Wearables, ultimately, are an expiremental product. Neither the users not the developers really know what the application is.
So... I think we should go easy on the dunking. These things must be tried to succeed. Failures like Google glass get so much criticism no one wants to try.
That said, these give us to types of (maybe instructive) failure. Glass looked too much like a headcam to be used casually. These put looks first, but aren't responsive enough.
The application both products targeted is there proverbial deep end. The bar is very high for a device mounted on your face as part of daily life.
Performance has to be flawless. The frustration caused by a small lag, voice recognition or whatnot is extremely magnified relative to a phone or pc. Same for aesthetics, comfort, etc.
All that without a very clear picture of how people will use the device.
I do think there's room to succeed in this space, but I think the innovations need to come in steps. Going for the mass-production, mass-appeal, everyday usage device before you have a successful predecessor... You need to hit multiple bulls eyes.
A sports, adventure or camera centric product has much better odds. Those activities already allow "gear."
The problem is that it's a race to the ultimate product, and making an intermediate may be just free market research for apple/meta/etc.
> Neither the users not the developers really know what the application is.
While I do agree with the general point about not judging experimental devices too harshly you're making an assumption there that there is an application for general purpose, wearable smart glasses.
I'm really skeptical. I did some work with Google Glass back in the day and irrespective of the way it looked it was really socially jarring. You could be in a conversation with someone and see their eye drift upwards to read whatever notification arrived on their device. It felt rude. At the same time who can blame them for looking at the flickering message an inch from their eye? Snapchat sunglasses felt socially jarring in a different way: whenever you were wearing them you were constantly pointing a camera at someone.
There's something very fundamental to the nature of these things that makes me feel like they just don't work. I can see them being incredibly useful in professional contexts (IIRC there were trials with giving Google Glass to surgeons, makes a ton of sense) but as a general thing we're all going to be wandering around with strapped to our faces? I dunno.
>There's something very fundamental to the nature of these things that makes me feel like they just don't work.
Possibly, though my intuition is the opposite. I don't think social norms are "fundamental" in a strict sense. They're just important. That said, the reasons not to jump in the deep end is because it makes fundamental-unsovlvable problems indistinguishable from advanced problems that will be solvable later.
IE, if someone is using smart glasses for work or some other activity where they are useful, they might expand their use into other activities.
You could not have invented Tinder or snapchat in 1994. User density, camera, ubiquity, and other hardware issues matter. Besides technical issuaes, culture also had to develop before people felt comfortable using real names, posting pics and meeting people from online. If everyone already posts on facebook, the world may be ready for online dating, online therapy, etc.
Good points. I haven't used wearable tech like this and always thought it would a pain for the wearer. I didn't consider what it would be like for the person on the either end. Who wants to interact with a person that is distracted by visual information?
> You could be in a conversation with someone and see their eye drift upwards to read whatever notification arrived on their device. It felt rude.
I would like to extend this to smart watches. So many conversations I have had where someone is constantly glancing at their watch. I know it is just an automatic response to some vibration but sometimes it feels rude.
To be fair, looking at one's watch while in the middle of a conversation has always been a rude gesture whether the watch is smart or not. In some cultures, it's a deliberate gesture to indicate a lack of interest in the other person and/or the conversation.
It is rude, and exacerbated by smart watches; just not unique to them.
Great comment and it immediately made me think up the only use case which would appeal to me right now.
I have started swimming and I am timing myself with a stopwatch on my wrist. I am already wearing goggles because hard contact lenses and freestyle. The watch is hard to see with the goggles on, and I have to 'search' the stop button which adds latency.
I’m a convert to physical buttons for this reason (though I’m not a swimmer).
A Garmin watch that allows for all interactions to be done via easy to find physical buttons and well thought out data screens was a huge improvement for my own use cases.
FWIW I tried them out, I liked the screen, but the shape of the goggles really takes out your already limited peripheral vision which I couldn't get used to and returned them.
> Failures like Google glass get so much criticism no one wants to try.
