining. Of course I will decide for myself on what I buy and why, because I have a brain and my own agency AND can assess things using my own logic and values.
And please don't tell me you don't notice how a sweetheart he is to Apple and Tesla...
PEACE
People are going to point to this product as proof of the AI bubble even though anyone with a brain could see that this would fail from the start.
Okay. We're tech-people here so let's be straight. Software can be improved upon even after purchase. If the company gains sufficient momentum they could address some issues and make it better.
But the AI pin is a product which depends on:
#1 A projector which consumes too much power yet is too weak to be visible in daylight
#2 A voice-cloud-voice roundtrip which is not fast enough to feel instant, especially because there's no display to entertain the user while waiting.
Apart from anything else, these human interface issues cannot be fixed after purchase.
So cutting as much slack for them as I can, my verdict is still "don't buy"
A disruptive product doesn't have to be jack of all trades, it usually excels in 1-2 areas while being weak in others.
--> in which area will the AI pin be able to excel?
PEACE
"Why is he a thing"... Does people have to justify their existence to operate?