Reggie James launches Hardware book 2024: an artbook covering the new wave of physical computing

Millions. I can't wait till we can say trusted by billions. Trusted by trillions. Um, let me see. trusted by Martians. What else we got here? Do we have any others? Um Oh, we have our next guest already. Easy. Let's bring him in. You got There he is. Reggie. Reggie, how you doing?

Chief, uh we didn't we didn't have a title for you, so I put uh the CRO, the chief Reggie officer. So, it's we're we're maximizing free agency, boys. Free free agencies and trade season. I wouldn't be surprised if you get a maxed out offer before this in your inbox before this. 10. 5 billion's on the table now.

So, anything I had a I had an idea shortly before you you maybe you could build it. Septum piercing AI wearable health tracker. Anything there? Ship it. Ship it straight to the top. Ship it. An aura ring for your nose% doing it. That can also be a companion. Yeah. You're talking to it all day long.

It's like, you sure you want to have that? You know, uh, Diet Coke. Yeah. But scent is tied to memory. So imagine it just squirts the scent up in your nose. Maybe not. Maybe not. Squirts. It remembers. It emits It emits an aroma to remind you of your grand cooking. Aroma is better. An aroma. Yeah, aroma is built in.

This is a This is a trillion dollar idea here. Uh, what? Yeah, I mean device. They're making Apple or uh Johnny Ives over at OpenAI. Uh, we were kicking around what we think it might be. It feels like Sam Alman's been into her. Uh, so we're thinking single earpiece that you wear. Maybe it has a camera on it.

Um, that was kind of the best thing that I could come up with. Maybe glasses. It feels like they're probably not just going to do a phone or an iPad or a watch, something with a rectangular screen on it. It's going to be something a little bit different.

Um, take you off of your off of your phone, maybe curing dopamine addiction. Uh, what are you expecting? and then we can go into all of the different uh all the different uh aspects of the deal. Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I think you know, one thing that felt very clear is that they emphasized like a sort of like family of devices, right?

So I think already they're coming from a uh multiple objects approach which which I think is cool mostly because I I think where a lot of hardware companies sort of get stuck is they launch one thing and then everyone only knows them for that one thing and then they get stuck in the loop of that one thing. Right.

So like Whoop is 17. Yeah. Pebble Pebble be like invented the smartwatch in many ways and then Apple came out with the Apple Watch and it integrated with the phone and the iPad and stuff.

So yeah, I mean lack of ecosystem I mean and it's only getting stronger like now you can just on your MacBook Pro pull up iPhone mirroring and just use your phone on your computer and stuff and so the integration between the ecosystem Apple knows that that's a strength that it's like oh yeah you the new the new Android phone might have a better camera but are you willing to give up full integration with everything else you have?

like ripping out one device now is a $20,000 proposition for many people. It's not just it's not just $1,000. So, okay. Suite of devices. So, you think there will be a rectangular a black mirror? I I don't think there'll be a black mirror. I think there I think they're smart enough not to go head-to-head with the phone.

I do think, you know, maybe it starts with a puck that's tied to like productivity, right? So something that just tries to get you interacting with chat GBT faster.

So I can take it with me and it also sits on my desk when I'm working and it's just the fastest way to sort of like that was easy, you know, Staples style thing.

Um that you can the workflow when you're in conversation with a friend where I'm like, John, what was that company like a year ago that was doing this thing and you're like oh I kind of query you and you bring it back. What do you think about foldables?

It feels like I've seen some demos out of China where the tech is getting pretty solid. The hinges are getting smaller and smaller and you could imagine we know where you're going with this. You want a newspaper sizeable that you can make. Let's make a newspaper.

But but I mean seriously, you could imagine a situation where it's like really what I want is if I'm gonna be on I I I don't want to carry a laptop because then I need a backpack. I can't put an I can't put an iPad in my pocket, but I could put something that folds up into the phone format.

And then it's a bigger decision. It's like, am I just gonna do the earpiece for the little random chats with chat GPT? But then if I want to go full in and watch a movie, I have a device that can that can really really superpower. And it's like kind of counterpositioned against Apple a little bit.

