
Why I'm sending back Google Glass - davidbarker
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9248434/Why_I_m_sending_back_Google_Glass?taxonomyId=128&pageNumber=1
======
RegW
> It can't do GPS without using your phone's cellular data or a mobile
> hotspot.

This isn't just a GG problem. This is general Google problem, and something
that seems to be growing. Until a year ago I had an old Nokia E5 that could
tell you where you were and give you directions to anywhere without being
"online". Now I have an Android which refuses to let me use the GPS in anyway
unless I am connected to be big G and have given them permission to track me.

~~~
Adirael
Aren't there any offline GPS apps for Android? I use one on iOS. It was 25€
and works without WiFi or Data enabled. Without the AGPS it takes a while to
see satellites but it works.

~~~
throwaway7767
There's OsmAnd for offline navigation with android, it's very good.

You can even get it through F-Droid if you prefer not to use the google apps.

------
suprgeek
Tried Glass. My mini review:

1) Huge potential - something like this will be the next "iPhone"

2) Headaches - 2-3 hrs of intermittent usage would give me a headache without
fail

3) Battery Life... BATTERY LIFE

4) Surprisingly hostile reactions in some places (restaurants etc)

5) Novelty wears off fast then what?

Returned with thanks to friend kind enough to lend it to me. Not something I
would buy until

1) Price is in the 2-300$ range

2) Battery life is 5x

3) At least one Killer app

~~~
onion2k
4 isn't particularly surprising. People rightly believe that they have the
right to decide who records them. A stranger walking in with a camera when
they're in an intimate/family/business situation feels incredibly intrusive.
If you walked in with your phone held out in front of you as if you were
recording you'd get the same reaction.

~~~
greggman
This reaction seems very luddite to me. I'm not saying I don't understand it.
Rather I'm saying it's a product of now and will have to change over time.

If some blind guy walked in with his Google Glass connected to his brain so he
could see and was ask to remove them do you think the "please remove your
glasses" would be acceptable? "But sir, I can't see without these as I'm
blind. Are you really going to discriminate against blind people?".

Cameras embedded in eyes are coming. First they'll be for the blind. Then
they'll be better than real eyes and probably be used for soldiers. Then
they'll become fashion/must have along the same lines as a smartphone is today
for most people. When friends can all see in infrared in the dark and you
can't or can zoom in and read something small thing 600 meters away, or can
drive through fog with their augmented reality eyes or recall whatever they
need on demand few people will stay un-augmented.

I get that people don't want to be recorded. I just see it as they have no
right not to be recorded because they have no right to choose how I remember
things. If we invented a tech that could read my memory and produce a video
then what? They've already invented digital memory that can be connect to
brains. So if my brain was digital would that make a difference? If you don't
want me to see you don't go out in public. Past that you have no right to
decide how I remember you. Whether it's with my memory of you, a sketch I
made, a picture I took or, a video I recorded. Those are all just augmented
versions of me.

~~~
Nursie
>> If you don't want me to see you don't go out in public.

Going out in public should not mean that my activities are automatically
recorded and published by anyone that wants them. It's not like I have an
expectation of privacy, but I do have an expectation that in general it's none
of your business and I really don't want to be recorded, tagged and uploaded.

There's a huge conversation to be had about anonymity in society and freedom
from pervasive surveillance, and it's nothing to do with being a luddite.

~~~
alaoiigha
I think you totally sidestepped his argument though.

If everything everywhere is being recorded by someone, such as memory
recording or a blind persons implants, who are you to say you can't be
included?

They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world,
which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have
the right to say he cannot remember it?

Sure, it's slightly different than these days of a person with a camera, but
it's an extended concept. One that is important to think about, imo.

