#android #smarphone
Love that design.
Well at least it has buttons.
Still shant replace my Nokia e90 and n900 for gathering dust.
No mobile phone used here since Edward Snowden confirmed they’re listening.
… But at least it has buttons.
That long? Youre brave man. Nearly impossible to live normally and travel without a smartphone that can get the latest airline app and hotel key card app, I hate it but thats how it is.
Don’t your family and friends think youre insane? My friends cant fathom that I want to use signal instead of Snapchat or fb messenger because its hard and scary and “dark web”. Any link from the fediverse ive ever sent them they are terrified of because they think it’s the dark web. Its hilarious.
Would you actively call up murderous thieves and criminals and con-men to tell them everything about you and your friends, let them in on your every conversation, even tell them your exact location and even your innermost unuttered thoughts, constantly?
I don’t see why it’s more sane to do it passively, letting the corporation and their spook friends conveniently do that for you.
I used to work in advertising [before Bill Hicks saved me, just as I got into TV adverts]. I was “just doing my job”, to the best of my ability, to serve my client, maximally manipulating minds, perverting perceptions, preferences and purchases. This was years before smart phones. My meagre team of two still managed to shape public perception, changed the culture. The things I would have done had I had the data available via the spyware so normalised today. The things I would have done had I had the millions of resources the corporations and governments have. I avoid such because I’m effectively a whistle blower for the advertising industry, and reformed abuser of peoples minds. And I’m of sufficient ethical and moral fiber to have got out. The ruthless psychopaths who are happily still doing it, are not going to hold back. Hijacking peoples minds, their perceptions, their preferences, and not just their purchases, but their purpose, is frighteningly easier than you (have been conditioned to) think. It’s much harder to de-program people back into a cognitively-competent free-thinking de-hypnotised state. It’s easy to subliminally suggest associations, drip-fed over time, without them realising. “90% of advertising is wasted” we used to say, before it was targeted. And that was fine. That was still sufficient efficiency. The other 90% wasn’t for you, it was for other people. None of it was really wasted, if it was done well. Would you actively tell an advertiser, a mind-manipulator, a con-man striving to serve their master who wants to extract all wealth from you and exact total control over you, everything about you? If so, the hour may be later than you’ve been led to think.
The fear of what other people think is a powerful induction to get people even more easily manipulated into group-think. Then advertising/psyop costs drop dramatically. People succumb to mass-formation, where they police each others thoughts for the advertiser/psyop-agency. This is the psychology of totalitarianism, not just so duped to be so suggestible, but in a runaway state of delusion where any and all atrocities are seen as necessary virtues in service of “the one true way”, with the limbic reactive portions at the back of the brain responsible for fear reflex have completely taken over from the forebrain where more reasonable responsible creative and critical thinking can happen. And a mobile phone can easily be used to actively emit inaudible frequencies to tweak these brainwaves, much the same as sound therapy works, but when it’s also able to actively read the feedback from all the biometrics, it’s like a cold-reading conman with thousands of times more information and insight into what your inner experience is than the most competent and ruthless mentalist. Able to play you better than Vanessa Mae plays the fiddle. A little nudge here, and there, a script to respond to this or that thought had with this or that association… and all the billions of resources to deploy it…
No I don’t have a mobile phone. I know what I would have done with it when it was still “just my job” to maximally manipulate people with it. I know (just some of) what potential is probably being used. Heck, just look at the groupthink and silly notions like fearing emancipatory-potentialled open-web technology such as the fediverse as if it’s the big scary deep dark-web… Cui Bono? Ever had the experience of receiving an advert for something you’ve been speaking about? Or how about just thinking about? But that’s fine. Nothing to worry about. Maybe the corporation cares. And maybe somehoe the psychopathic structure, and the psychopathic self-selecting, somehow did not happen for the bits that reach you, and everything’s fine.
If everybody else around went and jumped off a cliff, would you follow?
Better jump. Wouldn’t want them to think you’re insane for not jumping with them.
While I admire that, most people, myself included, have way too much going on in life to get into all the underground tech stuff. And im done convincing friends or family to change. Its never going to happen.
If I only run linux on all my pcs and also get a light phone, thats great, but everyone else I communicate with is on corpo net, so really it makes no difference. The population is dumb and tired, and there’s no way back. People refuse to even look at Terminal if they had to fix something in linux. They’ve been spoon fed, and theyre patience is long gone. Its over, and there’s a very very tiny subset of us who can or will resist.