We've heard rumors that Apple's maybe thinking about folding, but it seems like that's one of the technologies that you would be looking at. What's your take on foldables generally? Yeah, I I think foldables actually squarely land in like the Apple value system.

Um, you know, Apple really values the sort of like high definitionness of their rectangles, you know, and so I think if you're trying to compete on high definition of these rectangles, you're probably in a losing battle.

I think, you know, something I talk about a lot when it comes to hardware is like your values have to zag away from Apple as much as possible, right? So, like I think Avi Shiffman is a really good example of this.

Like Apple can't launch a puck that listens to you 24/7 because the conspiracy about Apple already and a lot of the tech giants that they listen to you 24/7. So, you can't do the literal thing, right? At least not for some time.

And so obby has a little bit of like narrative runway because that value is so separate from like the Apple ecosystem. So I think similarly like open AI and and you know my assumption is that Johnny's aware of it. You know they have to zag from a values perspective. Um what do you think their confidence level is? Right.

Like the most high-profile example lately is Humane, which is a talented team, maybe not as talented, but they did have, you know, the full backing of the SV hype machine in many ways.

A lot of a lot of investors were quick to point out that they weren't in it and that they thought it was silly, but it was like a moonshot new hardware attempt with a bunch of, you know, very talented people.

Do you think that that is in the back of their mind at all in terms of what projection specifically or no no just not even about not even about the form factor but just like hey this is actually like yeah it's cool to have billions of dollars in the world's best team but it's also Apple was started in a garage right something closer to A's environment right now where he's like that's true you know on a motorcycle like you know just like hair in the wind just like thinking about uh the next computing interface and it's also I feel like that the pressure to deliver value beyond on just companionship, right?

Like AI's edge is like I just want it to be your friend. I don't need it to be and yeah, maybe it can do other stuff over time, but anyways. Yeah.

So, so I think on the humane thing, you know, I got to know a bunch of folks over there and I I think my my main critique is that, you know, they were very like Catholic guiltridden about the iPhone.

like the entire animating spirit was like we feel we kind of feel guilty about the iPhone and now we have to present this alternative so that that's not the only road that we go down. Um I think unfortunately like they made a few sort of like key errors like I think the projection was sort of like a really key error.

I think they like backpedalled away from replacing the phone and then it was supposed to be just like part of like your broader ecosystem.

So I think um it's what's really clear already right is that they open AAI and Johnny are saying we don't want to replace the phone we want to be this third thing but we do want to live in your pocket right so it's like close close enough but far enough um and I think that you know what's funny is Sam you know backed Humane early and they had an open AI partnership and I think that um I don't know the full politics there but I would assume at some point, you know, Sam sort of maybe lost face and faith.

Sorry, not lost face, lost faith and then kind of turned to, okay, well, who were the other superstars at Apple? Cuz like, make no mistake, like Iron and folks on that team were like the superstars at Apple, right? It's just two different sides.

Like Iron was the HCI team and Johnny was the industrial design team, you know? So, um, yeah, I I think that's sort of, um, I think they're aware of those lessons. Um, but one thing we were talking about was in terms of building like a super high-erforming hardware device, consumer electronics team. Mhm.

Steve Jobs not only had Johnny IV, but he also had Tim Cook uh to build the supply chain. And building robust supply chains was difficult in the '9s and 2000s when Apple did it and it didn't exist in China. And now because of geopolitical considerations, it's also very difficult. It doesn't feel turnkey.

It feels like the turnkey era of consumer hardware was maybe the 2010s and now we are post that and there are lots of different considerations around tariffs and trade policy and geopolitical dynamics. Do you think that we would see someone like a Tim Cook go into open AI to get this off the ground?

Yeah, that's a good question. So, some things that I've been sort of like watching is that OpenAI already has like an internal hard team and they've had for quite some time. They have someone that's like head robotics.

They have I think they hired a woman recently that's head of like all hardware and so it's clear that they've been building up this uh capacity internally for quite some time.