Days will change in the near future, being recorded won't feel special. With
so many devices, so many recordings.. it just won't matter. You'll have to
invent some type of scrambler if you still care, when that day hits.

~~~
Nursie
>. They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world,
which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have
the right to say he cannot remember it?

It's not about memory, it's about pervasive uploading, tagging and tracking.
It's about amalgamation of masses of data on a worldwide scale, such that
every detail of everyone's life is collected and aggregated by massive
companies, fuelled by well-meaning idiots handing them video feeds with
associated timestamps, GPS locations etc etc.

That's not a world I want to live in, where people record everything, feed it
via google and facebook, and suddenly a third party company in another country
knows _everything_ you do, without your ever needing to interact with them.

Please get it through your head _IT 'S NOT JUST THE RECORDING_ (though that is
offensive enough)

------
grrowl
An unnecessarily pedantic review of Glass. Some valid points related to its
beta status (voice recognition not yet up to scratch), and some moderate
warnings for potential Explorers (the earbud is proprietary and doesn't stay
in the ear), some are just chances to whinge: "Glass can provide turn-by-turn
driving directions, but it uses your phone's data service" (obviously), and
amazingly "Google Glass Explorers climb mountains ... _You_ don't do those
things."

I guess the take away is, buy gadgets to achieve things, don't buy gadgets to
buy gadgets.

~~~
danellis
Also, the eye contact thing: you're not _supposed_ to use Glass while you're
having a conversation with someone any more than you would pull out your phone
and look at it in the middle of a conversation. The fact that it's there and
convenient isn't an excuse for being rude.

~~~
leoc
Taking Glass off to talk to people then putting it back on again all day would
be burdensome, especially if you have prescription lenses fitted in it.

~~~
Navarr
I think his point was don't turn it on and look at it? Notifications don't
turn the screen on, only an active application would have the screen on. Most
of the time it's off, such as when you're talking to someone

~~~
leoc
Duh, you're right of course.

------
molmalo
One thing I can't understand is: If most people use wired headsets, with their
phones, iPods, MP3 Players.... why can't Google Glass use a wire, so you can
have a much bigger battery in your pocket, and a much thinner frame in you
head?

I think that's their biggest error with their current design. If you can only
use this device for a very short time, it's going to be a failure.

~~~
eps
Their biggest error by a very large margin is adding a camera to the device.

~~~
cookiecaper
Aren't many of Glass's most interesting functions dependent on a camera?

I don't really think Glass makes people more recordable, it just makes that
recordability more obvious, and therefore makes people less comfortable. Maybe
it'd be a good thing to cope with the reality that we're always under watch
these days.

~~~
throwaway7767
Normalising having cameras pointed at you certainly makes people more
recordable.

Of course, you could point to ubiquitous CCTV and other public place cameras,
and you would be right - and I have a problem with that development as well.
But those are (at least where I live) required to be clearly marked so I can
avoid going to those places if I so choose.

------
nathannecro
More or less the reasons why I sent back mine as well. Fun to play with, not
remotely practical.

------
visarga
After reading the pros and cons, I am tempted to buy one when it comes out as
a consumer product with a sane price tag. It might be interesting to combine
gglass with learning and exploration activities, museum tours, or just to make
videos form first person POV.

~~~
huskyr
I'm wondering if GG might be in the same league as the Segway: not a complete
failure or a big hit, but a niche product for very specific things (like the
city sightseeing tours done on Segways).

------
SoftwareMaven
Is GG the eyewear equivalent of an Apple Newton? If so, will Google learn
enough from it to make the next go at it successful? More important, will
Google's management team tolerate a second attempt if this one fails?

~~~
rimantas
The most important: does Google Glass indeed solve some problem many have? I
can see it's appeal in some limited use cases, but not as a mass product.

~~~
codeulike
Walk down a busy street in London: about 70% of people are walking along while
looking down and fiddling with their phones. That's the use case.

------
nogridbag
I think Glass will be a success eventually - just not how most of us intended
it to be. I used Glass for a month before returning it, but am regretting it
slightly. As it stands right now, it's still a beta device with tons of
software and hardware issues which somewhat limit its usefulness even for the
most basic things like making a phone call. Though this article is true for
the most part, I think it's missing the major downside of Glass.

Glass is only useful for certain tasks mainly where our hands are not free and
we're away from our computers. For most of us, Glass is pretty much useless
throughout the day. As a developer, there is nothing Glass can do while coding
that a second monitor couldn't do better. When I joined the explorer program,
I thought I would constantly be using Glass. I found Glass most useful while
driving (responding to texts and hangout messages but NOT for directions* )
and I intended to use it while cooking.

But since driving with Glass is a grey area and I didn't want a hassle with
the police, that pretty much limited my use of glass to cooking or
occasionally hiking as long as you don't mind getting the unit all sweaty.

I don't think Glass belongs in public at all (restaurants, bars, etc). It
serves no function besides being creepy, though it does occasionally help
nerdy people meet woman as it's a great ice breaker (seriously).

* None of these reviews ever mention that the Glass display is only active for a second or two when directions is activated. This is surely to save on batteries. But it's simply no where near as useful as a normal GPS which is always on.

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Aoyagi
_" They do nothing to hide the fact you're wearing Google Glass"_

So... does that mean the man would like to have a "spy" camera that also
probably happens to send who knows what to a company with less than good
privacy behaviour history? (no, I'm not saying that Google is harvesting all
data so they can one day set up the New World Order).

