5 ms·

How have they "screwed" you? (Genuine question, I don't follow the Glass project much.)

by mrb 11y ago

jdietrich 11y ago
The software was unusable, they abandoned the product in a broken state and they didn't provide source code. Whether that counts as "screwed" depends on what expectations you consider reasonable.
- billyhoffman 11y ago
  But did Google ever promise Explorers stable, non-beta software when they signed up? Did they ever promise open access to the code or hardware? I get being upset if expectations aren't met. But I just don't understand what set these expectations to begin with.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - jimrandomh 11y ago
    They did quite a lot of things that set expectations which they failed to meet. First, obviously, a $1500 price tag carries with it an implied level of service. But it's not just that. Early in Glass' life, they swapped all their users' hardware with a new hardware revision. But when their software increased the memory requirements beyond what their deployed hardware had in it, they didn't do a second swap. They didn't communicate the fact that they had made a closed fork of Android (which is Apache licensed); I didn't realize that until I downloaded the source packages they were offering, and discovered that it only contained the kernel (which is GPLv2) and nothing else. They set up an app store, but put restrictions in the SDK license that fell only a tiny bit short of banning app development. (Specifically, it's GPL-incompatible and also bans charging money and advertising). They offered a usable API to develop against, then broke giant pieces of it and never fixed them.
  - chaqke 11y ago
    Well, they DID take $1500 of cash to join the explorer program. At least they could make it easier for someone to use the hardware if they were going to abandon it.
  - gcb0 11y ago
    yes. no matter how much they slap Beta labels on something with one hand, they drown everyone on marketing videos and press releases with the other. and that's not just glass. that's Google overall.
jimrandomh 11y ago
Glass cost $1500, which seemed at the time like a signal that they wanted to aim it at developers. My perspective is as a developer who wanted to do some projects on Glass, who bought it in November 2013 (when it was at software version XE11), which is when Glass was at its peak. So first of all, they released a software update (XE16) that increased memory requirement beyond the capabilities of the hardware most of their users had, and didn't swap those units. This despite having previously swapped everyone's units for a minor sensor upgrade, setting expectations. They deceived their users about the cause of the problems; they told their support staff to instruct users who complained about crashes and slowness to uninstall any third-party software, which did work, but created the false impression that it was bugs in that software rather than out-of-memory conditions that were causing the problems. (My own Glass unit is one of the ones with 1GB memory, so it can't really run the latest version of the software. The only way to make it usable is to root, flash with an outdated version, and disable the auto-updater by getting a shell and deleting it from the filesystem.) They took Android, an open-source operating system, and made a closed-source fork. But they did nothing to communicate what was still open and what was now closed, creating a public impression that the platform was more open than it really was. They repeatedly removed major functionality from the software, especially developer-oriented functionality, without notice or justification or in several cases even public acknowledgement. In particular, they removed support for bluetooth keyboards, touchpad gestures in regular Android apps, and video calling. The problem was greatly exacerbated by it being surprisingly closed-source; several of the issues would've otherwise been extremely easy fixes. There was a long period in which it seemed like a fix should've been just waiting for the next release, so as an outside developer with a project I wanted to do, I held on and invested a lot of time and energy into trying to find workarounds. But they never fixed any of the major issues; development just sort of ground to a gradual halt and then they announced that they were cancelling it. So I've got a useless $1500 device, a hundred hours invested into developing on a platform that will never see the light, and a whole lot of frustration directed towards Google.

How have they "screwed" you? (Genuine question, I don't follow the Glass project much.)

by mrb 11y ago

How have they "screwed" you? (Genuine question, I don't follow the Glass project much.)

The software was unusable, they abandoned the product in a broken state and they didn't provide source code. Whether that counts as "screwed" depends on what expectations you consider reasonable.

billyhoffman 11y ago
But did Google ever promise Explorers stable, non-beta software when they signed up? Did they ever promise open access to the code or hardware? I get being upset if expectations aren't met. But I just don't understand what set these expectations to begin with.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- jimrandomh 11y ago
  They did quite a lot of things that set expectations which they failed to meet. First, obviously, a $1500 price tag carries with it an implied level of service. But it's not just that. Early in Glass' life, they swapped all their users' hardware with a new hardware revision. But when their software increased the memory requirements beyond what their deployed hardware had in it, they didn't do a second swap. They didn't communicate the fact that they had made a closed fork of Android (which is Apache licensed); I didn't realize that until I downloaded the source packages they were offering, and discovered that it only contained the kernel (which is GPLv2) and nothing else. They set up an app store, but put restrictions in the SDK license that fell only a tiny bit short of banning app development. (Specifically, it's GPL-incompatible and also bans charging money and advertising). They offered a usable API to develop against, then broke giant pieces of it and never fixed them.
- chaqke 11y ago
  Well, they DID take $1500 of cash to join the explorer program. At least they could make it easier for someone to use the hardware if they were going to abandon it.
- gcb0 11y ago
  yes. no matter how much they slap Beta labels on something with one hand, they drown everyone on marketing videos and press releases with the other. and that's not just glass. that's Google overall.

jimrandomh 11y ago

Glass cost $1500, which seemed at the time like a signal that they wanted to aim it at developers. My perspective is as a developer who wanted to do some projects on Glass, who bought it in November 2013 (when it was at software version XE11), which is when Glass was at its peak. So first of all, they released a software update (XE16) that increased memory requirement beyond the capabilities of the hardware most of their users had, and didn't swap those units. This despite having previously swapped everyone's units for a minor sensor upgrade, setting expectations. They deceived their users about the cause of the problems; they told their support staff to instruct users who complained about crashes and slowness to uninstall any third-party software, which did work, but created the false impression that it was bugs in that software rather than out-of-memory conditions that were causing the problems. (My own Glass unit is one of the ones with 1GB memory, so it can't really run the latest version of the software. The only way to make it usable is to root, flash with an outdated version, and disable the auto-updater by getting a shell and deleting it from the filesystem.) They took Android, an open-source operating system, and made a closed-source fork. But they did nothing to communicate what was still open and what was now closed, creating a public impression that the platform was more open than it really was. They repeatedly removed major functionality from the software, especially developer-oriented functionality, without notice or justification or in several cases even public acknowledgement. In particular, they removed support for bluetooth keyboards, touchpad gestures in regular Android apps, and video calling. The problem was greatly exacerbated by it being surprisingly closed-source; several of the issues would've otherwise been extremely easy fixes. There was a long period in which it seemed like a fix should've been just waiting for the next release, so as an outside developer with a project I wanted to do, I held on and invested a lot of time and energy into trying to find workarounds. But they never fixed any of the major issues; development just sort of ground to a gradual halt and then they announced that they were cancelling it. So I've got a useless $1500 device, a hundred hours invested into developing on a platform that will never see the light, and a whole lot of frustration directed towards Google.