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I disagree. It was and is an AR product.

Re-watch this early promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErpNpR3XYUw

There are several clear AR features displayed. There's a location based notification about the subway service upon getting close to the entrance. There's overlaid compass based walking directions. There's GPS based location identification and check-in. AR is more than just computer vision driven overlays. Though that tech wasn't available to be put in a HMD at the time, these GPS driven features absolutely were AR features and the original Glass should rightfully be considered the first AR consumer product.

Furthermore, the product still exists as the Enterprise Edition 2 and this current version supports computer vison and object identification applications, further strengthening its AR use cases.



Sure if the experience of using it had been anything like that video it would have been AR, but it was not like that. I’m sure they wanted AR glasses but instead they built a tiny screen you could look at when you weren’t looking at what was around you… kinda like a phone that you didn’t have to hold.




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