

Why Google Glass Will Fail - philco
https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/2a6d4f7046b1/

======
jmduke
All of these arguments would also be valid for a post in the early 80's
entitled "Why the Walkman Will Fail."

~~~
philco
Hah, that's funny, but I disagree.

The walkman delivered value I couldn't get otherwise. I wanted to carry an
extra device because I wanted music, and I couldn't play music otherwise.
(Unless I carried a boombox on my shoulder, which some people did in awesome
rap videos).

Google glass doesn't add tremendous value over what I can currently do with my
phone. It takes pictures...faster...but I can already take pictures with my
phone.

~~~
Lewisham
"Google glass doesn't add tremendous value over what I can currently do with
my phone."

Right now.

And yet, isn't one of your points that it's not a micro improvement? You're
saying here it's a micro improvement on your phone... but that's a bad thing
in your blog.

It's not hard to imagine Glass having a phone built in (in fact I'd welcome
it, the apps I really need on my phone could easily be in Glass, and I could
do without the distraction of the others), so I really am having trouble
following your arguments based on a very very beta product that has plenty of
years of runway to develop.

~~~
philco
It's not a micro-improvement on my phone. It's an additional device.

------
MrDOS
Can someone post a mirror? I'm being prompted to sign in with Twitter to view
the article, something which I have no intent of doing.

~~~
DanBC
"Google Glass is a new gadget. Other popular devices reduced the number of
gadgets I needed to carry and made life better, but Glass is an extra gadget
plus it's stupid because it doesn't do anything and what it does do it does
badly".

~~~
philco
Yep. Solid TL;DR. Should've just blogged that instead.

------
meerita
I think Glass will be awesome in certain areas, mostly related with work than
pleasure. I am not an example that represents the whole, but my guess that the
work field will be the Glass' nirvana and the rest will be covered by devices
less obstructives with your look.

~~~
philco
That's interesting. What are the work use cases you're seeing value in? (I
haven't been in a formal office for so long, I may be missing the opportunity
there entirely)

~~~
meerita
There are many uses for the profesional. Most of them related to imagery
processing I guess, and reporting.

For example:

1\. A police will start a suspect detention, then he starts recording the
procedure as well his partner, so that video goes directly to the cloud and
the police station officers can have for later reviews. This could be really
nice for example it would provide many point of views of the action done and a
police would not be charged for abuse of force if everything is recorded and,
a citizen can be protected in case the officer abuses force.

2\. inventorying. Scanning code bars, access items in a database, ask for
availability, many things related to store management can be done by
employees.

3\. Medical: doctors can record procedures and save the images/videos to their
systems, they can ask talk other doctors for opinions without even picking a
phone. They can check a patient historial with better specifics. They can
access facts inmmidiately, like "What's the level of O(2) blood has in case X,
with person who drink remedy Y". Imagine the possibilities. Or access a
vademecum, etc.

There are many uses. More than the ones I would use for fun i guess.

~~~
philco
Love all those use cases. I wonder if their launch would have been more
successful if they picked one of the above, gave it away for free to X doctors
at St. Luke's in NYC with software adapted to their niche, and waited for word
to spread about how useful they were for doctors and had metrics for the
impact they had.

Your examples make me think of segways...great for cops apparently...but not
so awesome for domestic use cases.

~~~
meerita
That was one of the perfect examples of totally high-tech stuff but really
rarely seen on private use. I only meet 3 segways owners but know dozen of
companies that use the thing for workers.

------
semiprivate
Conspiracy theory time.

What if employers start making employees wear them and have the video retained
indefinitely? So that everything you saw, said and did was recorded for your
employer to watch.

If this video streams to any online account, what’s to stop an outside agency
from getting their hands on it.

Personally, I think it's rather upsetting that the feature people always rave
about the most is the one that quickest turns us into an even more voluntary
surveillance state.

TLDR: we don't need damn cameras on our damn faces. I promise your life can be
fulfilling with out them.

------
semiprivate
I don't think it'll fail. I think it's going to be a massive success for
people already addicted to things like facebook, instagram and reddit. The
thought of never having to miss some tiny thing to share online so you can
amass a tiny bit more internet karma is too alluring to go un-utilized. The
amount of 'check out what this person said at burger king' and 'look at this
person dancing on the subway' videos is going to skyrocket.

------
Pewpewarrows
> Problem is…people who wear glasses can’t wear Google Glass.

Uhh, what? I was under the assumption, at least from all their marketing
material and everything that I've heard about Glass from other people on the
internet, that there are models that fit over your existing prescription
glasses. No?

~~~
philco
I may be wrong! Thanks for correcting me. That having been said, it should
REPLACE glasses, not be in addition to. Still doesn't solve a problem for
their prime target demo.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
What's the difference between them offering snap-on Glass over existing
prescription glasses, and offering an existing Glass model with snap-in
prescription lenses? You need to have one or the other, and in both cases it's
an addition to normal glasses, not a replacement. Your requirement can never
be satisfied for those with sub-par vision.

As for your main point: for this initial model, the main benefit it offers,
that I hear from users time and time again, is the instant photo/video
capability. Not having to dig your phone or camera out of your pocket /
handbag is a huge win for a lot of people in the initial explorer program.

But that's not why I think the product will succeed. I can see the future
potential of an always-on heads-up display, and that's just too useful to pass
up. Will it ever get there? Maybe not, but I think it has a greater chance of
that than failure.

------
bsimpson
A glasses don't replace something I already wear post from a guy who still
uses a watch.

------
throw8
"IT’s hard to explain, but I feel like there’s a barrier between us - I wonder
if they’re going to interact with Glass at some point and do something in the
middle of our conversation."

Funny, I feel the same way about cell phones.

------
rhizome
[Reads title] "Medium? Pandodaily? Techcrunch? Check."

