
Snapchat launches Spectacles V2 - AnatMl2
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/26/snapchat-spectacles-2/
======
oflannabhra
With kids, I have often wished to be able to capture a short moment, after it
occurred. I hate having my phone out and recording my 2 year old daughter,
because it changes her behavior (and I think trains her to be a bit
narcissistic).

I'd gladly pay more than $150 for that ability, but I just don't think
Spectacles are it.

Someone, sometime, _will_ crack that nut, though, and I'll gladly throw them
my money. Google seems to be trying to do it with Clips [0].

[0] - [https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17055618/google-clips-
sma...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17055618/google-clips-smart-camera-
review)

~~~
013a
Interestingly, I think Microsoft has a solution in this category... on the
Xbox. "Xbox Record That" goes back in time and records the last 30 seconds of
gameplay.

This is how Google Clips should have worked. You can't trust AI algorithms to
know exactly when something should be recorded. But, if they're constantly
recording and throwing away video, then imagine yelling "Ok Google, record
that" to your Google Home, it could instruct all the Clips you have in your
house to save the last 2 minutes, then give you an interface to select and
edit the videos you want.

How Google didn't think of this integration is beyond me. Sometimes they live
twenty years in the future. Sometimes they miss things that are so blatantly
obvious that Microsoft has a solution already.

But I also question the motive. This idea that we need to record everything
for the future is very recent, definitely motivated by human psychology to
collect things and escape the clutches of time. We've lived for thousands of
years without it. Why do we need it now? Nostalgia? We already know that
Facebook and Insta are bad for your brain by showing you the "surface perfect"
lives that all your friends seem to live.

What, then, is the psychological impact of living in the "beautiful past"
instead of the moment. You're trading time and money today to collect these.
When we recall memories, especially positive ones, our brains add
imperceptible flair to them, helping us cherish them even more. This is lost
when we take and watch videos of everything, recording the absolute truth of
moments in our past. We post them to Facebook. We embarrass our children later
in life with them. Its... weird.

~~~
chrischen
Nvidia offers this, but both Xbox and Nvidia's feature only apply to gameplay
footage on your computer.

~~~
raihansaputra
Minor correction: not just gameplay on computer, you can continuously record
your desktop too (for whatever reason)

------
iDemonix
I'm surprised to see them have another go at this after the first go flopped.
I always thought one of the main issues, which apparently they've addressed
but it doesn't seem so, is that they're aimed at an age range that highly
prioritises fashion and style - and yet they release a v2 that's almost as
ugly as the first, and that my grandma wouldn't be seen dead in.

~~~
spyspy
I'd actually applaud them for buckling down and improving on what I believe is
still a good idea. I actually wish you could set them to instantly go to your
story rather than having to transfer the photos to your phone and do it
manually later.

~~~
wonder_bread
>"I actually wish you could set them to instantly go to your story rather than
having to transfer the photos to your phone and do it manually later."

Is there any word on why this is? These would be a lot better if I could just
click the button on the glasses and have it post to my story automatically (I
understand this means the user wouldn't be able to add any overlay effects but
I feel like the vantage point of the video is the main attraction to posting
it in the first place). With this friction it makes the process a bit less
sexy.

~~~
spyspy
Probably having a constant connection drains the battery much faster.

~~~
jfaat
Would you need a constant connection? Auto-uploading to the phone if it’s in
range after each recording would drain the battery faster but with their
advertised ~2 day battery (one week of use on 4 case charges) it doesn’t seem
impossible, it seems like a trade-off they decided not to make.

------
bflesch
To me, the circular video format is an amazing new feature. Now no longer you
need to worry about how you hold your phone, and your friends can view it in
any fashion they'd like to.

I wonder if they built a proprietary video codec for this or whether they were
able to adapt an existing one to circular content.

Also, people are used to spending hundreds of dollars on nice sunglasses, it
is clever to go after that spending. $150 for sunglasses merged with a gopro
is amazing.

I'm not a big snapchat user but I respect them very much for shipping this
product.