Uber has burned up over $100bn in capital, let's not pretend that hurt feelings is what's holding the smart glasses sector back. Maybe companies don't want to try because they've looked into it and decided that a pair of sunglasses with an EULA is too hard of a sell.
This. Inventors, either individual or corporate, are not afraid of repeating failures. Every inventor is 100% convinced that their version is revolutionary. Overconfidence is the problem, not sensitive feelings.
> Wearables, ultimately, are an expiremental product. Neither the users not the developers really know what the application is.
I think we know what the killer applications are, and the problem is that the killer apps for wearables (especially glasses type devices) have deep societal/ethical concerns. The apps that would sell well are mostly "situational awareness" for law enforcement, sales (used car credit checks before rep engages), venue security (don't let people with records/bad social credit in), etc... Connecting face recognition, credit/background checks and putting that at the point of sale or entry. Unfortunately, it's coming. I'm not sure this is going to make the world better.
BTW - UI, design and all of that really matters less than you would think if the application has great utility and benefit (to the wearer/wearer's employer). The problem is a lot of the apps I've seen don't really do anything that is all that remarkable or useful enough to make your "greeters" wear them.
A lot of the criticism comes down to the fact that the ideas seem objectively terrible. I don’t mean for a design standpoint. Look how awful smartphones have been? Wearables, at least currently just seem like even more intrusive, physically uncomfortable smartphones. Especially when Google or Meta are the ones designing them. I just don’t see a world where a Meta wearable is anything but terrible.
I just grabbed a Starbucks that I ordered on the way so there was no wait, exchanged some texts with friends who live 8000 miles away, and responded to an urgent work email that 30 years ago would have been a “drop everything and drive into the office” phone call.
I mean there are downsides, like anything, but it’s hard for me to see smartphones as anything but a net godsend. Do people really think they’re in the same category of bad as Google Glasses?
> I mean there are downsides, like anything, but it’s hard for me to see smartphones as anything but a net godsend.
That smartphones involve tradeoffs means that some people will find the downsides worth it, and others won't.
I used to find them worth it, but starting a couple of years ago, I realized that they aren't for me. This is why my current one will be my last one.
> Do people really think they’re in the same category of bad as Google Glasses?
In the sense of there being tradeoffs, yes, I do. The eyewear form factor has much larger downsides, though. The primary reason why I don't like them is the same reason why I hate using my smartphone in public: it seems very rude. But with the eyeglass form factor, it's harder to slip them into my pocket.
> Wearables, ultimately, are an expiremental product.
Undercover cops love tech, the apple airpods are a classic example, they are excellent for recording conversations, so when you get a stranger wearing a pair, or meta raybans, or even a mobile phone in hand engaging you in conversation, they are phishing for self incrimination.
So can you really say, they are experimental? Seems like they are being put to good/bad use.
When you are a company the size of FB/Googs, a product that is only used in such a niche way by such a small number of users is not a successful product. So yeah, they would probably much rather the public think of it as an experiment that didn't gain traction to save face rather than releasing yet another failing product. The example you described would probably have users described with numbers in the thousands. These companies are used to numbers in the billions, so that doesn't even make them get out of bed in the morning.
This is my take as well. "...audio, connectivity, and 'some of the hardware features, including battery life.'" So similar complaints to early smartphones. That sounds like a great outcome to me.
What you wrote is well written and thought out. I do agree with the sentiment that it’s worthwhile to try to make such products. I wonder though if a large part of the backlash has more to do with the who is behind the product than from a failed attempt. People don’t trust Google or Facebook. There are people like me who want them to fail when coming up with new products because ultimately those products, if they succeed, are going to be ad filled experiences.
yeah,
even non-HNers aren't likely to want to use hardware tied to something called "Facebook View" to manage their photos (it actually doesn't sync photos with Facebook unless you specifically ask it to never mind having any means to display ads or inject viral videos and political content into your eyeballs, but if they need to explain that...)
If they only optionally sync it's better than I thought - clearly they're explaining badly enough that even some articles I've seen about it didn't mention that was optional.
