[HN Gopher] The mystery of the garage
___________________________________________________________________
The mystery of the garage
Author : HR01
Score : 42 points
Date : 2024-02-22 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.strangeloopcanon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.strangeloopcanon.com)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| on General Magic:
|
| > But despite all the talent, clear obsession, technical prowess,
| and a lot of money, the infrastructure just wasn't there to make
| it work.
|
| Almost everyone was trying to make a handheld device then, and by
| the time Palm came along, the category was cursed as far as VC's
| were concerned.
|
| The infrastructure WAS there, as Palm proved. You just had to
| scale down your expectations and find a set of functionality
| people actually wanted. You also needed to give up on cursive
| recognition and trust that the users would learn a simpler method
| of entering text.
|
| The monster egos in General Magic just refused to do that, as did
| their big corporate partners, and all the other failed startups.
| ghaff wrote:
| Arguably, a lot of pieces were still missing at the time. Yes,
| Palm had a large enough early adopter market. But I also
| remember the Palm Pilot being the cool device all the engineers
| wanted but a lot of people stopped using it because keeping it
| synced in near-realtime was such a pain. It really took
| cellular betworks with relatively cheap data (and app stores)
| to bring the vision to fruition.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| No, it didn't. Read _Piloting Palm_ (you have to get a used
| copy, since it 's not on Kindle and print is expensive).
|
| The first Palm had _only_ a sync cradle with the PC. It did
| not have any wireless, and it was a huge success. The sync
| cradle gave users what they wanted.
|
| We could quibble whether all those users were "early
| adopters." Whatever you call them, there were plenty.
| ghaff wrote:
| Compared to smartphone users, they were very much early
| adopters. No wireless sync, graffiti input, etc. They were
| not really mainstream devices even if they were pretty
| successful by the standards of the time.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Invalid comparison. There were no smartphones then.
|
| The market was desktop computer users.
| ghaff wrote:
| And my point is that, as a Palm Pilot owner, it just
| wasn't really a very satisfactory solution at least for
| me and a lot of other buyers. It really took cellular
| networks and various other innovations before it was
| satisfactory for a mainstream audience. Sometimes
| technologies just aren't baked enough to be interesting
| even if there aren't any real alternatives.
| Retric wrote:
| They sold 1 million of the things in a year. The device
| had plenty of flaws, but by the millionth customer
| products are mainstream.
| ghaff wrote:
| I won't seriously argue. They had a good enough run. I
| even upgraded the one I got for free at a tradeshow at
| one point. But the synchronization and input was always
| enough of an issue that I can't say I ever found it all
| that useful in retrospect. And it always seemed to be in
| the "cool gadget" but not anything that was really
| critical.
| samatman wrote:
| The Palm Pilot reminds me of the Zip drive, another
| product from the same rough era. It met a felt need:
| floppy disks had pathetic storage, now you can buy a
| 100MB floppy disk! They sold very well for awhile.
|
| But people didn't want 100MB floppy disks, they wanted a
| way to transfer data. Flash wasn't cheap enough to sell
| in bulk, and as soon as it was, the Zip drive fell off a
| cliff, replaced with the still-ubiquitous thumb drive and
| SD card. You can argue that the Zip was a success, or
| mainstream, but you can't argue that it was equally
| successful and mainstream as thumb drives or SD cards,
| not honestly.
|
| Same deal with the Palm Pilot. For a couple years, I had
| a flip phone, a Palm Pilot, and an iPod, all three of
| which I would pack to go to classes at university. Of
| those three, the only one that felt clunky and overly
| limited was the Palm Pilot. I liked it, I used it, real
| boon to an ADD-brained kid trying to get through higher
| education, but it was notably limited and I wanted
| something better. Even tried programming it, got the
| O'Reilly "pigeon book", never got that far with it
| though.
|
| It wasn't until 2007 that those three items were
| successfully combined into one mass-market gadget,
| although there were preludes like the Danger Hiptop. Palm
| even tried to get into the smartphone game, in the first
| generation. But the original device category PDA was
| obsolete, whether or not (as it turned out, not) the
| company made the jump to the new one.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's a great analogy.
|
| Iomega made a bunch of people a lot of money and provided
| multi years employment to others.
|
| But they were an evolutionary dead-end.
|
| Whether because Zip drives (or other forms of higher-
| density non-harddrive storage) ultimately weren't very
| interesting or because networked storage ended up as
| something of a niche (although some companies play int
| that space).
