Same with my 13 mini. Small size + lightweight is a killer feature. I want the 5x camera zoom of the iPhone 16 Pro, but it's not worth the tradeoff. And none of the other new features matter to me.
Am I the only one who laments this trend of using a common first name as a product name? When I see this, my first reaction is that the company lacks any empathy for people who have the name they're co-opting.
Not sure about the “rude” part. It really depends on the person. But yes, it can get annoying rally fast. Therefore “shitty” indeed. But yeah, I do think it is very cheezy and lazy when companies do this. When I talked to someone that worked there, I guess it was because of the hard constant “X” -it would make a better Hollywood movie if they said Artificial. Language. Expanded. Xenomorphic. Amplified. A. L. E. X. A.
Devin comes from "dev in chat", a common phrase in livestream chat rooms to signal that the developer of the game or product being showcased was present.
The short version of my name is one letter away from "Alexa". You can imagine how many comments and jokes about Amazon's AI assistant I've been party to for the past decade. Although it may be hard for you to believe I actually don't really care, much as you probably don't care about the hot dogs bearing your name that you see when you walk down the cold aisle in the grocery store. Should they instead call the anthropomorphized AI assistant something like "W'rkncacnter" to preclude the possibility of name collisions (chaotic entities imprisoned in alien stars notwithstanding)?
My Japanese mom always thought it was weird to put peoples names to destructive forces like hurricanes. I think she said in Japan use some numbering system (might be as simple as incrementing, I don't remember).
The US did this for a long time -- only numbering storms. In 1953 they switched to a list of names, female only. Then 25 years later to male and female names. It is kinda weird, and if they're destructive enough the name is retired. I think the idea is that people would pay more attention to human names in the warning process as the hurricanes approach land.
When I was 7, my family's Japanese foreign exchange student was being introduced to me.
She bursted out laughing saying my nick name Dev Dev sounded like "fart fart" or "fat fart".
Had the nickname fart fart until my sister moved out of the house.
Maybe you could confirm, but ChatGPT tells me in Japanese Debu colloquially and offensively means "fat" or "chubby", and Bu is an onomotapoeia for a fart noise, like "prrt" in English.
It appears your name is Alex, so I'm not surprised that the Alexa product name doesn't bother you. I suspect you would feel different if your name was Alexa. If the product was named Nate, it would bother me. There are plethora of other options for product names that companies can use besides common first names.
I think it's different when the product is an tool you call by name to use vs just the name of the tool. E.g. the article is about "Alexa" and I'm not sure most people even realize there are ways to use it without saying "Hey Alexa" every time. Without that type of callback association it's not a very serious concern.
I don't care about it potentially being a real name, because I doubt it would be a household item, but somehow the name itself for this particular product seems offputting.
If it had to be a name for a product, it seems like to give me some sort of cheap male grooming or AXE body spray product vibes.
As a long time Pixelmator user, this really worries me. I loved DarkSky and then Apple acquired and killed it without a good replacement (I switched to Wunderground because Apple Weather is inaccurate, especially for precipitation predictions).
It's ironic that the example he gives for driving across LA already has a fast train connection:
> People that live in LA, I mean try to get from Pasadena to El Segundo during rush hour. You can fly to another city faster than you get to crosstown LA. And you have to drive the whole way.
You can take the Metro A line from Pasadena, then transfer to the C line to get to El Segundo. No driving necessary. Musk sells cars, so of course he has a massive incentive to say more cars are the solution to peoples' transit woes. But it seems like throwing more cars at the problem will simply make traffic worse, and from my experience living in Chicago, the best solution to avoid traffic (and parking!) is to take an alternative mode of transit that can bypass it (e.g. train, bike, electric scooter).
Unless you think LA should go London/NYC style and build a load of stations, there is still the problem of what to do if you're not near a station at the start or end.
If it involves a bus connection, people will just drive
LA is already doing quite a lot in its transportation system. But just spending a bunch of money on a bunch of project isn't enough. They need to evolve into a higher level thinking about transportation. Currently its just 'money here for project X', 'money here for project Y'. And then they need to evolve again and think about the whole city in a new way. Transportation and land use planning a 100% linked, to have good transportation you need good land use planning. That requires reforms in zoning codes, building codes, parking regulation, road regulation and a number of other things.
In some sense US cities are actually well prepared, they have tons of space on their gigantic roads to have priority bus lanes, bike lanes and many other things like that. Road safety and transportation could be improved by a gigantic amount with simply changes in road design and investment patterns.
How to achieve that politically, well, I don't know.
There are other alternatives. Short commute by bicycle to main stations a la french/dutch style. Requires less investment for safe bike lanes but it pisses off car people.
Trams are also much cheaper than metro or train lines and serve metropolitan areas pretty well but they anger house owners and nobody wants to take public transit, thats poor people stuff.
It will take a lot of disillusion from cars before any decent alternative gets traction. Took long in Europe and is still ongoing for most of it, it will take even longer in the US.
People might be stubborn enough to only turn away from cars when the big traffic jams are all made of self driving electric cars with one or two people inside going all to the same places.
LA is literally filled to the fucking brim with parking lots, so many fucking parking lots. You have enough space for more stations then Paris.
And yet somehow in most large cities people use trams and bus in large numbers and don't 'just drive'. Crazy to consider that some people don't even have to own a car in such a city. If you have proper transportation infrastructure, those buses/trams can be faster then private car traffic.
Its called a 'transportation system' for a reason, walking, biking, buses, trams, trains all work together to provide something that practically moves millions of people a day even in the largest cities in the world.
Musk: Mom, can I have national infrastructure on which I can safely and reliably operate my semi autonomous vehicles?
Mom: We have infrastructure at home.
The Infrastructure: a rail network with communal seating, infrequent service, and a minimal set of fixed route options.
If, through the accidents of human history, we spend the next century repurposing highways as railroads for rubber tired carriages then I suppose that’s a good enough outcome. In the century after that maybe we’ll start to reclaim the highway land back, a la Dr Beeching’s shuttering of post war British railway infrastructure.
I think roller skates are an underrated mode of transportation, but there is a learning curve for people new to skating. If these Moonwalkers are easy to use with no prior experience, I think that's a big step (or roll) forward.