~~~
poopsintub
It's a picky review for a beta. He complains about the angle of the photos in
one sentence, then tells you his ears are un-level. It's hard to please the
Glassicapped.

------
erso
A well-written, real-world review of Glass. I enjoyed it.

------
k-mcgrady
I can see Android Wear taking off and Google Glass quickly being forgotten
about. The Moto 360 watch looks great, and the Android Wear software is pretty
nice. I can get my notifications without taking out my phone and I don't have
to wear something that looks ridiculous. It doesn't provide the 'hands free'
experience of Glass but I've yet to see any software really take advantage of
that other than in niche areas.

------
hyp0
low tech alternative: Glass appeals to me because it takes up less room. e.g.
in a tent, you don't always have room to hold a device out far enough for your
eyes to focus on it. Eventually I realized that _reading glasses_ ($5,
available everywhere) also change your focal distance - and as a bonus,
increases your display size, without increasing device size, nor battery usage
(which larger displays do).

But I think google's strategy is right: get a foothold before the technology
is ready. Then, when devices are smaller, it will all be there. Their big
deficiency is that they haven't found any real users yet...

My advice is simple, and something that engineers find impossible to do:
remove the cool feature of a camera. Bang, privacy concerns gone, but still a
revolutionarily useful product in other ways. And before long, people will
accept they never really had privacy, so you can put it back.

Note: I expect this is what Apple will do.

------
netcan
I suspect that Glass and other 'wearable comupters' might be a case where it
needs 'more power.'

10-100X improvements in battery, data, latency, storage, etc. If it gets to
the point that it just records everything. You can go back and rematch your
conversation with Aron or read a transcript of your meeting with the design
team.

------
sreyaNotfilc
Well, with all the griping about the Glass from this guy, he should have known
that this is purely a prototype. The goal was not to be perfect but put the
Glass in the wild.

Yes it will run hot, or take tilted pictures, etc. But that's the point. And
really, this rant actually helps Google more than it hurts them.

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mkevac
How it is possible to send something back to store if you have already used
the device? It seems strange. You were wearing it, it possibly have scratches,
bacteria from your skin, etc.

~~~
ygra
At least in Germany (possibly also EU) when ordering something (excluding
software, movies, food) online or via mail (i.e. not buying in a store) you
have the right to send it back within two weeks without having to give a
reason. This is to counteract the problem that you can try out a device in the
store where you might buy it, but you cannot when ordering online. In any
case, usage marks, like scratches, etc. just mean that you may not get a
_full_ refund.

Some retailers allow for longer periods; e.g. Amazon allows for a month
instead of just two weeks.

~~~
rohanprabhu
This is off-topic, but the sensibility of EU provisions always amazes me. In
other countries, it is pretty much up to the companies to offer such relief to
the consumer as a response to competition, but there really is no such
requirement, which makes monopolistic industries much worse.

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etfb
This is a dangerous article. I was nodding and saying "I knew it!" so often, I
got a sore neck.

------
yeukhon
I also don't think this review is giving GG a chance to survive, despite
listing up and down in each point.

This device was not invented to keep in your pocket. When mobile phone first
came out, it was giant and you had to carry it by hand. No one expect it to be
small.

> Point 1 (eye contacts)

God. I am not sure how you would do that unless you (1) shoot some light beam
into your eyes, or (2) have glass cover up your eyes like in Star Wars.

That's not a valid point to ask for refund.

> Point 2 (not a good listener)

Fair point but speech recognition's problems are known and are hard to fix.
Not good enough reason to return - no AI with speech recognition today is
capable of fixing all those problems in an open environment.

> Point 3 (batter)

That's a good point. But it should be expected, somewhat, given its tiny size
and the amount of computation it has to do plus wifi and bluetooth connection.

> Point 4 (Bulk, not pocket friendly)

As I've said above, god, this is the one of the least valid reasons to ask for
refund.