|
| You can certainly make the case that they were a
| "successful" company for their time but they also
| ultimately failed.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The original post said:
|
| > But despite all the talent, clear obsession, technical
| prowess, and a lot of money, the infrastructure just
| wasn't there to make it work.
|
| and all of the ensuing discussion was what "it" was.
|
| If you're an engineer, "it" can reduce to "will I make
| money from the stock?" In fact, that was my approach. So
| ZipDrive? Great, those people probably made money. Palm?
| They got $5 a share from US Robotics, plus some USR
| shares, which in turn made money from 3Com.
|
| You can demand more out of life, of course. Nothing wrong
| with that.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "Interesting" - I define that as "a product that a lot of
| people will buy for a few years, and is profitable."
|
| I guess you have a different definition.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| Now, with housing prices going through the roof, how many would-
| be founders actually have a garage or basement in which to
| tinker?
| ghaff wrote:
| Many people who don't live close into one of the handful of
| favored metros.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| If the goal is to have cheap, dedicated space where you can
| build stuff, it probably makes a lot more sense to buy an old
| but sizable house, with land, in a remote place. These are
| cheaper than garages, and no one will be there to complain
| about the noise, or how bad your activity looks to the
| neighborhood. The cost of living tends to be cheaper than in
| metro areas too.
|
| There are drawbacks too, but it is not like you are going to
| commute, so one of the biggest one is out. For internet and
| utilities, some remote places are remarkably well served.
|
| Now, if you are doing software, you don't need any of that,
| all you need is a computer and you can do it from your
| bedroom.
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't even need to live in the mountains of Wyoming or
| wherever. I live about an hour west of Boston and have a
| 2-car garage and plenty of space for hobbies in a location
| that is not particularly expensive.
| bluGill wrote:
| You need to live, for most of us that means more than
| whatever hacking we are doing in our garage/shed. If you
| have independent wealth and no family moving to a cheap
| area might be a good option. However if you need a job to
| support yourself where you live must be in range of that
| job (though many reading this are able to work from home,
| most of the world cannot). Family means your spouse - where
| does she/he need to be for work - this limits where you can
| live just as much (and if both of you have to go to work
| what jobs both of you can take) . You can force move your
| kids to a rural area but they will not be happy about
| losing all their friends (many do this anyway, but it
| should be a consideration even if you do it to them. Family
| also means extended family - where does your sister,
| parents, in-laws live - moving away from them is hard.
| Likewise everything about family and your kids friends
| applies to your friends - do you really want to move away
| from them? There is also safety - the cheap side of town is
| often cheap for a reason, do you want to wear a bulletproof
| vest around all the time?
|
| So realistically: cannot move to a cheap house on some
| land.
| cdchn wrote:
| Many had hopes for the TechShop / Hackerspace paradigm to help
| with this, but it appears it didn't end up too viable as a
| business and Hackerspaces were problematic in their own ways.
| ghaff wrote:
| Hackerspaces and non-corporate coworking sort of spaces
| probably suffer from the fact that people want to have a
| space in a cool/dense place but don't actually have the
| means/desire to pay for it which is a big part of why they
| want the space in the first place.
| burnished wrote:
| There are some spaces like that in Seattle that seem to be
| getting on fine, a Makerspace with a monthly fee
| (appropriate for access to wood and metal shops as well as
| various printing and cutting options, but too expensive for
| me when I was working in the restaurant industry) and some
| tool libraries with work spaces (free, volunteer run) are
| the ones I'm familiar with.
|
| Just wanted to point out that there are probably places to
| go to get that itch scratched just under a different name -
| I think my examples actually sort of underline that it
| isn't exactly a booming industry.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not saying that such spaces don't/can't exist. Just
| that the market for individuals plopping down cash for
| desks/workbenches outside of where they live is fairly
| limited. I know someone who tried running such in London
| for a number of years and it was apparently always a
| difficult business. Of course some areas are much cheaper
| but the demand is less too.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is a hacker space near me - but near isn't good
| enough to join. By the time I get the kids to bed I
| couldn't even get there and back before my own bedtime. I
| can go to my basement/garage and work in that time and do
| something. I have a nice shed full of tools, but by the
| time I get out there (it is only 10 meters from the door,
| but that means shoes, coat...) I can't really find time
| to get anything done so I end up with a separate workshop
| with much less tools, but at least it is easy to get to.