People don’t trust Facebook but still use Facebook. I believe given two equally good implementations of a product the one made by Facebook will be less popular. As it stands now Oculus is the only standalone VR device and people will use it despite being owned by Facebook.
... and sure it is. I certainly am not hoping for Meta to succeed in owning the metaverse.
That said, the sentiments can add up to an impulsive "roast em!" habit that discourages risk taking, even risk thinking. It's ultimately much easier and less interesting to consider how things can fail than how they can succeed.
> if they succeed, are going to be ad filled experiences.
So will self driving taxis be an experience where the passenger is bombarded with adverts projected onto all the glass so you cant see where you going?
I'm surprised this has not already appeared in the US!
Seven years ago I got a taxi in Las Vegas to go from the airport to my hotel. The whole ride had ads blaring from the radio and the backseat area was filled with display ads. I’ve never taken a taxi since then. What you describe will be a thing in the U.S. if self driving becomes a thing. We already can’t get gas without being bombarded with ads. To me this fact is the main reason I hope to get an electric car someday.
> We already can’t get gas without being bombarded with ads.
Thank goodness this hasn't become common in my part of the country yet. The only gas stations that do this are the ones near the major hotels that out-of-towners stay at (where the gas is also more expensive), so they're easily avoided.
> We’ll... need to better understand why users stop using their glasses, how to ensure we are encouraging new feature adoption, and ultimately how to keep our users engaged and retained
Well... maybe they aren't particularly useful to the average person? I get the feeling that Meta might be ignoring the possibility that this isn't actually a sensible product. You still need to carry your smartphone, the camera isn't as good as strapping a GoPro to you head, many won't be into the idea of varying sunglasses non-stop. It's a cool demo, but what's the use case exactly?
I can see them being useful in a professional setting, like a plumper or a mechanic who needs to be able to show an issue to a customer. I just wouldn't make them into sun glasses, nor would they need the Ray-Ban branding. The reality of products like this may be that they are primarily useful in work environments, but that's not a sexy market to be in for Meta. Maybe they should have teamed up with Black & Decker or Bosch.
Honestly, this happened to me with smartwatches. I’ve had at least two over the years. One Samsung and one Apple. I’m pretty sure they’re both sitting around somewhere having not been used for years.
I just really hate having to constantly charge things. My phone is enough. It’s half the reason I was disappointed with everyone dropping the headphone jack.
If you just want sleep and activity tracking, I am pretty happy with garmin so far. I charge it about once a week or less. I don't use it for notifications or any other smart stuff. Just weather, sleep, and activity tracking.
That was exactly how I felt about the smart watch, right up until I got one. Before then, I had not warn a watch daily for decades. Previously, when I did wear one, I actually wore 2 as a soccer referee, but never for much longer than 90 mins. The charging thing is a thing, but it charges so damn fast that I can charge it on my desk while working and not even think about it. The headphone jack is still an issue for me, and is one of the main reasons I still drive an iPhone 6S+.
With all of that, as much as I hate to admit I like it, but I do like my smart watch. I keep finding things about it that I like the longer I have had it. There are a few things I wish I could do with it, but that's more of the app available on my phone doesn't have a watch version.
I mean some years ago Apple (or someone in the industry, don't quote me this is now just rumours and hearsay) that they intentionally optimized for about a day of battery life; the technology is there to make a smartphone last for a week, but that means cutting down on performance and whatnot.
I'm pretty confident that iOS 1.0 or 2.0 or whichever would last for a week on a modern-day iphone, even without all the optimizations they've done since then. Battery capacity tripled or quadrupled, and there's been multiple generations of chip design since then.
I am the same way. My watch is firstly a watch, secondly needs to do minimal things (HR, step counter, sleep analysis, notifications). For that the Withings Steel HR [1] was perfect.
I bought it at the start of the pandemic after seeing it on my local news, and wore it every day/night for 5-6 months before needing to take it off to charge, and when I did that, I realized I lost the charger.
It was an amazing watch though. Simple and elegant.
