I struggle to understand what the target market is for products like this.
I can't imagine a legitimate market for (in my opinion gimmicky) colour e-readers, and I believe this would be a horrific experience as a daily-use monitor.
Is this intended for some form of advertising or marketing?
I've started to noticed these hardware products in the $500-$1000 that don't really solve any problems. See the $500 digital album art frame that sold out and I do not think ever shipped. Or the Orchid synth which is a $600 musical toy with an amazing amount of included modules and bugs. Patreon and Discord support channels filled with issues and help requests, being met with radio silence or asking for patience or "an update is just wrapping up", all while just feeding the social networks more 5 second clips of people playing an arpeggiated chord and announcing a second drop.
I guess people crave purpose and perhaps a bit of connection too; and they’re willing to spend money in a slightly misguided attempt to find it. Speaking as a person who owns too much music gear.
It's true and I'm no different and in constant contradiction. I'm envious of both the creators of the Orchid and its customers. I don't have money for these kinds of purchases, so these products are not a consideration for myself. Not everyone shares that luxury. Instead, I spend way more time than I'm worth hourly than that $600 fighting the web audio context to make something similar.
I don’t know if you want advice so skip this comment if not; for anyone who is in a similar situation and does:
I’d skip expensive gear and use cheaper replacements or whatever I already have. Pick an iphone, ipad, ableton lite, acoustic guitar, or any other tool or instrument. Use that to make music and have fun. Optionally show my music to other people.
I would love to be able to comfortably use my laptop in outdoor conditions. (Or indoors but in a sun-lit area.) This is one of the ways to achieve that. I'd even replace my laptop's screen with an e-ink display if I had that option.
If you can use a regular monitor with mental hassle they're probably isn't a good reason to consider a product like this. There is some niche appeal to general tech hobbyists who find it cool, and also to the minimalist-yet-buys-expensive-stuff-regularly crowd. Perhaps there are also some use cases like writing a book where it can provide a wonderful experience.
On the other hand a portion of the population has an absolutely horrible time using backlit monitors. Simply put, they will tolerate just about anything to have a usable alternative that doesn't cause migraines and eye strain. I'm getting there, and I can confirm it's a ridiculous experience. Completely destroyed my workflow, to the point where I was very seriously considering digging up my old t60p ThinkPad from over a decade ago because it had a special LCD panel that looked like paper.
Let's assume refresh rate and color quality can get "good enough" to where it can work for daily work stuff, excluding gaming or graphic design. Then I see a strong argument for eink. I think we're all damaging our eyes staring at LEDs all day.
The correction was "decimated" literally means "decreased by 10%".
If you meant a 90% decrease you should have said.
Your link shows transportation in the USofA uses 67% .. that is not 90%, not in the USofA and not globally. Even so the linked article I posted talks of Electric Vehicle use increasing resource demand as more EV cars are built between now and 2050.
EV cars are not the full total of "Transportation" (in the USofA or indeed elsewhere) - a large chunk of that Transportation goes to mining equipment used to estract resources, the use of which will increase to meet resource demand created by EV growth.
With climate change increasing global unrest and decreasing security there will be greater military demand for fossil fuel reserves and use globally - I understand the use of batteries et al in the military and the cold fact that the energy density of fossil fuels is unrivalled.
I appreciate your enthusiasm, your word use and arguments could use some work.
For sure. I don't think we are disagreeing on that fact, nor do I believe it hurts the validity of my comment.
Two sides of the same coin. Demand will always exist in a waxing / waning fashion. You've identified an area that will temporarily increase demand in the industrializing countries.
My hope is that the reduction in demand in more established countries will be able to offset that increase in demand somewhat. Probably not enough to net-zero it, but hopefully it has some meaningful effect.
My city talked about banning "Single Use Items" from drive thrus and such, but what they failed to communicate was this also meant "Paper Bags" like what McDonalds would hand you out the window.
It was _that_ part which sparked outrage. The overly-simplistic definition of "Single Use" items included items which are _actually_ recyclable like paper (or compostable if covered in food-stuff).
It does not matter much how they do in a landfill. What matters is what happens when left out in the environment, aiui they weather and breakdown pretty fast.
Anything that ends up either in a landfill or in the environment (fwiw landfills are usually part of the environment, but that's a different discussion) is something that doesn't get to amortize production costs over several uses, so arguably both are best to be avoided, if at all possible.
Yes I can attest to how quickly they start breaking down even just sitting in the container for about a week. Almost need a scheduled reminder to replace it no matter how full it is.
You're living it the best you can with what you have. As the other commenter stated, you are making unfair comparisons. Focus on comparing your tomorrow self with your today self. As long as that comparison trends in the right direction, you're doing well.
You also start to approach the old UNIX command line philosophy. Each command did roughly one thing very well and input and output were pretty simple CHAR streams.
While I understand where you are coming from, the iPhone 4 was announced in 2010[1].
I believe a more apt comparison would be my current situation with an iPhone 6 which came out in 2014[2]. It works perfectly fine, albeit with a new battery. I do not plan on upgrading to any iPhone past the 6 unless the headphone jack comes back (my major personal gripe).
I can't imagine a legitimate market for (in my opinion gimmicky) colour e-readers, and I believe this would be a horrific experience as a daily-use monitor.
Is this intended for some form of advertising or marketing?