Also you are quite well spoken and I appreciate your comment, but to a normal person you would likely come off as a complete nutjob-not to be mean, but thats how it is.
Good luck in your future!
This is so cool and I wish I could have it. But the moment you travel and need lyft, turo, and the hotel keypad app, youre screwed. Not to mention the airlines shitty app.
It’s a standard android 16 phone. You can install whatever you want to it.
You can even just not use their launcher and have a very normal android experience.
It runs android 16. Why can’t it have any of these?
Well thats great then!!
According to the support ticket I put in last week when I saw the first post about this, the bootloader will be unlockable. Or, at least that’s what they said. So here’s hoping we see nice debloated/de-googled ROMs.
At the very least, it should be immediately rootable with Magisk.
It has a MediaTek chip, so I wouldn’t be so optimistic about custom ROMs, but as you said, at least you could root it and de-Google
I wish it kept the square screen but the keyboard was a slider.
Would this interest you then: https://www.clicks.tech/powerkeyboard
It’s weird how it’s being advertised as a second phone - it looks like it has the same capabilities of any other android phone? Just a smaller screen and a physical keyboard
They’re afraid to go full bore advertising it as a minimalist alternative. If they weren’t, they would have offered more thoughtful features beyond the (admittedly great) notifications-only home screen. But that’s secretly who this phone is for. I am sure they’re just afraid to pigeonhole it. Calling it a second phone is silly and will sell it to about 50 people but it leaves any other potential buyer to interpret what it is and why they might want it for themselves. It’s a…whatever strategy.
I know why I want it, and the early bird price (slash threat of the higher price later) is certainly compelling, but:
- I just put a fresh Clicks case on my existing phone
- I just paid that phone off and I don’t see any need to upgrade
- I ordered a Clicks Power Keyboard or whatever they’re calling the other thing they announced at the same time (and doesn’t that purchase contributing to diverting me from the Communicator suggest they’re cannibalizing their own moment by announcing both at the same time?) so I’ll have that as well as my fresh Clicks classic case to buy me further years (one hopes) with my current phone and
- I expect that when my phone DOES finally die, yes, I will absolutely look at the Communicator if it’s still around / affordable used (which it should be since it’s affordable new). At that time, it’ll also have come out and been reviewed extensively, so there also won’t be any guesswork in whether it’s worth picking up.
They’re afraid to go full bore advertising it as a minimalist alternative. If they weren’t, they would have offered more thoughtful features beyond the (admittedly great) notifications-only home screen. But that’s secretly who this phone is for. I am sure they’re just afraid to pigeonhole it. Calling it a second phone is silly and will sell it to about 50 people but it leaves any other potential buyer to interpret what it is and why they might want it for themselves. It’s a…whatever strategy.
I do think there is also just an aspect of the people running this company living in a bit of a tech bubble where they are constantly changing their phones and carrying around multiple at the same time. The “second phone” thing gets pushed constantly by tech YouTubers like Michael Fisher (who is behind Clicks), so much so that the term “daily driver” has become normal lexicon for these people. No one in the real world talks about their phone like this, it’s just our phone. We don’t have another one, unless it’s an older model sitting in a drawer somewhere. I’m not sure YouTubers understand this, though.
100%. His handle on social media is CaptainTwoPhones, haha. It’s a positively, ridiculously insulated angle. But I don’t think they’re entirely naive, either. I think he even acknowledged in the announcement that it’s a pretty uncommon, upper-crust, eNtHuSiAsT thing to do. I can only speak for myself, but I find the notion of being so engulfed in obsession with these horrible little gadgets that if you keep two of them on you for any reason except being a professional tech reviewer or needing a second one for your job…that is, if you carry two phones just for the love of phones…well, that’s extremely off-putting to me to the degree that I have nothing polite to say about it, and I think I just should stop myself instead. I know life is short and it’s unsavory to ‘yuck someone else’s yum’. But. Meh.
I think the element of it that I don’t particularly like is how they frame themselves as people who value their time and mental health because they carry around a second, intentionally limited device. They kind of play this “social media is really bad, phones are really addictive” angle but then they don’t actually give up on any of that stuff because they still have their extremely expensive high-end folding phone on them at all times as well. It all feels so performative to me, like they’re not actually willing to make sacrifices themselves but still want the social cred/respect from pretending to be aware of the problem and part of the solution. But they’re not, really, because they’re entertaining this fantasy where phone addicts can magically get their lives back without changing their relationship with phones. If anything, they are contributing to the problem by encouraging people to buy and use even more devices.