I am happy with a Mi Band... 4. Tracks steps, sleep, heart rate and exercise, relays notifications, allows me to find my phone, lasts 2 weeks on a charge. And it's not going to be a disaster should I lose or damage one. The Mi Band line is top bang for buck. The thing that's putting me off from buying a newer model is that they got rid of the capacitive home button. For me swiping back is just not as quick. Sometimes to check time or step count while my hands are busy, I just tap it with my nose :^)
I'm intrigued by this kind of tech as I think it could be repurposed as a fancy pair of cycling glasses. Rather than looking down at a cycle computer, have the relevant data fields shown in a HUD and also a killer application would be to have an overlay of a rear view camera so you can see when there's gaps for turning etc. (you'd still have to look behind before performing the manoeuvre though).
You can use them for voice commands, or to take pictures of whatever you happen to look at. That makes them very limited even just as cameras - a fairly large proportion of the pictures I take involve moving the camera (my phone) into
angles I wouldn't get my head into with comfort.
If cheap enough they could be fun as "I want a picture too fast to get my phone out and happen to have my sunglasses on" cameras, but that's not exactly something you'd expect to get you huge use. If they were cheap enough and they didn't upload everything to Facebook (which they apparently do; EDIT: someone is saying elsewhere this is optional, which makes it marginally better if I trusted Facebook not to change that down the road), it might be something you'd think is a fun "nice to have" you might not use very often, but hardly something many people will go out of their way to buy at a large added cost.
Okay, that makes them fairly useless then. If I wanted to take lots of photos of stuff that I look at, I'd be better off with some kind of GoPro video camera just stuck on a hat.
My thought too, not least because being obtrusive avoids all the pesky social issues of appearing to be trying to obscure that you're possibly filming.
When it then also costs 3x a regular pair of Raybans (UK prices at least) and if you're happy to look like you're going around spying on people you can buy a pair of cheap spy glasses on Amazon for 1/10th the price, I don't understand what market segment they think they're going for.
As just a camera, if they were detachable and visible enough that you're not looking like you're trying to get away with something, I'd be far more interested. If they're going to be permanently mounted, they need to be invisible.
Yea I'd say a HUD inside the Ray-Ban form factor is the killer app. I'd love to double tap the side of my glasses (similar to how you double tap quest 2 headset) to bring up a HUD showing time, weather, trains, notifications from my phone, etc
Something like that would be the beach head into the AR future.
I am convinced all the naysayers here haven’t even given them a shot. I got a pair a year ago and use them all the time, it’s like a dash cam for my head. I’ve taken a ton of video and photos with mine and absolutely love them for phone calls and music.
I do wish they were water proof and had more battery life, but. Otherwise they’re great.
It doesn't roll continuously, but I can press a button and it starts recording. Something I would have missed, especially with little kids, I can now capture.
There is a market for these things. But that market the big companies making them does not seem to understand. They keep doing these big splashy expensive things that most people do not want but some do. So instead of small launches with iteration into good things they come out swinging. Overspend like crazy then the thing looks like a total disaster. All of these companies want hockey stick curves on sales and are totally unsatisfied with small trial runs.
While its true that the both the article and title are obvious clickbait and make no effort to present a balanced view.
It's also true that today AR/VR is a tiny niche market of little consequence. That may change when we have much lighter glasses that enable an AI assistant, but today its expensive R&D not a viable consumer product
I interviewd at facebook when these launched and one of my interviewers wore them throughout the call and i just couldn’t take the goofy dude seriously lol. what a dumb interview.
> The music video, directed by Rob Quartly, shot at the Don Jail in Toronto, reflects the vision of a "fashion" police state, with scenes of Hart in a prison cell, without sunglasses, being strong-armed by police officers and paraded past various citizens wearing their regulation shades.
I liked Casey Neistat's review. The idea is not bad but the picture quality is horrible (and it's very apt comparison that is nowhere near good as even an iPhone 5 from 2012). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF3iysOyelg
Honestly I'd buy one of these. We already have GoPros on helmets so a camera in a sunglass would be pretty nice. Well as long as it makes good pictures at least.