And so I think you know the joint venture is definitely some form of appeal to authority right um with Johnny and the my personal hot take is I don't know how sensitive they are to actually shipping or at least shipping on the time that they you know stated you know like the hot take the extreme hot take would be right is like Sam needs another, you know, 200 billion.

He, you know, he goes to like Saudi Arabia with Johnny and Johnny puts on his like British accent and, you know, they don't have to even talk about the next model or like sure numbers, right? It's simply when's the device shipping and they could just say a number or like say a date and they can get the money, right?

Yeah, if you're building up the valuation, you're saying there's a 10% chance that we disrupt Google. That's a multi- trillion dollar business. So, you can value us at a multiple hundred millions. There's also a 10% chance that we disrupt Apple and that's a multi- trillion dollar business.

So, you discount the value and that's a couple hundred billion. And so, yeah, you kind of add and then that question doesn't matter. Exactly. You know, like then that supply chain question doesn't matter. When I have 200 billion in cash, it's like what supply chain, you know, buy Foxon. Buy Foxcon. Yeah. Foxy.

I I think Sam we manufacture Apple now. So manufacture Apple now. Uh I mean what what Yeah, we're going to bake we're going to bake the new model into into Yeah, I've seen I've seen some hot takes back and forth.

Uh Johnny O was obviously deeply loved and admired and kind of took the internet by storm with the conversation with Patrick Collison last week. Um at the same time a lot of people uh have said that uh a lot of the work that he did was iterative uh and not that revolutionary.

Um what is your take on the legacy of Johnny Iive uh you know he's he's in his 60s that's sometimes retirement age. I believe he's in his 60s I actually don't know but I mean at the same time Berkshire Hathaway just hired a 62-y old CEO and Warren Buffett worked into his 90s.

So uh what is your overall take on on on Johnny Iive's legacy and and where it goes from here? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think the early part of his legacy or like the Apple part of his legacy is like undeniable, right?

Like one one interesting thing to like in Johnny history is, you know, the first place he was working I believe like the design firm uh specialized in bathrooms.

And so when you understand that, you can actually understand like his obsession with smoothness, his obsession with like um sort of like knobs and dials and all of these things that we see that are kind of orthogonal to like computer hardware. Um as well as just like things that are unobtrusive, right?

And like brushed aluminum, like you kind of understand his design language when you know where he started. So then you get to Apple and he's had very started from the toilet. Yeah.

But, you know, in a in a lot of ways, like these devices sort of um they they blend in similar to like a a home object and they don't really stand out like what we understood consumer electronics to be. So, so then you start fast forwarding, you saying, okay, now he has like all the devices in play. What does he do?

My hot, one of my hot takes is that like he kind of gives technology a type of like body dysmorphia, right? Like all he cares about is thinness. He even when he gets control of the whole design team, that's when we get the pivot to flat design.

So he even takes like the interface level and makes it thin and flat and not too like fun. Wait, so was the was the camera who's responsible for the camera bump? Is that just to sell more cases? What's up with that?

I think the camera bump just became a tradeoff post Steve because again think we still have to understand like Apple the machine right when Steve was there really the only person you had to appeal to was Steve.

So there's like a very known thing around like Apple demo culture where like it's Steve in a room with a couple other people. You go in, you show it to him and he says yes or no. And if he says yes, it's in and there's no one else you're convincing.

My assumption is post Steve you're you're going through stakeholder management, right? So Johnny doesn't have like the number one authority anymore.

So he starts having to like wrestle with, you know, the camera team and he's wrestling with Tim and he's wrestling with manufacturing and he just doesn't get to win every battle anymore. That's my Yeah. Yeah. Seems like a good What do you think's going on with Apple Vision Pro? Have you used it?

It feels like it it's built on some of the design language that Johnny IV uh pioneered uh aluminium, I suppose, but uh at the same time uh not the thinnest VR headset. Uh Johnny left in 2019.

They've obviously been working on Apple Vision Pro for longer than that, but it feels like maybe the first Apple product that doesn't have his mark on it. Um, but overall, do you think that's going to get any better? Is there any salvage they can do? Have you used it? What's your reaction to just VR broadly?

