
Why Google Glass Broke - kanamekun
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/style/why-google-glass-broke.html
======
kefka
I work in a capacity that reviews, tests, and develops proofs of concepts for
new tech. We purchased 3 glasses when they came on the market. Our review:

1\. pathetic battery life. You're going to have at most 6 hours of life. And
that's with the GG radios off (and functionality at a nil).

2\. You can't turn it off. it goes into a screen-off non-standby that still
chews through battery. So when you think that youre conserving it for later...
nope.

3\. "Glass Overheating, shutting down". This showed up in the latter
firmwares. Never fixed. It ruins the idea of recording video for lengths of
time. I was trying to record a renaissance dance. Didnt work.

4\. Forces a facebook style timeline. Horrible interface.

5\. Has no use without wifi and bt on. The device is an Android... yet is
completely dunb without data connections. Why werent there functionality built
in that didnt need 24/7 internet access?

6\. In order to use with a cell phone, you have to: turn on bt and pair, turn
on WiFi tethering on the phone, allow data to tunnel through BT, and pair
every connection from glass to phone. This, of course, eats battery. So, it
was left at home, with the home WiFi, beating the purpose of with a cell.

7\. Screen was offcenter and annoying. Itwas placed so you had to look up
right to see it. Not to mention, it was askew on the face. That means
recording video had an annoying 7deg tilt... unless you held your head like a
dog.

8\. $1500 . For "Google Quality". Not to mention, no support unless you count
other people who wasted $1500 or more for the similar experience.

And, they took out one of the neatest features: facial recognition. Because of
"privacy", yet the device consistently chatters to home base.

Yeah. Its a turd.

~~~
kefka
And one last story regarding the Glass.

Google engineers came to us for a public demonstration. Now, our network has a
secure component (WPA2-enterprise) and a non-secure component. However to use
either, you need to register the MAC address with our system. Simple. No.

For a company that made Android, and focuses oh so much on security, they dont
support WPA2-enterprise. Just doesn't work. So, we were relegated to the
unencrypted network. Except, we needed the MAC addresses.

So, how do you get a MAC address on a Glass? You go in to settings and....
Just kidding! You don't get to see what the MAC address is on a Glass. You
have to associate it to a AP and then look in the configs to see what MAC it
has.

So... Google Engineers gave us a list of their GG mac addresses. Except, they
got it wrong. But of course, they gave us this list 30 minutes before the
demo.

Eventually, our network didn't work with GG. They ended up buying Aircards
from some cell vendor.

That's what I call "Google Quality". No support. Worse than Alpha, except you
paid retail 'production quality' for it. Google

Project Tango is also another turd, in the similar light of the GG. Except the
3d driver crashes regularly (every 3-10 minutes of use).

~~~
dublinben
This is obviously an issue with Google Glass, but MAC address filtering is a
waste of time. It offers absolutely no protection against a determined
adversary. It is a perfect example of security theater.

~~~
kefka
You're assuming that it is the only defense. It isn't.

We look at security as one would look at an onion.

~~~
rdtsc
OP is right though. As far as the onion is concerned you better add more
characters to the security pass-phrase, also make sure WPS is disabled on all
routers etc.

Once someone has determined to break in, even minimally sophisticated they
will spoof the mac address. It is good that you want to add extra security,
but even as your story shows it just creates confusion, and make using the
system harder.

~~~
kefka
Those decisions come the people in the glass room in the security office. Not
much I can do to change global security policy.

~~~
rdtsc
I understand, it was more of a comment in general, or maybe the glass room
people would stop by and read too ;-)

------
greggman
I'm not convinced it broke any more than the newton or the palm pilot broke.
It's just too early. palm pilots, newtons, and other PDAs were around for 13+
years and were considered "for geeks only". It wasn't until iPhone that PDAs
finally became popular with the masses.

Personal HUDs or Google Glass etc will go through the same steps. Something,
maybe not totally similar but something with a camera, a HUD, augmented
reality, and hands free controls will happen someday and will become as
mainstream as smartphones are today. It might be 5, 10, or 15 years down the
road.

~~~
vacri
We got a few at my old workplace, and the tone of this article really annoyed
me because you had to be _wilfully ignorant_ to think that Glass was a
finished, polished product. The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly
stated as being for finding the kinks in the system outside the lab. The
people who claimed it 'worst product ever' were moronic linkbaiters.

One of the problems it did have that I thought was a problem for adoption was
that it didn't handle being lent out very well. If you calibrated it for
yourself, it was pretty responsive, but hand it over to someone else, and it
was out of whack in didn't really respond. I lost count of the number of times
I'd show someone something cool, hand it over to them to try, and have it not
work on them because the calibration wasn't suitable. Understandably, this
left them with the opinion "this is shit".

It was a marvellous bit of well-made kit, had a couple of problems, and as you
say, was in the first generation of it's kind.

~~~
k-mcgrady
>> "The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly stated as being for finding
the kinks in the system outside the lab."

Originally. Then they started to sell it on the play store for $1500 with a
full marketing page and no explanation that it was a beta product.

~~~
msabalau
Indeed. It was one thing to release a prototype to people interested in
experimenting and playing around. It was another to push it through a retail
channel alongside designer frames.

Certainly the time they released it to the UK market Google would have known
that they were selling an evolutionary dead end as if it were a product.

I would assume this was more an act of internal political cowardness at
recognizing reality rather than grubbing for money.

------
adnanh
Personally I think it was the camera that killed it. That, and the fact that
google put out an unfinished product without providing plethora of resources
and apps for it, to get people excited, hoping the community would finish it
for them... That, and the fact that people started calling Google Glass users
"glassholes".

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _That, and the fact that people started calling Google Glass users
> "glassholes"._

That was one weird thing I did not expect to happen after the release, but I
can't stop thinking that a people calling Glass wearers "glassholes" are
themselves _actual_ assholes.