They have demo pictures and video on the official product announcement page, and even there the quality is shockingly bad. GoPro era was 10 years ago, it's crazy that FB would release something with such poor quality for $300.
This is more of a story of how many people can be conned into buying garbage hardware with software under someone else's control, and not get refunded.
I think AI is going to create the killer app for something like this… though if people will be ok with that is another question.
I’m imagining something that attempts to record your life so it can help with it.
“Remember you told your wife yesterday you would take out the garbage today”
Driving home from a meeting with Joe:
“Glasses, can you get me more information about the thing Joe mentioned?”
“Sure, he asked about the viability of selling our widget in Asia, my brief search tells me that there are three obvious competitors to your product there, and they are X, Y, and Z. The market appears to be growing at 10% year over year. Blah, blah”
“Thanks. Can you tell me more about X?”…
When you get home:
“Glasses, summarize our last conversation and put it in my inbox.”
Get topical reminders: you are at the grocery store, and your glasses reminds you of your grocery list without prompting (when no one is trying to talk to you, so you can pay attention, and when you need to know about the item: so onions and celery in the grocery section, pork butt when near the meat, etc).
You are at the grocery store, and you can’t remember if you have any saffron at home, and you didn’t throw it on the list. Your glasses can tell you because it remembers.
Etc.
We are almost there. The tech isn’t at the level it needs to be in accuracy and we haven’t built the “meta” ai, that can recognize that knowing what food I have at home is valuable, so it should pay attention to that, etc. I just hope there is a self hosted version built by someone when we get there.
Smartglasses seem to forget just how many people already have that equipment slot taken up by their actual glasses. A lesser concern for the market, as they aren't even close to adoption to saturate the non-glasses wearers but still something which personally kills my interest before it starts.
Writer Scott Galloway (former brand strategist) notes that essentially noone will ever wear something that doesn't add to their self image or presentability to others. Trillions in commerce has happened on this premise.
I was kind of surprised that Meta went ahead with shipping these after the clear failure of Snap Spectacles, a very similar product technically although with a more outré youth-oriented design.
Yeah I was excited to try the spectacles from Snap. they're ok, they worked but when do I use this exactly? It is just sort of awkward in my experience.
The failure of various smart glasses (and the AR/VR vision more generally) seems to punch a hole in the argument that in industrial capitalism consumer wants are manufactured. Companies can push very hard with marketing but there needs to be a minimum "click" with at least some consumer demographic for the magic to happen.
The article mentions privacy concerns, hardware / quality issues etc. but this does not feel like a coherent explanation. The masses have been conditioned not to worry about their loss of privacy and first adopters tend to be accommodating of usability and quality issues.
Somehow all this "tech stuff on our head" has hit a cultural and/or user experience barrier that is non-trivial to overcome. Yet it is hard to pin down the real reasons: Billions are now entirely happy with "tech stuff in our hands", tech that is privacy violating, has been of varying quality, creates potentially dangerous distractions etc.
It doesn't have a screen, so there's that. It (optionally - for now?) uploads the pictures and video to Facebook though, so don't worry, there's another downside.
So... I think we should go easy on the dunking. These things must be tried to succeed. Failures like Google glass get so much criticism no one wants to try.
That said, these give us to types of (maybe instructive) failure. Glass looked too much like a headcam to be used casually. These put looks first, but aren't responsive enough.
The application both products targeted is there proverbial deep end. The bar is very high for a device mounted on your face as part of daily life.
Performance has to be flawless. The frustration caused by a small lag, voice recognition or whatnot is extremely magnified relative to a phone or pc. Same for aesthetics, comfort, etc.
All that without a very clear picture of how people will use the device.
I do think there's room to succeed in this space, but I think the innovations need to come in steps. Going for the mass-production, mass-appeal, everyday usage device before you have a successful predecessor... You need to hit multiple bulls eyes.
A sports, adventure or camera centric product has much better odds. Those activities already allow "gear."
The problem is that it's a race to the ultimate product, and making an intermediate may be just free market research for apple/meta/etc.