~/entries/teardowns/humane-ai-pin-postmortem
The Humane AI Pin: A Post-Mortem I Did Not Want to Write
It ran hot, it leaned on the palm, and it asked for $24 a month to keep doing it.
TEARDOWN // I rooted for the AI Pin. A wearable with no screen, projecting a laser ink display onto your palm, that is a genuinely brave swing, and brave swings are why I do this.
It shipped in April 2024 at $699 plus a $24 monthly plan, and the brave swing met physics. The thing ran warm against your chest, the projector was hard to read in daylight, and every interaction carried a pause while it thought. I opened mine up mostly to understand the thermals, and the answer was: there was nowhere for the heat to go.
The lesson I am taking to the shelf with the r1: ambient computing cannot also be a space heater. If a device lives on your body, the engineering budget goes to comfort and latency first and cleverness second. Humane spent it the other way around, and the body always wins that argument.
SPEC NOTE Humane's AI Pin began shipping in April 2024 at $699 plus a $24 monthly plan, projecting a laser ink display onto the wearer's palm.cd ..