
Google Glass Is Dead; Long Live Smart Glasses - jonathansizz
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/532691/google-glass-is-dead-long-live-smart-glasses/?
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bane
I think the fundamental issue with Glass was putting a camera on it. Imagine
if it _didn 't_ have a camera but was otherwise unaltered. It would have been
a forcing function to actually find out more things to do with it than be a
head mounted camera. Most of the social stigma would have been gone and it
might be a thriving device now.

Get it going, add the "obvious" camera functionality on some models and off it
goes.

Instead the camera was fundamental to the design, and to my knowledge
represented about 90% of the use-cases demonstrated for the device...without
even offering AR.

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malthaus
The fundamental issue was the geekiness of it all. Look at the lengths Apple
was going to show Apple Watch as something fashionable when introducing it.
Google failed and projects a worse image than a bluetooth headset or a Segway.

The camera doesnt help and helps to rationalize it as a failure but was not
the main factor.

~~~
yconst
The fundamental issue is that glass is a blatantly obvious design, with no
sophistication whatsoever, one that couldn't even get close to being
charmingly _anything_. It's an ugly stick in front of some (admittedly
ugly/geeky) glasses, with touchpad (!) and voice controls crammed together. No
amount of functionality can account for the design and usability horror that
this device has unleashed since it's conception.

~~~
tripzilch
Agreed. It's awfully awkward to operate.

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Mithaldu
In the very first batch of paragraphs this article gets a very fundamental
thing about Glass and the backlash to it wrong.

The article tries to claim that owners became known as glassholes because they
wore computers on their face, and then tries to argue that less conspicuous
implementations will be accepted more easily.

Meanwhile in reality people got upset because Glass owners had a camera on
their face the entire time.

Edit: Turns out the entire article is in fact trying to claim that Glass is
disliked because it's too obvious, and that it'll be just fine when it's near
invisible.

~~~
bobcostas55
I feel one must question why people are upset about glass-cameras but are
perfectly fine with omnipresent CCTV or NSA data collection. The Surveillance
Camera Man video series highlights the same issue.

Do people genuinely care about privacy, but only think about it when the
breach is obvious and in their face?

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lentil_soup
I think they are two different things.

Having a friend filming your conversations feels a lot more personal and
tangible in my mind. A dumb example, but let's say you talk to your friend
about how you hate your boss or how you cheat on your partner. Your friend can
very easily cause you a lot of problems by just emailing that conversation to
someone else.

While CCTV and the NSA are terrible in their own right the damage that they
can do is at a whole different level. (Except on particular cases) they don't
care too much about the specifics of your personal life.

~~~
csallen
Your friend can repeat what you've said to others without any device at all.
He can also make an audio recording of your comments while pretending to
fiddle around on his phone. Hell, he can do it without taking his phone out of
his pocket. People are a-ok with this state of affairs, but are appalled at
the idea of being "surreptitiously" recorded by someone wearing possibly the
least stealthy device ever created by man.

Why? Because a legitimate fear of being recorded isn't what lies at the heart
of mainstream hatred toward Glass.

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lnanek2
It's dead with consumers. Business use cases can make sense, though. If you
can make a warehouse picker 5% more efficient you can easily save the cost of
the device, etc..

~~~
asah
5% x $15/hr = <$1/hr savings.

$1500 + software + support = >1 year payback. And if they break, you lose
entirely.

In my warehouse, chromebooks and used Dells run the show.

~~~
gohrt
No doubt the price today will be the price forever, and nothing survives
longer than a year,

~~~
nashashmi
I know you are being sarcastic.

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klez
I like Thad Starner's other designs[0] a lot more than Google Glass.

Granted, they are bulky and dorky, but at least they had a keyboard and a
hackable operating system (linux with an emacs-based ui if I remember well).

I wouldn't mind a setup with a tiny screen, a wire running from the back of my
glasses to my pocket, connected to a raspberry pi or similar (heck, even my
cell phone) and some sort of chorded keyboard that I can use without looking
at it.

[0] for example
[http://www.innovations.gatech.edu/wearable/photos/ThadStarne...](http://www.innovations.gatech.edu/wearable/photos/ThadStarner.jpg)

~~~
jimrandomh
They had Bluetooth keyboard support, and ripped it out in a (forced) update.
They almost had a hackable operating system - it was possible to set up a
Linux install in a chroot and use that - but they went around breaking things,
and since there's not much point without the keyboard, no one's gotten it
working again.