I much prefer the anti-addiction/“minimal” phones that are either a) very small or b) have an e-ink screen, but are still marketed as an actual phone (not a “secondary” device). Those manufacturers intentionally put up walls to frustrate and force the owner to change their habits and re-wire their brain, rather than pushing this fake “you can have your cake and eat it too” philosophy to combating addiction.
Yes, you’re absolutely right.
Right now I’m super interested in the Minimal Phone, and the SLEKE Phone, and to a lesser extent the Communicator (lesser of course because but for its wonky screen size, it can essentially ‘do’ everything a smartphone does). I understand the Minimal Phone’s often clunky compromises and that it can also technically install any Android app but as you said, the amount of friction introduced by the e-ink screen is severe enough one would hope it would help. If I had to pick one to buy today, it would almost be the SLEKE phone, because to me the idea of simply perma-banning all the apps I struggle to keep deleted myself seems just about perfect, and they also have a Communicator-esque ‘notification-forward’ home screen with no icons trying to incentivize you to open apps just to pass time. The one and only thing holding me back is that because they’ve de-Googled the phone, they appear to have broken Android Auto, and in the spirit of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I’m not too proud to say I don’t find GPS mapping to be a terrible drain on my life (even though it’s increasingly used as a data point about a kind of thinking that has atrophied in our modern-age brains) and I simply will not give up its inclusion in my car. I know Garmin still exists, but…that’s just a little too boutique, even for me. Any in-car mapping solution I’ve ever used short of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay has taken way too long to input or adjust destinations, been to quirky (I’m specifically thinking of a BMW I once borrowed and its awful built-in nav), and of course, AA and AC give you that ‘single pane of glass’ to manage not only your maps but also your music / podcasts / audiobooks through. I just can’t give that up for a minimalist phone.
But if SLEKE can figure out how to add AA back in, I’d jump ship on my old iPhone the second my Clicks Power Keyboard arrives in the Spring.
I’ve never heard of SLEKE. I love how many companies are approaching these problems from different angles. The solution can be quite personal so it’s good to have some variety and nuance there instead of just being forced to switch back to a dumbphone.
I heard of it from this video. The video creator is too much for me like 30% of the time but I think there’s very often decent information in his content. His energy is just up there.
I think the home screen is just Niagra launcher
It’s made in collaboration with them, but Fisher claimed it was made for the phone.
Something like this had already been produced as an even “dumber” phone: https://www.thelightphone.com/shop
Light phone has been around for a while. I guess this thing would be like a next step up.
Android 16, $399, 170g, blackberry-like keyboard, “companion” to a bigger phone or can be used as a main phone, 4000 mah presumably non-removable. It does have a wired headphone port, props for that. Main purpose seems to be to declutter the comms apps such as messaging, plus make typing easier with the blackberry keyboard. Meh. I have a full sized but skinny Bluetooth keyboard that weighs a lot less and was like $10.
I think the main purpose is probably to provide a more-usable “dumbphone” experience. I know a lot of people (myself included) who would love to doomscroll less, but need a more full-fat version of Android for work or family. Using Digital Wellbeing and the like gets part of the way there, but not the whole way. With this, the weird aspect ratio means that pretty much all video is going to be letterboxed to a crazy extent, which could be enough to make bypassing those controls feel pointless. And then they used that extra space for a physical keyboard, which is genius. If this thing had a better camera, I’d be all in.
It sounds to me that the dumbphone experience could be supplied on a regular android phone, with an app or launcher that uses kiosk mode.
I don’t really want that much control removed, though. I just want to have a little bit more friction between my serotonin-starved brain and the cortisol river on Facebook.
uninstall the Facebook app. you can still access it through your mobile web browser, but without the app you have more steps between you and it that givez your conscious brain more time to stop.
Yep, I’ve done that. Hardware changes are more effective than software changes, though. Every time.
Dopamine, mostly - says my brain. It wants the dope.
Yeah, that one too.
Screen ratio is perfect for emulators, tho - and the keyboard can be customized for their use with KeyMapper. Agree on camera, and replaceable battery other commenter mentioned, tho.
hmm. That’s true. And dangerous, lol.
What’s so bad about the camera? I’m no expert, it advertises a high megapixel but I know enough that megapixel doesn’t mean everything
I mean, it’s probably fine. I’ve just had a Pixel for long enough that my standards are too high. I have kids, and we just moved across the world, so I take a lot of photos.
Fair. Most of the pixel’s magic is in it’s software.