Any of that stuff that you're thinking through? Yeah. So, I I have one. I used it. I was very curious. Um, it is really heavy. Yeah. I think they had the wrong guiding metaphor at the end of the day. They didn't have like a true creative direction um anchor.

And so they landed on we're going to put a floating iPad on your face and it's going to be somewhat antisocial, right? So everything that they show is widgets and air and then you sitting alone on your couch watching something in extreme high definition.

And that's fine, but as like a counter position, it's like what if their anchor was like the iPod, right?

And maybe their like hero product was actually something around Apple Music and it looked more like the dancing silhouettes that when you put this headset on your entire apartment actually turns into this beautiful colorcape and you are animated, right?

So they chose like a stagnant couch potato instead of you being animated. And we're seeing the same thing in Apple advertising when it comes to um the way they talk about Apple intelligence, right? It's like this kind of like slobby guy at his desk getting AI to write an email to his boss to slack off further.

So, we have this company that used to champion like you are going to be your best self with these products and now it's turning into creativity. Yeah. Put on the headset and slob out. Don't do your work. Get AI to tell your boss why you're going to be late. And it's just like it's like Steve's nightmare, you know?

It's funny. Yeah. I mean, what about what about glasses as a form factor? I I'm I'm bullish on glasses as a form factor and I think it's going to go a few different ways.

I do think like the meta ray bands like that form factor will continue to get better eventually like what it takes to put projections in those will be you know lightweight enough. You know I think the Orion I think was the project on Meta. You know I think obviously that's like too bulky.

Zuck looks silly but I think they're going to just get it thinner and get it thinner and like 10 years it'll be great. Maybe five.

Also, I mean, with the uh with the XR stuff and the AR stuff, like XRE and NRA Air, this company does glasses that it doesn't do all the crazy tracking, but it can pull up a visual in front of you just statically. And that solves like 90% of the use case for this.

If I'm on a plane and I'm just going to watch a movie, I think that that's going to get there first. And then you have to figure out, can we actually make it fully holographic? But if you just want a basic HUD, like a heads-up display, uh that's a lot more achievable.

No, none of the big tech companies have really said like we're going to settle for that. But I think that that might be a path along the road actually. Um but I haven't really played with it enough.

Um staying on Apple Vision Pro, I heard a rumor, I don't know how true this is, that uh the person, one of the one of the key people at Apple in charge of it was an ex Dolby engineer who was all about the Dolby cinema theater. And I and and I thought that like that was the killer app. Doli's great. I love the movies.

The soundboard just so hard. But but um like I tried wrong creative anchor. Yeah. Yeah. But I I tried the dinosaur experience. It was like two minutes. I'm like I'm not going to game on this thing. I'm not really going to work on this thing. I'm not going to work on this thing.

But I did watch I watched all of Citizen Canain actually in in Vision Pro and it was amazing and it was like being in a theater and it was fantastic. And I almost think that they should have gone narrower and maybe the iPod is the right thing.

Like the iPod when you put in the headphones it is isolating but the campaign around that was you dancing around in silhouette is beautiful and there is something about like restoring this idea of going to the movies but I agree with you that the ads were super dystopian.

There's that one where he that the the guy is clearly a dad and he's watching a video of his kids and it looks like he's divorced and like his kids super depressing but giving blood on the track Bob Dylan divorced.

It was very rough but but what is your take on this idea of like Apple narrowing the focus of of vision to we have one killer use case because they're they're kind of the everything company. The the iPhone will call you an Uber, does your email, does phone everything.

Um, you know, the original iPhone keynote was it just does three things and and then it grew out from there. Do they even have the culture to refocus around one value prop? I always thought like they have Apple TV. They never made a real TV.

They could have just positioned this as like this is the best way to watch Apple TV and it's just an Apple TV machine and then it has some other stuff and yeah, we'll have an app store but really but what what do you think about that culturally at Apple and just in terms of like if you were running the place, what would you do?

Yeah. Yeah. It's a that's a great question. You know, I think um it's it's so hard to understand why certain things in your own history worked out the way that they did, right?