~~~
untog
It's just a normal video, warped. Someone already made an iOS module that'll
replicate what the app does:

[https://github.com/gizmosachin/Monocle](https://github.com/gizmosachin/Monocle)

~~~
nakedrobot2
it's not warped. a camera lens is round, it makes a circular image. here that
circle is smaller than the sensor. all they're doing is wasting 1/2 the
sensor's pixels :)

~~~
adrianmonk
If they can get a square (rather than rectangular) sensor, and if my math is
right, it's a lot less than half..

A circle has an area of pi _r^2. And it fits just inside a square whose sides
are length 2_ r, and whose area is thus (2 _r)^2 or 4_ r^2.

Therefore, the circle fills pi/4 of the square. So only 21.5% of the pixels
are wasted.

It gets worse if they use a rectangular sensor, though. With a 4:3 rectangular
sensor, it's 41.1% wasted. For 3:2, it's 47.6%. And for 16:9, it's 55.8%
wasted.

------
some_random
I can understand why this might be of interest to some people, but V2 is still
a long way from something I think most people will want.

10 seconds of video, up to 30 if you keep poking the thing? Some commenters
are acting like it's a gopro, it's not even close. How frequently are you
doing something you want to record that exceeds 30 seconds?

Not to mention the round output, not a bad thing for a casual social media
post, but what if you want literally anything other than that?

Oh, and of course your $150 purchase will only work through a proprietary app
that adds another step to getting your pictures and media out.

Hard pass.

~~~
chrischen
Proprietary app to you, but main chat app to others.

------
o_____________o
I like the idea of these, but Snapchat is unusable now – and I'm saying this
as a fan of their esoteric UI. Their app has become stupefyingly bad,
primarily from forcing a ton of random celebrities and tabloid content into
the stream of people you intended to follow. It also grinds my modern Android
to a halt pretty frequently.

~~~
erk__
They have added a tab with subscribed content where all the tabloid content
not is (except if you subscribe to it)

~~~
o_____________o
There are people that I follow in the publisher/subscriber sense that aren't
Friends so aren't in the mercifully clean section. Instead, I would have to
wade through the random ordering in the tabloid section to find them.

It's too bad they didn't take content curation a little more seriously (or
personalized, at least). The in-app content seemed almost revolutionary in the
beginning, especially those from more serious publishers that explored one
topic over multiple high-design pages. It turned into AOL before it had time
to mature.

------
CameronBanga
Can people actually buy these? My brother is the biggest user of SnapChat I
know (dozens of posts a day?) and wanted a pair, but had to wait for me to
travel to NYC to buy some for him at their temporary store. It was either
that, or follow some web page in hopes that a random track showed up somewhere
within driving distance.

~~~
blairbeckwith
> The $150 V2s are $20 more than the old version and only available on Snap’s
> app and site — no Amazon, pop-up stores or vending SnapBots. And V1 owners
> will get a firmware update that lets them take photos.

First 20% of the article.

------
hesdeadjim
Make them look like a pair of Raybans instead of the current bubbly design and
they’ve sold me.

------
spycamv2
Spectacles V2, or as some may call it, Snapchat's 2nd attempt at mass
commercializing body-worn spycams.

It's a dual-use tech.

The consumers will be the ones fronting the cost for and implementing further
mass surveillance and state infiltration into our private and personal life.

------
adamnemecek
They haven’t learned anything.

~~~
mkirklions
Eh, a billion dollar company has a marketing department that said they should
go for a second try of this.

They probably studied it, asked customers to try it, etc...

Lets see what a billion dollar company comes up with. If nothing else, it
pushes innovation a little forward.

~~~
adamnemecek
I'm guessing that this isnt the case. I'm guessing that it's yet again another
instance of Evan Spiegel believing he knows what customers want the best
despite evidence indicating otherwise.

------
stronglikedan
In the first demo POV video of the article, the girl has to push them back up
on her face after a simple spin. I would think they would need to stay up on
their own to maintain a proper POV perspective. I'm surprised they didn't re-
shoot that. Is that a selling point?

------
johnrob
The underwater capability could be huge. Given the timing here (mid spring in
northern hemisphere), I suspect Snapchat is fully aware of this killer
feature. Influencers could have fun with it while enticing the masses to buy a
pair.

------
prdonahue
People still use Snapchat?

