SlightlyCyberpunk (@[email protected])

@[email protected] I think Sun's Project Looking Glass might have beaten them by a couple years too ;) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JXv8VlpoK_g I remember watching demos of that thing in highschool thinking it was SO COOL...now I understand why *almost* none of those ideas went anywhere, and the ones that did persist are nearly unrecognizable. Sure, you can flip through your music collection as album art, but who wants to be spinning discs like a jukebox?? Once the novelty wears out it's just an obnoxious UI. I think part of it might be that these things are really good tech demo *because* they're such shit as actual technology. I have seen *so many* iterations of the "post-it notes on your desktop!" crap and NOBODY ever wants that...because you aren't using those things because you just love writing on little yellow squares, it's entirely about the physicality of the object. So it's a fun challenge to see how much of that physicality you can replicate on the machine, but then you've built something that uses none of the strengths of the machine and is only a poor imitation of something so ubiquitous that everyone already has...but it's impressive to the tech folks so it goes in the demo, and since it's in the demo everyone expects it to be in the product too.