I think we are so anchored on like you said the iPhone being this giant enablement to not only Apple but a lot of I mean how much of the valley is built on just like mobile apps that did a thing, right? And that's because if you're Uber, you know, you have GPS and now like you can actually do all these things, right?

So I I think Apple wanted to be hyper enablement ready again.

you know, they wanted developers to really build things on this and I just, you know, I think unfortunately at the premium price unlike um like the Quest, it's really hard to bootstrap bootstrap that and get consumer adoption and because they they also have never done just like a developer only product before.

So, there were just so many conflicting narratives. again, it just seemed like no one was at the actually gripping on to the to the reinss.

So, I'm I'm very pro like pick a singular use case that's going to be incredible at, you know, like I think Steve's original thing was like iPod for the eyes, you know, it's like noise cancellation for the eyes. And so, you have Apple TV, you have Apple Fitness. It's just like we're doing these two things.

Make it super lightweight, make it comfortable as much as possible. Um, and maybe as a bonus you can like tie the laptop to it so you have like a keyboard in front of you, right? But this is about being static and XYZ. Have you ever Have you ever thought of applying for a job at Apple? Maybe not CEO job.

I don't think they have a listing, but trying to fix Apple, get it back to its roots. I I think I think you need a lot of political capital to do that. There is my assumption. And so I'm I'm far more attracted to the things I see getting built from like my peers. And um yeah, let's switch gears for a second.

I mean, it's it's just fascinating because it is a uh it's like almost like a supply chain story in the sense that they were able to pull forward the highest resolution display that no one else had access to.

Not even Mark Zuckerberg spending10 billion dollars a year on the metaverse could get that screen pulled forward by two years. I'm sure the next Quest will have a comparable screen, but Apple was able to do that and but that's not enough. It's like it's a fantastic execution on the supply chain side.

Anyway, Jordy, where do you want to go next? Uh, I wanted to ask what you're up to. I know I'm sure you're cooking. I know you're cooking. Uh, anything you can anything you can share right now? Yeah.

Um, so yeah, I mean I'm coming out of, you know, uh, sort of an acquisition of Eternal and just thinking about what's next. And one one thing that I've been working on with friends throughout the past year is actually speaking of hardware. This Oh no, the background. Look at what I see paper. I see paper.

Hardware underrated form factor for hardware. Yeah, it's a Wall Street Journal competitor. Um, newspaper. How do you do the uh Oh, there it is. Oh, that's not it either. How do you do these things? Oh, there it is. Okay, there we go.

So, I Why would you want to Why would you want to hide that Why would you want to hide that background? That's a way better background. It's I just have I have so much Listen, I love San Francisco. It's the best city in the world. Very appropriate, says the New Yorker. Stolen stolen valor on that Golden Gate Bridge.

Brutal. Brutal. Show show us uh Yeah. What you working on? Yeah. So, the big project I've been doing in launching technology brothers exclusive is um this hardware book. So, let's go. 2024. Um, I made my friends Julian Davis and and Charlene Deng.

And, you know, I I I saw sort of a few years ago that hardware was really going to become the new meta. Um, it's sort of, you know, we saw software shifting into these two very big ways like and we and we started to see the containers for software shifting as well.

um those containers being sort of like spatial and and hardware. And so last year just started to feel like a really special time in hardware, humane, rabbit, all these things with Teenage Engineering, Daylight, USB Club. And so we really wanted to give sort of like the artbook treatment. This is my personal copy.

The real copy is going to be hard cover. Um but we really want to give the sort of like artbook treatment to what's happening in hardware. Daylight, let's go. Yeah, daylight is beautiful. you know, while writing the like humane um sort of blurb, they got acquired by HP.

So, these things were, you know, really shifting in real time, which was so crazy. Um, one of the big big sort of cells on this book is a exclusive interview with Jesper, the founder of Teenage Engineering, who maybe folks remember from his config talk last year. Oh yeah.

And so it's 260 pages of giving like present day technology uh that artbook treatment. So really really excited about that. And then yeah, when can we buy it? When can we buy it? You can buy it right now. Hardware 20224. com. Hardwarebook20204. com. Let's go. Fantastic. Amazing. I'm I'm excited.