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abruzzi
This a bit of an aside, I have slight astigmatism, and I have some
prescription glasses in a drawer somewhere that I haven't put on in ten years.
Fixing my less than perfect vision is not worth the hassle of having to wear a
device on my head all the time. I haven't worn a watch on my wrist
since...probably elementary school--so the 70's. For a few years I carried a
pocket watch, now my cell phone is my pocket watch, and that is a
significantly better situation than wearing a piece of tech on my wrist. So it
seems like the all the tech companies are trying to make me wear something
that I have already concluded I don't want to wear.

In the case of watches it seems less strange--plenty of people love watches on
their wrist. So Apple and Motorola can sell to them. But the only people who
wear glasses are people with vision problems. They do their best to make them
comfortable and fashionable, both I don't know anyone with good vision wishing
they could wear glasses. So if Google can make a version that works with
prescription lenses, and sell to people that need them, but it seems like it's
going to be a much harder push to get people who don't wear glasses every day
to commit.

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jarek
Plenty of people wear glasses for fashion.

~~~
illumen
Plenty of people wear contact lenses.

~~~
jarek
Yep, athletes, cyclists...

~~~
esrauch
Many many people wear contact lenses rather than glasses for style reasons. I
probably know more people who have contacts than glasses, and none of them are
athletes.

~~~
jarek
It's not exactly a non-starter though. These days few people in the first
world wear glasses or watches out of necessity, but some do wear watches or
glasses for fashion.

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nashashmi
Google Glass's biggest problem is really wrong timing. In fact, all of the
wearables that are coming out now have the problem of wrong timing. We hardly
have exhausted the applications of mobile computing. And the applications that
do exist are only a version of desktop and big computing devices retrofitted
onto mobile.

The true vision of what "a computer in every pocket" can do has hardly been
scratched. Things like accepting credit cards on the spot with an iPhone or
barcode scanning with mobile cameras are true examples of that kind of vision.
3D scanning, whenever it arrives, will be another example. Flashlight, pocket
camera, video conferencing, and digital level are also great examples.

One of the great ways I hacked my life to use a "pocket computer" was using it
as a digital briefcase where the phone would sync all my work files on my work
computer the moment I connected to work wifi and sync it again to my home
computer the moment I connected to home wifi. (I know it's not needed
anymore.)

That kind of true innovation where you give the mobile phone actual _mobile_
purpose is what makes the phone a great device. Retrofitting apps from desktop
to mobile fits only in some (venture capital)/(mobile frontier)/(developing
country) scenario.

To immediately warp speed to wearable computing and to retrofitting desktop or
mobile apps onto wearable platforms is immature. There are some great uses of
wearables like Google Glass in the areas of augmented reality. But very few
companies are even thinking about it. Other uses for Google Glass are hindered
because of privacy alarmists who cannot stop thinking about sinister uses. And
of course there is the cultural stigmatism of having a computer on your face.

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Karunamon
Wait, "dead"? Last I checked, the only thing you can get right now is the
explorer edition (read: beta) device at the "no random consumers" price point
of $1500. Google is on record as saying this is supposed to get another
refresh and a lower price point in the future.