| ghaff wrote:
| For someone working full-time, especially with family,
| absent a hobby with a lot of specialized equipment needs
| like photography back in the day, it's a bit hard to
| imagine the justification for spending the time the time
| in a hacker space you pay for more than occasionally. The
| random Meetup--sure. but somewhere you go to on a regular
| weekly cadence? Harder to imagine.
| rout39574 wrote:
| Care to elaborate on those ways? As an officer in a
| Hackerspace, I'm likely oblivious to how I'm problematic.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Currently don't have a garage but I do have a basement
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| The actual 'garage startup' is bit of a myth, played up as a
| rags to riches story. Most startups happen in personal spaces
| like bedrooms or home offices or rented offices and are often
| better funded than you might think. Or the 'garage' was just a
| very temporary thing and mostly for storage/laziness/clutter.
| Even Woz debunks this:
|
| "The garage is a bit of a myth," Wozniak told Businessweek. "We
| did no designs there, no breadboarding, no prototyping, no
| planning of products. We did no manufacturing there."
|
| Today a "garage startup" just really means they're just
| starting out, self-funding, or under-funded.
| cocoa19 wrote:
| Also, having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not
| exactly rags. It means you can afford a car (first barrier),
| you can afford a covered structure to park your car (second
| barrier), you can afford to use your garage as a hobby space
| (third barrier).
|
| It's somewhat normal for the average American, but not
| anywhere else in the world.
| jdsully wrote:
| The garage was a story of economic mobility for the middle
| class. It was never aimed at people in abject poverty.
| There were stories about going from troubled neighborhoods
| to college as well during the time when America still
| believed in class mobility.
|
| The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title.
| There was never a promise of mobility and this is what made
| America and its legends different for all its failings.
| Going back to this world will not improve things for the
| better.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > The world of the 1800s was a world of hereditary title
|
| what book did you read that in?
|
| "titles" never existed in the US. And AFAIK, there
| weren't any "garage startups" in countries that still had
| them in the 1800s.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The US of the 1800s was a world in which you could
| legally own another human being, right up until December
| 6, 1865. Those born into bondage were condemned to live
| as such and had no legal way to change their personal
| status. This is kind of the ultimate form of a hereditary
| title.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Before the Civil War, slavery was only legal in the
| South. After it: nowhere.
|
| Being a slave was not a "hereditary title" in any common
| sense of the word, which was "duke" or "earl" or "lord."
| As in Europe.
| bluGill wrote:
| The US was one of the rare exceptions to the hereditary
| title thing. Most countries still had them in some form,
| though the big players today were throwing them off. (the
| English monarchs never used their power of veto, though
| they still have a lot of influence on the text of laws)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| can you point to a garage startup NOT in the US?
| ghaff wrote:
| Taken literally, in the US, it tends to imply a house in
| the suburbs in an environment where an uninsulated attached
| garage can more or less be used year-round. Which, as you
| say, is far more common in many areas of the US than
| elsewhere.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| "privileged" -- you mean "middle class" right?
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| > having a garage is to be in a privileged position, not
| exactly rags. It means you can afford a car
|
| I have lived in plenty of houses with garages or garage-
| like structures and I have never parked a car in there
|
| Why waste all that beautiful storage space on something you
| can leave out on the street?
| lsy wrote:
| The 2nd episode of Stewart Brand's BBC series "How Buildings
| Learn" is called "The Low Road" and also addresses the use of
| inexpensive or undesirable space.
|
| Ultimately part of making room for innovation means allowing
| people to take risks, and that mechanism has in recent years
| shifted from wide availability of low-cost resources to wide
| availability of speculative capital to obtain high-cost
| resources.
| chrisdhoover wrote:
| And a whole genre of music is named after the garage practice
| space.
| cdchn wrote:
| And before they started turning into luxury "loft" apartments
| disused factories/warehouses were perfect environments to set
| up micro "practice spaces."