> Point 5 (frame doesn't hide Glass!)

This is also a ridiculous reason to ask for refund.

The point of clip-on shade isn't to hide Glass. It's so that you can use glass
even when it's sunny outside. Or because people want to look cool.

> Point 6 (Tilted photos)

Okay fair point. Technical stuff to be addressed.

> Point 7 (Directions drawbacks)

Fair point. Technical stuff to be addressed. Driving while using Glass is
really dangerous. but hiking with Glass without touching your phone (but
enable your phone use data) is kinda cool.

> Point 8 (earbuds)

I agree the earbuds are pretty... hmm, not stylish. I'd like to have cordless
earbuds. Like one of those for people with hearing problems.

> Point 9 (advertisement stories vs reality)

This is a marketing trick. I always use Facebook's Home and Paper as example.
On the ad side they look amazing but in reality your fb dashboard could just
fill with memes and cat pictures. Boring.

> Point 10 (10. Too little, too soon)

Not a valid reason to ask for refund at all. I mean this is explorer edition.
Hello???? Hellllllo???? Even if this was version 100000000, you still have
rooms for improvement. Future is not here yet, because future is non-stop.
Tomorrow is a different future.

Sorry. If I were Google, I won't refund. I don't mind taking back your Glass
and give it to yeukhon for free.

~~~
renox
About the point 1, I think that someone(seen here) is working on glasses which
will work as a kind of HUD, so it is possible to have 'smart glasses' without
having to be cross eyed to look at the display.

Of course, GG doesn't work like this so this isn't a reason for a refund, but
it is still a reason NOT to buy them.

~~~
yeukhon
Any chance you can find a reference? Would be interesting to know about the
state of the art.

~~~
renox
Here's the link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6925644](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6925644)

And whether it is "state of art" or not, I don't know, we'll have to wait and
see, it does seem to solve a lot of issue that GG have, now whether they will
manage to 'make it real', that's another issue..

------
bcardarella
TIL: Computerworld is still a thing.

------
vacri
This reviewer wants 'magic', not 'tech'. It's a terrible review. I mean,
seriously, "this micro device is too large and must be made smaller, but
Beethoven's 9th sounds tinny on it"? Obviously has zero clue about acoustics.

This reviewer is inventing reasons to give the device a failing mark after
getting to play with it for a few weeks. Glass has it's problems, a couple of
which are mentioned in the article, but overall the article is just terrible.

~~~
Lost_BiomedE
Likely, he was just trying to fill out 7,8,9, and 10 to make it a top ten
list. The first six were at least informative for someone looking for
drawbacks or specific questions. Some of those may be more obvious to the tech
group but not to non-techies.

~~~
vacri
Well, the point he opens with is just him being rude, nothing to do with the
limitations of the Glass itself. What's he's actually asking for in that very
first point is a way to view content on Glass without the other person in the
conversation realising that you're tuning them out. As someone else commented,
this is the same as pulling out your smartphone and playing with it instead of
conversing.

The conspicuousness point is also trueish, but overblown. The sunglass clip-
ons do reduce the visibility of the unusual headwear, they just don't
eliminate it. From experience with our set at work, people out in public react
considerably less when the sunglasses are clipped on. It's not going to fool
someone you're in a direct conversation with, but you get fewer odd looks.
Obviously this is with one of the subtle charcoal colours, and not the day-glo
varieties. I would argue that you shouldn't be fooling someone you're in a
direct conversation with anyway. If you want to do that, there are other tools
for single-party recordings.

So we're down to 4.5 points out of 10. Not accounting for uneven ears, sure.
Battery life, sure. Bulk, maybe. Voice recognition? It's actually pretty good,
for voice recognition. It just doesn't have the same capabilities as a human
(no tech does, hence my original comment). We got a set straight from the US,
it was responding happily to my broad, middle-Australian accent, and it would
still recognise a colleague with a very strong French accent who passed by me
saying "OK Glass, google porn" ("drive-by" commands are a different
problem...), all with no particular calibration done. Voice recognition
doesn't work with background noise? Even humans have trouble with that.

So no, it's a bad review all around, for both techies and naifs. It sets
expectations for naifs that are impossible to achieve, despite there a few
real issues being described. I personally don't think Glass is ready for the
public yet, but this article offers a lot of misdirection on why.