Granted I'm a bit old for their target demographic but it's a ghost town as
far as I can see (when I open it once a month). Seems like everyone has
migrated to Instagram Stories.

~~~
davisonio
Absolutely not true for my demographic (18 UK). Everybody is using Snapchat
stories still because it's more "personal". Instagram Stories are used mostly
by brands.

------
prophesi
Is there a Spectacles alternative that has a developer SDK?

Preferably with a sleek design that doesn't scream "I am wearing a computer on
my face."

------
guiomie
Bought the V1s, used them for only 1 trip, then I stopped using them because
what I care is sharing with people on facebook not on snapchat. I've got a
water oriented trip coming up, and am tempted to buy them, but then,
everything is trapped in snapchat, so whats the point?

~~~
chrischen
You can export video clips.

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otp124
Not really stylish, as the article wants you to believe. But under-water
capable is pretty cool. Either way, I've never used Snapchat so I'm not the
target audience.

------
petercooper
Actually purchasable online AND in the UK this time, so I've bought some.
First Spectacles weren't available here at all.

------
drb91
Any chance it saves to anything other than snapchat?

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dasanman
April fools? lol

------
dingo_bat
Article does a terrible job of explaining the differences between this and v1.
I got:

\- yellow ring is gone

\- you can click photos

\- exports are always HD

If this is the entire list then I dunno how snap plans to sell them any better
than v1.

~~~
lavezzi
\- Slimmer case

\- Faster video transfers

\- waterproof

\- slimmer frames with nicer colours

\- prescription options

Also the article lists most of the features in the first paragraph, so I
hardly consider that a legitimate criticism of the content.

------
username223
Why does Techcrunch publish marketing spam (money), and why did you post it
here (money?)?

~~~
solarkraft
doubt; i consider this noteworthy for the tech industry.

~~~
username223
That says very little for the tech industry. This is the low-effort ad copy
pasted on top of an obnoxious photo of a model biting her tongue and
pretending to smile:

> Photos, not just video. No yellow ring alerting people to the camera.
> Underwater-capable. Classier colors with lighter lenses. Prescription
> options. Faster syncing. And a much slimmer frame and charging case.

Techcrunch should have sold out for a bit more.

------
pm90
Probably an Off Topic comment, but I still can't see the appeal in sharing so
much of your life through social media. What is the point, exactly? To show
how cool/amazing life you have? Is that need really so strong that you will:

1\. But a $150 product and

2\. Wear it even if you don't want to?

As someone else has pointed out, although they are certainly more stylish that
Google Glass and Spectacles v1, their design is still pretty ugly (IMO). I
think if they really wanted to crack into the celebrities/fashion market, they
should have worked with an actual high-end fashion designer to get nicer
designs.

------
igetspam
Glassholes v3? I can't help but feel there's something deeply wrong with a
world that voluntarily signs up for and actively participates in creating a
surveillance state. After all the stories, we still haven't learned anything.

Whatever happened to Privacy Visor? As stupid as I'd look walking around with
those crazy glasses, it seems like it's becoming the sane way to live.

------
dwighttk
I understand that I don't even get Snapchat, so I'm not the target for this,
but wow, that is not even sort of interesting.

You have to disconnect your phone from WiFi to connect to the glasses' WiFi to
transfer data? I'm not interested in trying to get those glasses connected to
WiFi, but I'm also not sure this is a better option.

~~~
jannotti
I don't think I'm the target market either, but it seems to be a good fit as a
GoPro competitor. At least in as much as people are often buying GoPros for
Point-of-view vacation videos.

(And GoPros also use wifi to download, which is what me made me think of it in
reply to you.)

~~~
tbassetto
Spectacles record for 10s only (30s if you press 2 more times) and do not let
you record in 4k or change FPS. Hardly a good fit as a GoPro competitor.

~~~
jannotti
I hadn't seen that yet. Annoying limitation, and you're right.

------
madeel
How about spending the same amount of money to build cheap usable glasses for
blind people. No we are too ego washed to try anything that benefits humanity.

As long as the geeks shout innovation on cheap money we'll bank on the
idiocracy of the masses.

~~~
seattle_spring
Why in the hell would it be Snapchat's responsibility to build vision tools
for blind people?

~~~
madeel
that's like saying why is it U.S responsibility to export Democracy by funding
terrorism

~~~
seattle_spring
It's not really at all. You're comparing a private company to one of (if not
the) most powerful nation in the world?

