

Why I'm Returning Google Glass - tanglesome
http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&doc_id=265693&

======
pkfrank
>It feels very prototype-ish and I can't help but feel that it's the precursor
to something better Google might even be working on now as we try these.

^^ This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair
and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful
statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for
$1500, he wants to be blown away _now_.

He doesn't want to pay a substantial premium "just" to be part of a privileged
set of early-adopters. Everyone knows that this is still a beta, and
improvements are on the way, so he's just saying the current iteration can't
push him over the hump to hold onto the device (as opposed to recoup his
cash).

~~~
rsl7
> While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a
> particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product.

This is an unfinished product and he wants his $ back because the user
experience leaves him cold. He's not investing in Google - he's buying an
actual product. And clearly he is skeptical that this particular product will
ever live up to its potential.

Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible
potential and was an excellent actual product.

~~~
Goronmon
>Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible
potential and was an excellent actual product.

Or as someone else mentioned, contrast this to a console devkit. Imagine
someone making a blogpost about how they are returning their Xbox One devkit
because there aren't any good games for it.

~~~
baddox
Is Google Glass marketed as a developer kit, or even as a prototype or "first
run" device? All the FEM I've seen is very polished (leading me to believe the
company wants me to think the product is polished) and seems to be catering to
a mainstream audience.

Compare this to the Oculus Rift, which explicitly sells a "development kit"
and even requires checking a box that says "I understand this hardware is
intended for developers and it is not a consumer product." And, as an aside,
the Oculus Rift development kit is a much more polished and functional product
than the current generation of Google Glass.

~~~
Finster
Yes, I think Project Glass has been pretty clear about this being a first run
device. That's why the participants are referred to as "Explorers". The point
is to start mapping out use cases and fine tuning the UX.

Source: My wife is getting her Glass in a few weeks.

~~~
malandrew
They should have avoided being cute and simply called it a "Developer Kit"
instead of targeting it towards "Explorers".

I don't know about you, but the use of "Explorers" is broad enough and appeals
to the ego enough to be inclusive of a pretty large swath of society that is
going to be disappointed by the device. "Developer Kit" pretty much describes
exactly what audience it is actually ready for.

------
portmanteaufu
The first paragraph says it all.

> "Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of
> anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after
> much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my
> $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere."

He shelled out for a beta product and was disappointed when it was, well, a
beta product. More than that, even -- it was a beta version of a product which
is the very first of its kind. I'm glad he was able to get his money back, but
I'm not sure why he was surprised.

~~~
arkades
While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people
not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's _beta testing_. If you
ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised
expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant
luxury good.

I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by
weeding out the less-passionate, you bias them towards strong positive
responses - but they did cross "beta testing" and "luxury goods" wires.

~~~
deelowe
I don't get this. The current release is meant for developers, journalists and
"technologists." Google was very up front about this. It's not intended to be
a consumer product. Complaining about it at this point seems akin to someone
getting a console devkit and complaining there's no games available and those
cost 10s of thousands of dollars.

Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to
create some sort of secret selective list for early access.

~~~
ewbuoi
Complaining about it did get his blog to (at least) the top 4 on hacker news.

------
ambiate
I'm actually wearing Glass for my last day too.

First off, I do not have toys to communicate with Glass. I realize that Glass
is too early. There are not enough data dumping devices available at decent
prices. Withings, vehicle data, health data, all the things people try to keep
private. That kind of data is what would be useful with Glassware.

The lack of a SDK and depending on RESTful services. I want to toy with
sensors too. Delayed gratification does not work. Where are my long nights of
programming?

Battery life and destroying my cell's data plan are also issues. I'll miss
watching people's faces light up when they try it on.

~~~
lnanek2
The Android SDK works fine with it. Turn on debugging mode on the Glass and
code away. Sensors are no problem:
[http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-
sensors-...](http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-in-
google-glass)

Google even flat out stated at Google IO that the upcoming GDK will just be
the Android SDK plus extra classes you compile against.

~~~
ambiate
OK, now you have got me interested. I really have not heard anything about
this. You may have just made my week. I was getting quite depressed about the
money I wasted.

