If It's Broken, Ship It
The Humane A.I. Pin and the culture of releasing stuff that doesn't work
I'm a sporadic gamer — I play 3 or 4 games a year — but I recently played through Cyberpunk 2077. It's set in a futuristic world of robotic body parts, headsets, high-tech gadgets, neon lights, and, of course, a heavy dose of the cyberpunk aesthetic.
It was enjoyable. (If you were hoping for an in-depth review, I'm not your guy). But I couldn't get fully onboard with it. Back in 2020, I was eagerly awaiting the game's release, only holding back for the reviews to double-check before purchasing. Then they hit the airwaves, and there was one small problem — the game was completely, utterly, outrageously broken. Reviews unanimously trashed every aspect of the game (once they were allowed to review the game due to tight embargoes. Early reviewers were also forced to use footage provided to them, which is never a good sign). The backlash was swift. Gamers felt the studio had swindled them, promising big and delivering very little. Sony quickly removed the game from the Playstation Store and offered refunds. The studio, CD Projekt Red, had to apologize and promised to do everything possible to repair the damage.
And credit to them, they did. Over 3 years later, the game is very playable today and resembles the original promise after a few huge patches. Yet, that doesn't wipe what happened from memory. As the dust was settling, it came to light that after numerous delays in a bid to get the game ready, the studio had succumbed to investor pressure, and that's why they released the game in its buggy, broken state. The shifty practices around reviews kept preorders rolling in so the company could bank that sweet dollar and meet their financial target (read: bonus requirements).
In other words — it was greed.
It's a practice otherwise known as, "If it's broken, fuck it, just ship it anyway."
The game industry is rife with it, so much so it's almost become the industry standard. Most games seem to release half-finished or half-working and then comes the inevitable promise to fix it later by offering extensive roadmaps of upcoming patches and features to keep angry users on board. Unlike Cyberpunk, very few cases have been a 'success.' It often leads to the reputation of studios and publishers being left in tatters; many get closed down altogether — the human collateral damage of untethered greed.
Unfortunately, this malpractice is not isolated to the game industry. Think about it. How many films are released these days at a quality so low they are almost unwatchable? Or TV series that are widely panned, canceled, or removed to be locked in a secret vault somewhere? In each case, almost everyone involved knew the outcome, perhaps even from day one. Yet it's pushed out as the greedy suits figure we'll eat it up like mindless zombies. If we don't, it's either buried or followed up with apologies and promises to do better.
This nonsense is also rife in the tech industry.
This month, Humane's A.I. Pin was finally released into the wild. I was expecting reviews to be bad — the fact the founders could barely explain the product and why it existed in the launch video spoke volumes — but now that they are in, they are really bad.
The Verge panned it, writing that "this wearable computer promises to free you from your smartphone. There's only one problem: it just doesn't work." Tom Warren, a senior editor at The Verge, said the Humane A.I. Pin "will go down as one of the worst reviewed tech products in history." I think he may have forgotten about the Juicero. Wired called the device "too bare-bones and not all that useful." Arun Rupesh Maini, better known as Mrwhosetheboss, who spent time with the co-founder of Humane getting hands-on with the Pin, said, "as of right now, the Humane Pin is an incredibly poor proposition."
The review that seems to have riled A.I. grifters everywhere was Marques Brownlee's hot take. While normally a very pro-tech kinda guy (almost to the point you could question his judgment), he obliterated the device, saying, "this thing is bad at almost everything it does basically all the time." He called it "the worst product" he's ever reviewed. He found his experiences with the device so bad that he split his review into two parts: what the device said it would be and what it actually is.
Ouch.
The review seems to have caused a stir with founder and VC types because it doesn't support the "builders," in this case, the folks at Humane. Those who've leaped to their defense are worried that Brownlee's reach — the video has over 5 million views on YouTube alone — could be enough to bury the device, and possibly the company, for good. They feel that's unfair because "these are good people trying to make good things" or whatever.
