From Wired, Dec 6, 2022:
The product guru made Ledger’s new hardware wallet—a tiny vault for digital cash—flashy and fun. Plus, with this gadget you’ll never get FTX’d.
When I come to Paris to see Tony Fadell’s new device, a clean rain has washed the city and the sun is out. Fadell and I hail a taxi. When he gives the address for Ledger—a maker of hardware wallets for the cryptoverse—he speaks in French, but even after six years abroad, there’s still Detroit in his voice.At the meeting we enter, everyone is speaking English. People are sitting at a large table. On the walls are labels such as PHOTO ASSETS, VIEW FROM LANDING PAGE, USER FLOW, with big printouts taped below. Fadell strides to the front of the room.“We’ve got seven weeks to pull this off,” he says. “Are we going to pull this off?”The people in the room say yes, they will pull it off. They sound confident, weary, but ready for the next round of work. Each person says what they have done since the last time they met. Fadell responds with questions. What’s the drop-dead date on the plastic blanks? Where’s the press release? Are we recording the click-click-click? I want to hear it!The click remark reminds everyone, as if they needed it, that Fadell once led the team at Apple that created the iPod, with its elegant clicky wheel and revolutionary interface. He also cofounded Nest and created its smart thermostat, which Google then acquired.Fadell circles the room to examine the printouts, which describe the product rollout. A man with a video camera follows him, recording the moment for posterity and promotional use.Fadell stops to examine a group of photos of the device: a hardware wallet called Ledger Stax. A hardware wallet is a utilitarian thing. It’s a physical lock for digital secrets. When you own cryptocurrency, your balance is protected solely by a private key that can be devilishly hard to keep safe. Ledger’s wallets, made of steel and silicon (and, OK, plastic), act as tiny vaults, but so far they have been off-putting. Much like crypto itself. Fadell is reinventing this gadget, his first major design project in years. He has come to believe that by giving it the panache of the hottest consumer gadgets, he will redirect the crypto field, just as he helped kick off digital music and the smart home.
Fadell looks at the photos of the credit-card-sized wallet and its innovative E Ink touchscreen. When Ledger reveals it on December 6, it will cost $279. That's a rounding error for those who buy Bored Apes. To add a bit of flair, the screen wraps around one side, giving it the equivalent of the spine on a book. But the photo doesn’t show this enough. “It’s very rectilinear and 2D,” he says. “Not enough spine. I’m not feeling the curve.” He frowns. “And it’s so dark.”David Sloo, a user experience designer who worked with Fadell at Nest, picks up on the critique.
“Can we be less Darth Vader and more Rebel?”
Fadell agrees. “It’s really who we are—it’s all about the Empire.”
His remark is a segue to the next panel, marked MANIFESTO. A handful of slogans are taped to the glass....
Previously:
The Creator of the iPod and the iPhone Seeks to Dethrone Tech’s Giants
It’s a crisp January morning in Paris’s 13th Arrondissement, and
outside Station F, the former freight terminal that is the epicenter of
France’s startup scene, twentysomethings climb out of cars hailed using
iPhone apps....