Yeah hopefully we’ll see a gcam mod port for it, I wouldn’t hold my breath though
How pocketable is that keyboard, tho? Not that I’m all that into a physical keyboard since swype-style entry is my thing, but I can use them as buttons that can be programmed for various tasks and/or used with emulators. Never mind unlockable bootloaders are becoming far too rare these days.
The BT keyboard I use weighs a few ounces. It is not pocketable but I don’t notice it in my backpack. I had one way back that was pocketable and would have been way more usable than a blackberry keyboard, but the keys bounced something terrible, probably due to crap debouncing software inside. I thought of getting another one that might be better, but am happy with the full sized one. I don’t write that much text on a phone anyway. I use my laptop when I can.
This feels so contradictory! You don’t write that much text on a phone - but enough to buy a full-size keyboard for it, that you carry around in your backpack? I don’t think many people like going to that much trouble. An extra thing whose battery status needs to be monitored, an extra thing to turn the Bluetooth for - and where do you place it for typing? Where do you put the phone so you can see the screen? Needs a table.
The keyboard just sits in my backpack, so I have it if I want to type more than a few sentences on my phone, which usually means I didn’t bring my laptop (an old chonker). A smaller laptop would be better tbh, but my old one broke and I haven’t replaced it. Yeah seeing the phone screen while typing isn’t so easy, but I’m a touch typist, so I type first and then look. Battery not too much of a problem tbh. I just charge it up once in a while. I had one previously that used AAA cells (preferable) but I misplaced it.
It’s not perfect but it beats the phone keyboard and I would say beats a Blackberry-style keyboard. I never used a real Blackberry but I had a Nokia E63 for a while, and it was the same idea. It was better than a screen keyboard but still a severe compromise. You can currently get something like that from M5Stack.
The tiny BT keyboard with horrible keybounce that I had for a while looked like this:
https://www.adafruit.com/product/3601
I like to think the linked one might be better, but I haven’t tried it.
FYI if you like the UI in the promo, just download Niagara. It’s minimalistic and one-handed. The pay wall limits customization, though. Also, there’s phone cases that have keyboards built in if you miss your black berry. Here’s my home screen/ ui:
Edit: I use viral as my icon pack
Also swype based keyboards are fucking amazing if you work with your hands.
The pay wall is actually insane! I bought my lifetime license back when it was 10ish dollars. But I just went to try to get the license for wife, ~45 dollars?!
Plus I do believe I remember being able to do more in the unpaid version back when I had it, now my wife can’t change clock, show weather, change icons etc etc without paying.
Their last update was the “artistic” update, with new wallpapers “designed by real artists just for us”. The wallpapers are very sus (ai) in my eyes. Not much has happened on the update front new feature wise for quite a while, just lots of customization.
I genuinely love this launcher, and I would find it hard to go back, but it is sad to see it go the way I see it going.
Jeez, even $10 is pricy. I think I paid $5 for nova, and that took some thought. I have only bought a handful of apps in the last like… 17 years? Most expensive was fairemail (I actually bought it twice, one from the website, one from the play store) at like, $7? But that has a feature set that nobody can touch, it’s better than Thunderbird on the desktop imo. So $10 for a launcher is absolutely wild.
E: and $45 is more than what I pay for most AAA games lol
You can download “modded” versions that have all the paywalled features unlocked, but it seems like a bit of an unnecessary risk when there are so many other great, free launchers out there.
I’m using it, it’s still really useable without paying. and they offer a subscription and a one time payment, overall, not bad
The biggest red flag is it’s a lot of the same folks who put out fxtec pro and that was a bit of a shit show, I’m excited but I’m sure as fuck not going to preorder
I didn’t know about that. Just found this about fxtec. I guess it’s smart to be cautious.
https://community.fxtec.com/topic/4070-now-that-fxtec-is-dead-lets-do-an-autopsy/
Apparently there’s a tech YouTuber by the name of MrMobile who is also apart of this. I only recently heard of him through MKBHD so I would like to think that there’s some accountability there but honestly you really never know.
I’ve been watching mrmobile for several years, like almost a decade now? The dude seem to be nice, no bs tech reviewer. I don’t watch for buying advice or anything, just to keep up with what’s new, but I definitely put way more weight behind him vs other reviewers like mkbhd. No reasoning or trying to explain why X is/has/isn’t/can’t Y, just ‘here’s what it can do, here’s what I don’t/like, here is the price’ - usually in a sort-of real-life/daily driver/vlog experience.