Seems mighty premature to call the device dead when it's both not out yet and
the beta users are still getting updates.

~~~
jimrandomh
> Seems mighty premature to call the device dead when it's both not out yet
> and the beta users are still getting updates.

The updates that have gone out to beta users have been extremely minimal;
there can't be more than a couple devs working on them. And on net, they've
removed more features than they've added, and broken about as many things as
they've fixed.

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datashovel
I think it's easy to dismiss Google Glass because it's never been "necessary",
in the entire history of human civilization, to have a computer on your face.

But in order to test the "is this a fad or is this truly transformative"
question, my guess is that at its core there is no question this is a
transformative technology. Here's how I've reasoned to this conclusion.

Having an unobtrusive computer on your face, where you get no-friction,
continuous access to the user's basic senses of sight and sound while they're
out living their lives (far more time than your typical person spends sitting
in front of a computer), is what this is all about. If you can't imagine uses
for computers unless we're sitting in front of them or holding them in our
laps, my hunch is you're not very bullish on human innovation.

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secfirstmd
Hmm, as a techie I think its somewhat of a shame that Google Glass is dead.
But as a person concerned about privacy I'm glad it's dead. Meeting people and
speaking to those wearing them was just too non-human to be comfortable.

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skuunk1
I don't necessarily think launching/announcing it in its beta state was the
wrong thing to do (as opposed to launching a finished product like Apple
does). Imagine if they spent all the resources to "finish" the product and
then find out it was a failure?

They obviously learnt a lot from the initial public reactions and I am sure
that a lot of Glass technology has made its way back to smart phones and smart
watches (especially voice recognition).

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pselbert
A company I consult with has done a lot of research on Glass users over the
past several months. I won't, and can't, share any of those insights, but I
can say this: the office still has 40 glass devices sitting in boxes because
not one of the employees is tempted to use one or take one home.

Most interestingly, Google is willing to simply write off "$70,000" in
devices. Their budget is unbelievable.

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superasn
I think the problem has more to do with mass production and marketing than it
is with privacy concerns, etc.

If Google glass sold for $100~$200 price range and could be purchased
everywhere (like Chromecast which I got in India for $40) it would have been a
big hit.

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datashovel
I think the "killer apps" for Google Glass will require pairing the glasses
with a Project Tango device.

I just hope the Google Glass project remains alive for long enough to see this
happen.

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pasta_2
Google is a search advertising company not a consumer products company. They
haven't had one successful product in hardware yet.

Which makes the thought of Google actually executing on a driverless car
pretty laughable.

~~~
deelowe
Huh? What about all the nexus devices or the Chromecast?

~~~
_almosnow
What about them? Have you ever peeked into how much market share do they have?
Let me guess, no. And Chromecast? Nobody knows what that is aside from geeks
obsessed with Google.

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icebraining
Chromecast is currently the 2nd best seller product on Amazon in the
Electronics category, having recently dropped from 1st where it stayed for
months. On what exactly do you base the idea that nobody knows what it is?

~~~
_almosnow
If you compare the reach of AirPlay against the reach of Chromecast there's a
difference of at least TWO orders of magnitude; that's my basis. And I'm not
an apple fanboy (gohrt), I'm more of a reality fanboy.

~~~
icebraining
AirPlay is not a device, it's a technology implemented by multiple devices,
and it's four years old (compared to Chromecast, which is barely one).
Comparing the two directly is nonsensical.

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tortos123
I think this post is falsely trying to accuse Google of something.

Remember Google is a company that doesn't make money out of its products and a
lot of their stuff are open sourced like Android for people to be able to keep
them alive.

What happened with Google glass and its on the makings documentary about it,
is that they wanted to make some breakthrough in technology. They never
planned on making the glass work 100% or become and iphone that everyone would
kill to acquire, because they are not looking into that kind of profit.

I find that post being on some short of a steak with google and wants to blame
them for their own product and how its doing...

~~~
RubyPinch
it might of been a breakthough technology-wise, but it hit a massive horrible
wall social-wise. I'd say that the social barrier is probably the more
important breakthough at the current moment than the tech one, and it does
seem google is falling a bit short on that.

It doesn't help that google is a data company as well, probably not the most
pleasant brand-name to stick on such a device