I can only run APKs on Glass while in USB debug mode? There is no way to
actually execute the program again without being in the debugger, correct?

~~~
myko
You can install a third party launcher on Glass. Here's one that lets you
switch between launching APKs and the standard Glass interface pretty easily:

[https://github.com/kaze0/launchy](https://github.com/kaze0/launchy)

There's also a Mirror API based Glass app that lets you launch apks, but it's
a bit more work setting up. It actually requires you install a couple APKs as
well: [https://pontedivetro.appspot.com/](https://pontedivetro.appspot.com/)

------
cromwellian
Imagine that you buy an Xbox or Playstation DevKit, they cost 10x as much as
an actual console that is shipped. There is precious little software except
samples and demos, and you are expected to be a tester of buggy and incomplete
stuff as well as potentially develop.

And then you go and complain about how you shelled out thousands and there was
nothing to do, and other devices will cost a fraction in the future.

Do people not understand that Glass is primarily intended for developers and
dogfooders?

I think the #ifihadglass program was a mistake. They should have kept it
limited to people attending Google I/O or other bonafide developers. I
understand they wanted to have it tested by a diverse group of people in the
real world and not just developers, but the wide ranging audience they were
seeking also happens to be the people who don't seem to understand what
devkits are.

------
alanctgardner2
Let me be the first to say: if you don't want it, feel free to sell it to me
(seriously, email in my profile). I tried some out when I was visiting the Bay
Area and I did think they were amazing and magical; YMMV.

edit: The author mentions that he wasn't interested in developing an app for
Glass anyways; I thought that was half the point of the Explorer program
(unless you're a skydiver/ballerina/whatever who can produce awesome marketing
content).

~~~
srik
The TOS probitis reselling, loaning or transferring.

~~~
TylerE
I don't think a TOS can override first sale doctrine on the physical hardware,
can it?

Or was the initial "purchase" actually structured as a rental or lease?

~~~
nhangen
They can't prevent you from selling it, but they can revoke your access to the
API.

------
aptimpropriety
In the summer of 2007 I was doing a bunch of research as to whether or not to
buy a few shares of $100-$130 Apple stock. I knew the iPhone was coming, and I
thought it was going to be big. The reason I eventually decided the iPhone was
going to be a loss? Rumors of a Google phone, which I thought would be the
end-all.

Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how
Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require
a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the
other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a
polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very
long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you
could say this is even more the case with hardware.

I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will
be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere
else.

------
l1ghtm4n
I can't help but have a little CueCat-ish response to Glass. I don't wear
glasses and don't care to. So Glass saves me from having to take my smart
device out of my pocket by having something on my face all day?

NB: I've seen plenty of these around but haven't actually played with one.

------
Schuback
I had the unique experience of borrowing a pair of Google Glass for a multi-
day hackathon. The very first thing I did was figure out how to develop and
install actual Android apps on it, because the "card" system isn't conducive
to developing interesting applications. Frankly I'd rather go with a smart
watch if cards are all I could do.

During my time with Glass I prototyped 3D interactive software where you could
load up models of human body parts, physical structures, etc, and swipe the
side to rotate them around and view from all angles. This ran pretty well on
the embedded processor, and I was importing relatively large 3D models.

As well, I tried running computer vision algorithms on the device. This did
not go so well. I could not run a basic Canny edge detection algorithm at more
than 1 FPS. FYI this algorithm - and similarly complex ones - are fundamental
to doing anything remotely useful in image processing. The alternative is
doing all your image processing offline, which may be fine in the future as
internet becomes super fast. Some people are doing facial recognition like
this, at a whopping 2 FPS.

About the product. There's the issue of the screen size. Small, hard to focus
on, and up to the right. Not really conducive to augmenting your vision. I
think it's fair to say that Glass was meant as an information retrieval device
- which again, makes me wonder, why not just use a smart watch? Frankly I
think the screen quality could be better on the watch too.

All in all, the platform is an interesting foray into wearable computing but I
reckon it will take multiple iterations (and years) to get it to the point
where I can run more interesting CV and AR applications. In the meantime, I've
been building my own wearable computing hardware to enable the types of
software I want to build. The Alan Kay quote, and all that.

~~~
maffydub
How were you implementing the Canny edge detector? As a GLSL shader or on the
CPU?

I implemented a (simple, not quite Canny) edge detector in GLSL and it runs
fast enough not to be distracting ([https://github.com/matt-
williams/Optometrist](https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist)).

I've tried using OpenCV (which isn't GPU-accelerated on Glass because I think
OpenCV is only accelerated on Tegra) - this _was_ too slow.