~~~
cowsandmilk
They positioned it as an up-market, exclusive, fashion device. If you drive a
BMW, you've automatically classified as an asshole. Not at all surprising that
people wearing glass were labelled that way.

~~~
jschwartzi
I thought it had more to do with the fact that there was no way to know if you
were being recorded.

Basically, think about the most embarrassing or terrible thing you've ever
done. Now, imagine that that were a video on Youtube or Facebook and you were
automatically tagged in it. Users were dubbed Glassholes because they chose to
walk around with this kind of power in bars and public bathrooms.

~~~
tokenizerrr
Isn't there a light that goes on when it was recording?

~~~
jschwartzi
I thought they added that later in response to people freaking out about being
recorded.

------
erikb
Is it gone? My English is not the best but I would interpret the google plus
status they are reffering to not as closing down but as "Hey we move to our
own offices, beta is over, no new beta devices. We tell you when the final
release will be available for purchase."

[https://plus.google.com/+GoogleGlass/posts/9uiwXY42tvc](https://plus.google.com/+GoogleGlass/posts/9uiwXY42tvc)

~~~
pandatigox
"beta is over, no new devices" means no devices will available and the next
sentence "we'll tell you" seems to imply never or a very in-the-future date.

TLDR; It's an euphemism for closing up shop

~~~
erikb
Okay, yeah, maybe it's like that.

------
ohitsdom
This article made is seem like the demise of glass was due to Brin's love
life...

~~~
msabalau
I read that more as personal attachments and enthusiasms led Brin to over
invest and over promote the project in a way that was harmful. Perhaps the
author also saw this as further evidence demonstrating fecklessness.

------
wodenokoto
What I never understood about the whole explorer thing was, why didn't they
send out a version 2 after six or seven months?

------
Shivetya
because you could not use it without taking your eyes off what you were
already doing? To be honest, it was too intrusive for both user and those not
using it.

I will be more than happy the day my phone/watch/etc can talk to me in
conversational format and know when it should. Should being, would it
interrupt my doing something more important or not.

------
yAnonymous
\- battery life

\- people don't want to talk to their device in public or make gestures around
their head. it looks/sounds stupid

------
crumpled
I don't understand why everybody is pretending that the Google Glass that
"explorers" and developers have is a consumer product, and that it failed in
the market.

Google Glass has yet to hit the consumer market. All of the criticisms of it
as a fashion statement or a consumer device are pretty much moot. It's like
people pretended to understand that they were alpha/beta testers and then
conveniently forgot.

Yes, this explorer phase of the beta is over. Why do we need to make up some
deeper reasons? Maybe a lot of issues were discovered, but that's precisely
the point! Arguably, Google now has more insight into the real-world use of
optical wearables than anyone else. When the market (that they incubated)
develops more, they can be ready with a capable, fashionable product.

~~~
untog
Does this page look like a beta:

[https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Glass_Explorer...](https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Glass_Explorer_Edition_Shale?id=glass_shale&hl=en)

"Who are Glass Explorers?

From chefs to cyclists, Glass Explorers are the first to make, move, and
marvel through Glass. They're bold and inspiring and they're helping shape the
future of Glass."

It certainly doesn't even use the word 'beta' even once. And when there are
frames made by DVF available I'd say that, yes, you can critique it as a
fashion statement, too.

~~~
crumpled
I see the word "prototype" used all over this page:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass)

And if you refer to the terms of service, it's pretty plain that it's not a
consumer product.

~~~
untog
_And if you refer to the terms of service_

is never a valid argument in the twenty-first century. When was the last time
the average consumer read the terms of service before you bought a product?

------
beilabs
I'm going to put my neck out and say "watch this space".

Google don't have this front and center any more with this glass product but I
think they'll definitely be looking at different form factors in the future.

~~~
stesch
Waiting for Google Wave integration in Google Glass?

~~~
beilabs
I think i'd be waiting a while for that one. I think Google Glass will be
scraped as its form factor is just creepy but I believe it will be
miniaturised, perhaps into contact lenses.

~~~
stesch
The future sure will be interesting.

Maybe Microsoft's API Windows Holographic will be the dominant API then and
Google produces compatible contact lenses. Or maybe not.

I'm wondering when Apple will decide which technology has a chance to get
copied and cleaned up for its own customers? (I have Apple products. But I'm
aware that the ideas aren't coming from Apple.)

------
spiralpolitik
I look at Google Glass as this decades 'Segway'. Hyped beyond all proportions,
it failed as a mass market product, but found enough of a niche that you still
see them to this day.

That will be the future of 'Glass.

~~~
schnable
That seems doubtful as they have stopped selling them.

------
jkot
I dont think Google Glass 'broke'. Just because new thing is not as successful
as iphone, does not mean its failure.

~~~
badusername
Suffice to say that, it was at least a very expensive experiment. And
everybody I know hated it - it had a very antisocial vibe on the wearer.

------
normloman
What I like about phones is that you can put them in your pocket. If you're
having a face to face conversation with someone, you can put the phone away,
and give them your full attention. But if my phone was part of my glasses,
it'd always be on. How annoying!

------
jonifico
The project was interesting, but the technology nowadays is just not quite
there yet. I've heard people talk about HoloLens, which might have been a
point to consider as Google was basically the only people in this game,
although the thing was falling anyway.

------
lwh
Once they can get it to fit in a contact or use BCI with a phone...

------
sleepersmith
tldr

Marketing and sales came in and fucked it over, as usual. Nothing new.