And and what uh and the site's beautiful by the way. Very cool. Thank you. That was just a late night one late night coffee session. Vibe coding. All right. Yeah, some might say. All right. I just hit pay now. Let's do it. That was easy. There we go. There we go. There we go. That's amazing. What What's next?

Are you already working on the next book? You're already cooking. Hardware 2025. It's happening now. It's unfolding, dude. It's It is unfolding. Um, you know, I would I would love to sort of get sucked into the open AI hardware tentacles and uh, you know, maybe even like write some open AI checks to emergent hardware.

I think that we're going to see a lot of form factors emerge, you know, beyond just pendants, beyond just like pucks, what have you. Um, I've been investing in like advising some new hardware companies and AI hardware companies.

So, um, yeah, I'm just I'm Have you gotten a chance to play with the Have you gotten a chance to play with the chromatic from Palmer Lucky? No, it's sold out before I could buy it. Oh, it's sold out. Yeah. Uh, yeah. I I I love it. It's uh I mean, it's a beautiful product. You can run over it with a car apparently.

I haven't tried that. But also, it it it's it's like this perfect throwback, but you can use emulators to play any game. And now they just added Twitch streaming from it over USBC, which is crazy. So you can so you can plug it in and it records what you're what you're playing. So it's like this.

When can it control an enduro drone? One day, I'm sure. Uh and I think that they might be working on an N64 and some other some other retro hardware. So uh it it's fun. A lot of the retro retro throwback stuff coming through. Um I mean the only other spicy take I want is on Mimmoji, but do we have time for that?

Is Mmoji underrated? Are you using it every day? No, I don't. Are we driving? No. No. Sorry. Damn. What do you think? Are you talking about Mimmoji or Genoji? Genoji. Oh, yeah. Mimoji is the one where you make yourself into an emoji. Genoji is the one where you generate anything. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I think that, you know, I think the word I don't think Genmoji is actually a bad product. I just think like the ad campaign again like they've lost their soul when it comes to communication. Yeah. The entire thing about Gen Moji, it's the experience of making a niche reference for your friend.

And in the ad campaign is just like very weird looking. Yeah. Like end results, you know? Like the entire thing about that is like it's about the process, not the end result. Like the end result out of context makes zero sense. And then that's all they pasted around like major cities and it's just like god.

I mean, how do you even tell that story? Is like should the billboard be like two friends like in separate rooms kind of like uh like like mean girls split screen like laughing because they're sending each other Gen Mojis? That's not a that's not a billboard campaign. The first first level of like taste.

Is that a billboard campaign? Yep. No. I mean it's funny because it should be such a it should be a product that needs no billboard, right? like it it it should be inherently so viral and so userenerated that people just start using it, right?

And it has this sort of Giblly moment where people are just using Genoji and I just didn't see that at all. Maybe maybe I'm a boomer. Yeah. Um anyways, thank you so much for coming on. We've been wanting to do this for a while. This was great timing. Uh excited to get a copy of the book.

we will we'll show it back here on the show and uh I'm sure have some follow-up questions. But um congratulations on the launch and uh welcome back anytime for more more hardware hot takes. Ah fantastic. Thank you brothers. Play out for the studio audience. Thanks for coming on the show.

Legend Chief Reggie Officer of Hardware Book 2024. We'll talk to you soon, Reggie. I will be right back. How'd you sleep last night? You know how I slept, John. Okay, I should just give you access. I should just give you my login to just motivate you because I got a 93. I'm climbing up. I got a 99, John. You got a 99.

Uh, well, I beat you Monday, Tuesday, you beat me Wednesday, Thursday. You get out of here. I'm going to do some ad reads. Uh, go get a Pod Five Ultra at eight. com. They have a 5-year warranty, 30- night risk-free trial, free returns, and free shipping. These are nights that fuel your best days.

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There's been a bunch of stuff in the news. Um, uh, what else is here? Uh uh L3 tweet engineer just says LMO and post