~~~
Schuback
Yep, via OpenCV. If I still had access to Glass I'd love to try out your
library. Do you have any first-person videos of your application? If you have
an iPhone 5 you can hold it up to the prism in good lighting and record first-
person (it's a real pain though).

~~~
maffydub
I don't have any first-person videos yet, but I should give it a go. (I don't
have an iPhone 5, but I can try with my HTC One X.) I'll link to it from the
project's github page.

------
brandynwhite
I've been wearing glass for a while now and am active in development (see
[http://openglass.us](http://openglass.us)), there are a few select groups of
people I'd recommend it to at this point: developers (it's a
fun/simple/exciting platform to write for), researchers (just like with the
kinect, it makes it much easier to reproduce experiments), people who are
constantly running around town while being in contact with others
(business/sales people), who drive all the time (much safer/easier than a
phone), who would use a gopro on a regular basis (sports), and who travel
often (in the US due to mobile data).

At this point that's really it. If you sit at a desk all day you're going to
have a bad time with the notifications, "oh great I got a notice on my face a
minute after my phone buzzed and my laptop notified me". They work much better
when you are active, out and about when even picking up your phone is a chore.
If you already know your way everywhere you go (you don't travel) then one of
the best features, directions, is lost on you.

This applies to the current device/software/apps, part of what we are trying
to do with OpenGlass is push it past being a "beeper on your face" because
that only applies to the segment of people to whom getting notifications
faster than you do with your phone matters. Once they allow devs to push to
the Play store (coming soon) it'll be a much more compelling product for end
users. I think it'll ultimately be an amazing product, it's just the current
feature list targets what I see as limited audiences.

~~~
threeseed
DO NOT USE GLASS FOR DRIVING.

It is illegal, is not safer than a car docked phone and since it moves your
eyes away from the road is extremely dangerous. Stop being so selfish and stop
the car. Studies have shown that when you are distracted you are more likely
to crash. So innocent people's lives are at stake here.

~~~
msabalau
Glass is a perfectly fine way to get directions while driving. Just listen to
the voice prompts and ignore the screen. Heck, one can push the prism up to
the top of your head so there's no chance to see it.

(To be sure, one can also do this with a GPS app on a smart phone, but having
left a phone behind in a rental car, I see value in using a device that's
attached to me.)

------
wpietri
My personal bet is that Google Glass is the Newton of wearable hardware. It's
directionally correct, but way too early for the available hardware and the
existing ecosystem, and too expensive as well.

As a happy owner of a Pebble, I definitely get the value of going beyond the
phone screen. And as a sci-fi reader, I fully expect that everybody's going to
end up spending 99% of their time intimately connected to tech (and the
broader world via that tech). But I don't expect head-mounted UIs to be
popular outside of tiny niches for 15 years, if ever.

------
api
I actually think industrial applications might be the hidden killer app for
augmented reality. Imagine walking around a power plant and seeing your
environment annotated: last inspection time for each inspection point, what is
flowing through each pipe and its current pressure, etc. Construction sites
could be truly amazing.

~~~
guelo
Glass is not an augmented reality device.

~~~
aetherson
Totally. I kind of want to start every comment on every thread on HN with
"Glass is not an augmented reality device."

I've worn one (very briefly) now, and let me be very clear: you can not
superimpose labels or images on anything you see in daily life with Glass.
This is a physical limitation of the hardware, and it is absolute. This
hardware will never, ever, ever be able to do that.

And it's unclear to me if the hardware for Rainbows End/Halting State
augmented reality will ever (or at least in this generation) exist if Glass-
like heads-up-display hardware can not be successful in its own right.

~~~
ericd
Not really true, I have one that I wear regularly, and it could be used as one
in limited fashion.

There's also a little Easter Egg in it that lets you see the entire Glass
team, and look around at them, up, down, etc. and it's pretty engrossing, so
you can use it as limited VR as well.