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| I don't know if it's so much a genre of music as a status
| designation.
|
| "Garage band" to me says an outfit so far from being successful
| that they can't afford rehearsal space, transport to get to
| one, etc
| OJFord wrote:
| No 'garage' is also a music genre. I'm not into music really
| (certainly not that kind) but I think it's in some way
| related to but to mark distinction from 'house'.
|
| Of course funnily enough 'the house band' could also be a
| thing, but neither is related to the genre of that name.
|
| Edit: oh, seems it's a UK thing, so perhaps you weren't to
| know - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_garage. Though also
| older 'garage rock' (60s) on the disambiguation page.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| This might contribute in a big way to the economic dynamism and
| entrepreneurship culture of the United States (and not just in
| tech/silicon valley). The garage (and excess/sub-standard space
| generally) is a big component of American housing and explicitly
| included in houses and touted as a selling point.
|
| Not true in Europe and other parts of the world, where excess
| space can be a rarity or is improved to be living area.
| aurizon wrote:
| The Wrights are a bad example, being classical patent trolls -
| they held back US aviation so severely that the UK and Europe
| were able to leave the USA in the dust. Wright would not allow
| use or experimentation before an agreement was signed and this
| blocked all but military(with their mandated exemption re:
| Patents) who imported European/UK planes were able to progress,
| but commercial aviation was dead in the water. Once the patents
| expired the USA soared ahead...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers_patent_war
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > classical patent trolls
|
| No, a "patent troll" is an entity that doesn't produce
| anything. Not one that actually developed things.
|
| They did exploit their patents, but that was hardly unusual at
| the time. Henry Ford, in fact, was a victim of that, too,
| although obviously he overcame it.
| Isamu wrote:
| It's mysterious only if you subscribe to some myth of capitalist
| supremacy, that is that nothing starts without capital. Everyone
| is powerless because they lack the levers of capital.
|
| When in fact many starts are without capital, outside of it, in
| cheap spaces and without any permission. There is a bootstrapping
| that happens to develop the idea or product.
|
| Capital can be then dragged in to finance the growth necessary to
| reach the goal of the organization. Capital is shy, a risk averse
| creature that must be coaxed into supporting the next important
| boom.
| esafak wrote:
| A garage is just an office for people who can't afford one yet.
| Let's not overthink this.
| favourable wrote:
| They're sometimes called 'home labs' too.
| didgetmaster wrote:
| My wife asked me why I didn't throw out my old computer that I
| started coding my hobby project on years ago (a new kind of data
| management system). The computer is hopelessly outdated (a core2
| duo) so I never use it anymore and the thrift store won't even
| take stuff like that as a donation.
|
| I explained to her that it could be very valuable someday or used
| as a museum piece once my system is widely adopted and changes
| the world. I don't think she bought that argument.
| favourable wrote:
| > I explained to her that it could be very valuable someday
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/17/first-gen...
| ghaff wrote:
| I've thrown out or recycled many hundreds of pounds of computer
| equipment over the years. Even if I were able to pass it on to
| someone who briefly appreciated it, it's not worth it.
| dboreham wrote:
| You can always buy stuff back on eBay when it starts to become
| not junk but before it's super valuable. I have a KIM-1,
| AIM-65, HP-85, PDP-11/23 bought in the last couple of years on
| that basis. We're a few decades away from a Core 2 Duo being
| not junk.
| bluGill wrote:
| Why do you think it will be valuable? Some old things are junk
| that nobody wants. Some are valuable. There is no way to know
| which is what.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Here's a nice guide to home-garage-level designing and
| prototyping of electronic devices:
|
| https://predictabledesigns.com/how-to-develop-and-prototype-...
|
| Note however that the post-design prototyping stage is all done
| with off-the-shelf boards and similar components, there are no
| recommendations for developing surface mount soldering skills [1]
| or home semiconductor fabs[2], which are indeed cool but more in
| the hobby/art space. (look up 'surface mount assembly' on YT for
| why, e.g. Bittele)
|
| [1] https://www.eevblog.com/forum/beginners/a-beginners-guide-
| to...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/story/22-year-old-builds-chips-
| parents...