Just my thoughts.
Yeah I’m in now way trying to point and panic. But after going through the debacle with fxtec I personally will be exercising caution
That said this device looks like a dream especially if I can get lineage on it
I heard that the designers of that phone were involved with the original Clicks, but it’s kind of an over-generalization to say that because those guys are involved with this by-now well-established company, that this will turn out to be some kind of rip-off scheme. Clicks Technology have delivered on every promise they have made to this point. Even if their products aren’t for everyone, and even if (in my experience) the first generation have some serious issues with wearing down too quickly, they absolutely do make products, they do feel good to use, they do what they say, and there’s no reason to doubt they can deliver on this next one.
They have other hardware they’ve built and shipped for years, just a keyboard case not an entire phone but that seems to be positively received
Hiw do you know it’s those people? What’s your source? Fxtec sure was a letdown. Not a complete scam like the Turing Phones, but almost…
Some of the same people
This medium does a good job of saying kind of my thoughts https://medium.com/@markheijnekamp_41506/clicks-communicator-will-likely-fail-b4f450e556b4
Wow, that’s quite terribly written…
lol for sure, but I think it hits the points and I’m too lazy to write something out myself 🤷♀️
I’ve been looking for a mobile Linux terminal so I can ssh without hunt and peck, if this was under $200, it looks like it would be perfect…
Edit: If anyone had a recommendation for a non-build-your-own (I’m not in a living position where I can diy) mobile dumb terminal, I’m all ears!
Same company sells a magsafe keyboard addon.
I think its like 5/600$
More $ than my current phone 🤑🤑🤑
Same, I get the idea and I’d probably also get one for 200 and under, but, not that much
Dang…
I’d like something like this, I hate virtual keyboards compared to my old Palm smartphones.
This feels like a solution looking for a problem. What is the benefit of this ‘companion’? If the point is really just to have a physical keyboard for messages, seems like I’d be better off with one of those little folding bluetooth keyboard for 1/10 the price.
I really miss having a physical keyboard to type on, but not enough to carry a separate device that is disconnected from my phone.
It’s meant to be your real phone. They’re just afraid to advertise it that way. It’s truly bizarre to choose this advertising theme, because it almost causes confusion, since there have been phones in the past which truly are companion phones, totally tethered to your primary phone for their connection but besides that little (huge) dependency, were meant to be like…minimalist, distraction-free devices. Advertising the Communicator as a “second phone” absolutely summons up that same idea, in my head at least. If they did some of the app curation or de-googling of, for comparison, the SLEKE phone project, then they could full-throatedly sell this as a minimalist dream. But they don’t want to lock out any kind of customer, and so they’re struggling to make a case for who the customer even is supposed to be here. So they just call it a “second phone” and let you decide for yourself whether it could be a primary or a second or nothing at all. I’d buy it in a heartbeat if I didn’t have a bunch of frugal reasons not to, and if they hadn’t also announced an accessory so seemingly excellent that it encourages me not to give up my current phone for many years to come.
Hadn’t even seen their accessory. That is so close to what I would want as an accessory. If it was just much thinner and landscape orientation.
They have a feedback page. Never hurts to toss that idea out. I’m sure they’ve brainstormed like crazy but they are surely likelier to take that idea seriously, if they have thought of it, if they hear it from the people. I wished dearly that the FxTech X1 or whatever had turned out not to be a scammy piece of shit because I agree, that landscape style is really enticing. As you say, if they could make the same basic thing work as a horizontal version of the Power Keyboard, I’d be super here for it. Everything they advertise as a positive about the Power Keyboard, like controlling other devices, would be better if it was just…way bigger. Haha.
Couldn’t find the page quickly otherwise I totally would leave that feedback.
You’re right. I was thinking of the ‘report a bug’ page.
Lol it is a bug to me. A bug in their design.
For sure. I meant that as a point for why i would prefer to have that phone as my primary phone rather than a separate keyboard add on. But yeah that idea of it as a serving phone is bizarre except for as work/business phones.
Yeah their messaging is a bit fucked. At the same time they announced the Communicator they announced the potentially best and most flexible keyboard accessory they have put out to date, and for remarkably the least cost of anything they’ve released. It’s compatible with any phone or case that supports MagSafe, so…it’s just maybe not the best time to also announce a phone whose defining feature is its keyboard?