------
alxbrun
I think the biggest problem is this swiping thing. Imagine Apple had released
the first iPhone with a mouse plugged to it. It's a pure betrayal of the
original Glass vision, where all user => machine communication goes through
voice.

~~~
robg
Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Just consider the challenge as an
English speaker, with 18 years of experience, of traveling from Alabama to New
York to London and Wales and Scotland and Ireland to Mumbai and Kerala to
Cairns and Sidney and Auckland.

~~~
alxbrun
True, but in the case of Glass the speaker is always the same (it's the owner)
so you can learn and adapt the acoustic model over time. I'm wondering btw if
Google doesn't do that already for Android's built-in speech recognition,
which accuracy is amazing.

The other problem is that apps cannot (at least for now) change the language
model, so Glass will always be in either "search" or "dictation" mode.

------
jjindev
One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good
form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy.

(That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)

~~~
untog
Not even slightly. I don't think there is _one_ last good form. The future is
a variety of devices. Despite the rise of tablets, I still code using a
desktop machine with multiple monitors, and I wouldn't ever trade it for a
tablet.

~~~
jjindev
I'm looking at the progression of form. The paperback book did not kill the
newspaper, but it was kind of the bottom end. "Tiny books" are a novelty.

So yeah, development is serious work like stocks trading and you want a big
interface like the Wall Street Journal.

------
lnanek2
Kind of weird he mentions the Recon Jet. You can't even remove the sunglasses
part of that, so you certainly won't be reading emails casually at home on it.
It doesn't seem to match his key complaints.

------
liveinoakland
1 year from now: "Why I'm Returning To Google Glass"

------
Zimahl
I don't know if anyone has asked this yet but why does it have lenses if those
lenses don't actually do anything? I mean, why not just the display portion in
some sort of headpiece instead of including the glass?

~~~
lnanek2
The lenses on Google Glass are completely removable and replaceable. Most
people wear Google Glass without any lenses. There are clear and sunglass
lenses you can snap in, however.

------
bla2
"Because a title like this is bound to drive traffic to my blog."

------
mey
I had the option to get a Glass through the #ifihadglass program, but after
reading up on it's abilities and more on augmented reality, this is not the
device I want to spend 1.5k on.

------
mikekij
"Peacock. Peacock."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM)

------
ivanbrussik
finally some honesty - i _knew_ it would be exactly the same as when I got my
Nintendo Power Glove in the mail in 1989.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove)

~~~
brandynwhite
"I love the power glove, it's so bad"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw)

------
chenster
My first reaction is someone finally decides to speak up aside all that
marketing noise.

------
friendlytuna
I know this is off topic, but how do I get one of those "<dev>" shirts?

------
TeeWEE
duh!!! Its a beta device and its priced that way so developers can start
making their profitable apps already on it. Its an investment. Off course its
to expensive for daily use.

------
ChikkaChiChi
If you are returning Google Glass, you weren't meant to have it in the first
place.

Bleeding edge isn't for everyone for a reason. This is the birth of a new form
factor that has potential, not complete market realization.

------
Zigurd
"Wearables" in general are going to be a much tougher nut to crack than
tablets. Glass is, at least, radical enough to stand a chance.

I'd be less sure that a watch is enough of an improvement over taking one's
phone out of one's pocket.

Also, unlike tablets, which have the obvious business use case of liberating
people from the "sit down with your computer" inhibitor to interpersonal
interaction, nobody knows whether or how pervasive use of wearables could
improve productivity or interaction in a business setting.

~~~
wpietri
You know, I bought a Pebble watch so I could help an organization I love (the
Long Now) develop a Pebble watch face. I expected to hate it, as I hate most
gadgetry.

I've ended up loving it. One of the most annoying things to me about a modern
phone is its intrusiveness. Text messages, calendar alerts, phone calls, and
other interruptive communications. The Pebble makes all of those notifications
a) quiet, and b) subtle. It's fantastic to be in a meeting, see who's calling,
and decline the call, all without breaking flow.

I think it will also be good for a variety of special-purpose interfaces.
E.g., one person already has built custom software such that when he starts
moving on his bike (as triggered by phone-measured movement speed) it switches
over to a bike computer display.

And the nice part is that it looks just like a watch. Unlike Glass, people are
entirely ok with it.