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| It's the only place in the house where the wife can't harass her
| husband to tidy up.
| tfandango wrote:
| In fact that's where the wife puts the stuff she doesn't know
| what to do with.
| graycat wrote:
| For the original post (OP): Didn't see any mention of _market_.
| Hard work, youth, talent, dreams, obsession, dedication, novelty,
| risk taking, and an available empty garage -- these don 't mean
| that there is or will be a market. No market, no successful
| company.
|
| As I read the OP, all or nearly all the successes had two things
| in common but not mentioned: (1) There was a market or nearly so;
| i.e., there was a _nascent_ market. Plenty of people wanted the
| product or soon would after seeing it. (2) Not only was there at
| least a nascent market, due to various external circumstances,
| that market was growing quickly.
|
| Exercise:
|
| Ford cars? NYC had lots of horses and, thus, some very _dirty_
| streets. Cars didn 't poop. Out in the country, a Model T was a
| better way to get to the retail stores in the nearest town than
| horse power.
|
| "External circumstances:" The oil industry was ready to supply
| gasoline and lubrication. The oil industry? The steamship Titanic
| was powered by oil. Wars, which wanted motor powered vehicles.
|
| Google? The Internet was exploding in bytes per second, users,
| uses, revenue, .... For many parts, especially _social_ media,
| and as a whole, the Internet had a _gravitational_ effect, i.e.,
| the bigger it became, the faster it grew in, e.g., number of new
| users, revenue, ..., per month. So, quickly there became a need
| for Internet (Web) search, and Google grew.
|
| Facebook? As in the movie _The Social Network_ , the small start
| of _Hot or Not_ at Harvard spread quickly among universities and
| then, as it became _social_ with the _gravitational_ effect, had
| explosively rapid growth and, thus, both contributed to and
| benefited from the _gravitational_ effect in general of the Web,
| Internet, microprocessor based computing, etc.
|
| Boeing? From cars, gasoline engine technology to power the
| airplanes. Wars for a market. Planes that could take off and land
| on water -- the planes didn't need airports and provided a faster
| way to cross oceans.
|
| So, in general: The economy moves along and creates a new need,
| i.e., a nascent market. Some likely new circumstances make it
| possible to meet this need, make the nascent market real. Then
| more circumstances make the market grow quickly. Timed just
| right, not too early, not too late, sometimes even a garage sized
| startup can meet the need and grow quickly.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Woz debunks the started in a garage story[0]
|
| > Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says that the notion the great
| company started in a garage is "a bit of a myth."
|
| [0] https://www.cnet.com/culture/woz-no-apple-was-not-started-
| in...
| eternityforest wrote:
| I think it's a lot harder to find projects worth doing. You're
| (probably?) not gonna make the next ASML in a garage.
|
| Everything is networked together, a lot of tech is very important
| to people's lives, and there are fewer repair people. There's a
| strong incentive to use stuff that's made by the billions and can
| be replaced tomorrow with Amazon Prime if needed, especially if
| it comes with lots of cloud value adds.
|
| It's hard to find a project that isn't done by 40 people on
| AliExpress.
|
| There's still highly specialized stuff, and things that require
| breakthroughs in basic science or cost engineering (Someone
| please make mass spectrometry and XRF a consumer grade thing so
| we can see what has lead in it!), but for the most part... people
| who can afford startup products pretty much have everything they
| need.
| bluGill wrote:
| Everything builds on everything else. If you want to make a new
| GPU - you cannot be competitive without a large team and large
| backing. However there is an ecosystem of GPUs to choose from
| so if you want to make something that uses a GPU you can just
| buy one and build it in your garage. 30 years ago you could not
| have made something that needed a GPU - they didn't exist yet
| (the forerunners existed at SGI and the like - but they were
| not affordable)
|
| No amount of passion would have got the right brothers of 1850
| flying - there was too much about making an airplane that
| wasn't invented (the ICE engine needed to be developed to
| enough efficiency, and metals light enough to work needed to
| exist) However when the metal industry developed eventually
| metals that can work were available to anyone. Better metals
| are available to me today, all I'm lacking is an idea/passion
| for something that is not possible. (though metals of today are
| not that much better)
| tejohnso wrote:
| What stands out to me among the examples is that amazing things
| can be achieved when a small number of highly motivated
| (obsessed) people get together in a space with few distractions
| and plenty of freedom to experiment.
| koliber wrote:
| The only obvious conclusion is that to start the next unicorn
| company you must get access to the best garage possible.
| cobertos wrote:
| If only city ordinances weren't getting more restrictive with
| time. Would be hard to do some of this stuff today when some
| cities ban working on your car in your garage.
| hasbot wrote:
| What are some example cities?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't know cities, but I have seen plenty of HOAs ban it.
| Usually because there will be one bad apple that makes their
| home garage into a makeshift auto shop (and it will effect
| neighbors).
| Schnitz wrote:
| And even then, where is it actually being enforced outside an
| HOA?
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