Not to sell it short, because the colored notification LED and notification-centered launcher are both nice concepts, and the squarish screen appeals to the would-be digital minimalist in me, since it will definitely ruin many apps like Unihertz phones have been doing for years. I bet that I could own and really love this phone. The thing is though, the Power Keyboard they announced, which is compatible with my existing phone, costs less than a fifth of the price, and comes out sooner, and does more things (because you can connect it to multiple Bluetooth clients), and the format is more flexible (because you can spin your magnetically-connected phone horizontally, and your phone can maintain a traditional aspect ratio by…being your existing phone), and…yeah. It’s just a weird time to announce a phone and a super cool accessory that almost completely undercuts it.
Still, I love what this company is up to, and I hope they keep at it.
There’s absolutely no way that magnetic keyboard delivers a typing experience even close to this device, which has clearly been designed entirely with typing in mind. Even the normal Clicks keyboards for iPhones were actually kinda dogshit because the phones they were designed for are so large that the weighting was entirely off. The Communicator will be way more balanced in the hand and it has a sloped back for even more comfort and security while typing. It’s a phone for people who prioritise the typing experience above all else, which is admittedly a small group, but it’s not the same as a magnetic accessory keyboard.
I guess we’ll have to see!
IMHO it’s a dumb idea to have a “companion” smartphone to a “real” smartphone. Either the thing will do for your needs all day, then you don’t need a second one. Or it doesn’t, then it’s not the right one for you. IMO this phone should be way enough and need not be accompanied by anything. We don’t actually need all that functionality in our pockets all day, every day.
Looking at the site, it appears to have everything. Even qi wireless charging
I like it.
Unihertz Titan 2 Elite looks better
I think that is just a mock up. The keyboard layout is way different from the Titan 2, so I am unsure if the image of the elite is final design.
Very likely you are right, but I’d give my left arm for modern version of blackberry (with Bb keyboard)
I’m fascinated by the accusation (guess?) that the Titan 2 Elite and the Communicator share a platform from some common manufacturer. They have the same screen (just to eyeball it; I have not checked the specs to compare so please don’t flame me if I’m wrong) and they both have the top-left punch-out camera. They both look slick as hell and if I was in need of a phone right now I bet I could have a good time with either one, but between them I’ve definitely got a little more brand loyalty for Clicks since I’ve enjoyed their QWERTY experience more, and I also think their launcher looks slick as shit. But I’ve always wanted to love the Unihertz phones I’ve bought and my heart is always open to them finally nailing it one day. If they were built on the same platform and they both turned out to be…ya know, pretty good…I think the world would be in a great place (at least as far as QWERTY resurgence is concerned).
It’s more common than people realise within the phone industry. The Titan 2 is using old Blackberry Passport displays and the new iKKO Mind One is using a display that is seen on some handheld retro gaming devices. Fairphone has historically used a lot of generic parts too. These smaller companies generally don’t have the money or power to get everything custom designed, and re-using existing parts ensures long-term stock availability.
This is going to sound super generalized and possibly ethnocentric, but that’s not my meaning: buying shit on Amazon since the advent of the non-brand (you know, like ZMDRROI or BRRWE or CLQQIU or whatever) has brought to my ordinary consumer attention how much overlap there is in suppliers overseas. You can buy like, a skin care set, and a cake decorating set, and a nail care set, and a model kit set, and a clay working set of tools and there will be overlapping pokers and curvy pokers and hoopy-doos that appear in every single one. And I put this crude topology together in my head of what must be going on over there, and it’s just like, “I’m a factory that churns out little pokers the way some villages produce nails or bullets from raw metal, and I need to sell to second-level manufacturers and convince them that my poker is a good fit for skin care, cake decoration, nail scraping, Gundam model detailing, and clay art,” and then those second tier manufacturers (if indeed they aren’t the same guys as the first tier) are like, “I’ve got to use these taco bell ingredients to make as many conceptually varied remixes as I can, to cast as wide a net as possible in the marketplace.”
Sorry, had a few drinks, I hope I’m making sense. I know it isn’t really interesting, but I do think it’s kind of interesting. In the pre-Amazon age we just didn’t have much cause to think about generic elements of consumer products. But also, especially in the age of maker stuff, it’s very obvious. I built a little smart typewriter thing, and I bought an eink screen which was prescribed in the design, but that thing was originally marketed for like…digital signage at supermarkets, or whatever, to update prices on the fly.
I dunno. It’s kinda interesting. Kinda cool in a ‘scrappy manufacturers versus the world’ kind of way. At least, I’d rather think of it in those terms versus “cynical companies tricking us into buying the same shit over and over by putting new labels on it” :p