Let's call out the bullshit here. Coming to Humane's defense here instead of the consumer is utter nonsense. The money and marketing behind this product did not promise a prototype of something that could one day be a solution — it promised the solution. This was not a moonshot by some "builders" in their parent's garage. It was a hyped release from former Apple employees. They knew they were releasing a shitty product, and they were more than happy to take the SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS from any customer who fell for the schtick. Why Humane released the Pin in the broken state they did likely comes down to the same reasons behind every other shitty release in every other industry: money, money, money. We can only assume the company hoped the hype still holding up A.I. would paper off the cracks, but it has failed to do so.
Brownlee's review gets to the bottom of the shitty practice of shipping broken products and exposes it. We should be grateful to him and every other reviewer who fronted up and called it out. They saved some hapless would-be customers a lot of dough. The Pin is nothing but hot air, a big promise that was in reality just delusion, neatly packaged in shiny marketing, designed to trick unaware consumers into parting with their hard-earned cash.
It's good to see that in the case of Humane's A.I. Pin, the bubble has burst from the get-go. The device doesn't work. It doesn't deliver on its promises. It hasn't answered the big question of why it needs to exist. It's a needless product wrapped in Apple-esque marketing, where they've tried to pull out all the tricks to suck in the mugs who can't help but drool over the "next big thing." The hype got it this far — the company has been in stealth for years and managed to hoover up over $200 million in funding — but it won't carry it to the finish line. It's nothing more than potential that may never be reached.
Humane chose to deploy the 'if it's broken, ship it' playbook.
And right on cue, they've already taken the next predictable steps — the apologies and the promises.
Employees of Humane shared Brownlee's review, claiming it was "great feedback" and implying they'll take it onboard for the next version. Good for them. The company launched its roadmap stuffed with future features. It's just as expected. "Sorry it's a broken, please stick around, please keep paying your $24 monthly fee, and we'll try to make it better, probably."
As I wrote in I Kinda Hate the Internet, the users of the Internet take a lot of responsibility for the fact it sucks to use right now. The same applies here. It's we, the consumer, who let companies get away with this shit. Whenever we preorder a device, a video game, or a TV series, we signal that we are all in, without having the faintest idea what we've really signed up for. Sure, we know what we've been promised, but we should know by now that those promises are often empty. It's time we stopped buying it and took a second to see whether the company delivered what it said it would.
Humane marketed itself as a future smartphone killer. But in its greed to push out a product that doesn't really work, the tide has already turned.
The only thing it has killed is its own future.
On the Trend Mill this week
An app-less Apple — New Vision Pro apps have already bottomed out, which is bad news for a device that is struggling to find traction. From what I’ve seen across X, there have been a lot of returns (something Apple will never announce) and the company is at a crossroads. It needs to commit and push big developers/brands to get onboard, or just brush this one under the carpet.
The future of sex is bad for humanity — I stumbled upon something called Orifice AI this week, and well, you’re best just to watch the video. The A.I. tech bros are flying too close to the sun with this one. In all seriousness, perhaps it isn’t Skynet and Terminators that end humanity; it’s a world where we create A.I. lovers so real we stop procreating with other humans.
It’s time to pause on the robots — Boston Dynamic’s robots have always been impressive to watch; they’ve also been equally scary. This week’s drop features a robot that scrapes itself off the floor like some kind of deformed horror film scene. When do they reach the point of no return with these robots?
As a former apple alum I find myself getting into the mistake that Humane's cofounders are also getting into. Just because you've built world class hardware in the past doesn't mean you are guaranteed to repeat it. The product needs to solve genuine user problems.
Excellent article. You could extend this perspective to services as well. Last week I stayed at two hotels that “advertised” services that weren’t true. One said it had laundry service (I was on the road for a week) but when I arrived they said, “oh, only ever other day, and not today” (the day I was there mid trip). The other let me book and pay for a room on the “concierge lounge level” but when I arrived said, “Oh, the lounge isn’t open on Friday, Saturday or Sunday…” not was their laundry service. Both were major chain hotels of their premiere brands (Marriott and Hilton), not their bare-bones brands.
Of course there are “hotel reviews” but they have become largely useless because you have 2/10 right after 9/10 so there’s no authority in either. And the hoteliers know this, and keep on poorly delivering service. Sure, I’ll find different hotels in the future — but those two already got my money.
Something really broke over the last decade; doubly so since the pandemic. And companies are getting away with the most egregious tomfoolery to their customers…. With no end in sight.