There was a news story few days ago that Sony is launching an Ethernet controlled smart motor with integral reducer for robotics applications, and it has encoders on both sides of the reducer plus torque on output shaft. There's nothing so far on the English side of the public Internet about it, at all.
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
Apple makes gobsmack amount of profit from both devices and gambling apps(they don't do games) that easily cover costs of demo units. It'll be harder if you only sell only one type of fancy low-volume gadget at $499.
1) Why does Apple make "gobsmack amount(s) of profit"? Perhaps there's a strategy that leads to this. I believe the memes version is "Says 'because they're rich'; refuses to elaborate; leaves"
2) My example was clothing. I certainly think this makes sense as a setting in such an environment. Let you look and try. Directly sell most common sizes, transfer to online purchase for others. You can even have employees measure customers to get the right fits! Now you could even do the virtual tryons. This is very different than racks of clothes.
3) I think you forgot about stores like Sharper Image, Electronics Boutique, or Brookstone. Customers frequently would go into these stores to just see all the random gadgets and stuff. I can certainly remember going into Brookstone dozens of times yet not actually buying anything. Thing is, what these stores were good at was advertising products. But they were terrible at selling them because you could always find the same things somewhere else for cheaper, like Sears.
Like I've said, the value of many of the physical stores was not just in direct sales. That was a fine metric in the old days, but things changed and so did many other things. My original comment was a claim that a myopic view was applied, hyper focusing on the limited direct sales metric. But coke doesn't advertise to make you aware of coke nor do car companies advertise to make you aware of cars. They do things differently because their size and markets are different.
My point of a lemon market is that with the loss of ability to physically scrutinize products, you cannot tell the difference between a lemon or a peach. What I didn't say, is that this incentivizes more dark patterns like making returns difficult. Part of Amazon's quick adoption was free returns, making the downside of buying a lemon low, only costing you time. But the idea of tricking you into buying something, especially with a subscription, and making you live with the purchase sounds more like the strategy of an infomercial penis pill scam, not a blue chip business.
This isn't "if you run into assholes all day" situation, but I think it should be more widely recognized that Apple is slowly regressing into a casino franchise. They sell slot machines that also support phone and media consumption, and keep fraction of sales made on slot machines.
Online artists are more likely to be consultants and marketing experts. They "flip burgers", or rather make PowerPoints and lays out magazine articles, 12 hours a day for 8 days a week anyway. So AI only "financially" hurts them in the sense that it hurts their dopamine income.
This is more like it. Every dedicated artist I know does something else to pay the bills, from actual burger flippers to sysadmins like me. They will make time to draw things because they simply like doing it.
I really think this is why a lot of discussions and projects around generative AI and AI-relevant art don't go well. It's a one-way outside influence that also affect economy as second order effect to cultural impacts. Because economical impacts of these online arts are mere downstream effects, manipulations in that domain just don't work.
People that don't like East Asian monopoly of anime style contents. Manga and anime style contents are sold at completely broken price/performance ratio while it continues to invasively permeate into cultures globally.
There are increasingly more reports of foreign scalpers stocking couples of $5 doujinshi in weekend cons and demanding receipts, and authors are moving to block them. That's like mafias genuinely smuggling charity home baked cookies. It shouldn't make sense. This astronomical gap in supply and demand, alone, should be enough to create incentives for people to even just mess up and ruin the market.
> There are increasingly more reports of foreign scalpers stocking couples of $5 doujinshi in weekend cons and demanding receipts, and authors are moving to block them.
I haven’t heard about this. Do you have a link to some more info about this?
I don't think future tense is appropriate here as it's been few years since appearance of open weights image models. We're already transitioning into the gap phase between Napster to Vocaloid.
Audiences too. People loses interest fast for anything that something faceless can provide, whether the thing is machines or humans, or whether the act is drawing art or assembling iPhone.
... so I doubt motor torque be end all be all. Especially when Sony does it like that.
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