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I always get laughed at when voicing this, but I was one of the (admittedly ridiculous-looking) people who tried out the Google Glass when it came out. It was,

I always get laughed at when voicing this, but I was one of the (admittedly ridiculous-looking) people who tried out the Google Glass when it came out. It was, in many ways, a bad product, but if you could abstract away from how goofy it looked or how bad the battery life was, it was kinda awesome. I tried hard for a couple weeks to use it exclusively, and granted that back then my phone wasn't as much an appendage as it is now, but I found the experience of going back to my phone deeply disappointing. It made me aware, in a way I thought impossible, of just how much I strain my neck all day long to look at the phone, for instance. Calling my wife on Hangout and having her see what I'm seeing and picking groceries together while she was at work was a very neat experience... to have map overlay as I drove on my glasses, too, was awesome. That's all to say, I think anyone who implements a pretty good version of this with modern tech will usher in glasses as the new compute form factor. Which, paradoxically, is why I think Apple may be the last to do this. Good AR tech will absolutely destroy the iPhone... either they'll do it when they think they are ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED they can successfully cannibalize their own product, OR somehow the iPhone proves to start becoming an unsuccessful business on its own right. I think those two things are pretty unlikely; far likelier for META to keep their nose to the grindstone and perhaps, just perhaps, knock something out of the park.

zikduruqe 4y ago
Same here. Was flown out to Google to pick them up. It was an awesome product, for hardly any of my use cases. But I could see where certain industries or applications they would excel at.
- parthdesai 4y ago
  That's exactly the direction google took: https://www.google.ca/glass/start/ https://www.google.ca/glass/start/
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    They are just a bit glossier alternative to dealers and vuzix though which have been in this market for ages. There's nothing special about the Enterprise glass compared to those except the sightly cooler looking design.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      Sorry where it says dealers it should read RealWear. Damn you auto correct
      - reef84_ 4y ago
        You can edit your comments.
linkjuice4all 4y ago
I, too, was a Glasshole for a bit but I really didn’t try to “normalize” wearing them in everyday life. They weren’t quite ready for that and the software was pretty limited at the time - but they were interesting none the less. As others have pointed out in this thread people want full pass through wide field of vision AR and that’s not going to happen soon enough. I feel like the breakout application won’t be the home consumer but rather some industrial use. Augmented reality could easily level up an entry level assistant faster by visualizing the task they need to do. Disassembling and repairing equipment you’re unfamiliar with would be easier when the overlay tells you what bolt to turn on which widget.
sebzim4500 4y ago
Cannibalization is a non-issue when the product requires you to have an iphone as well, which depending on form factor and price point could be reasonable.
- interestica 4y ago
  Yeah the most likely form factor would be keeping all processing in the phone and keeping the glasses as a "thin client" of sorts. Wireless connection. And make the batteries part of the form factor (eg part of headband/strap to balance weight of glasses). A sort of AirPlay (ARPlay?).
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    The bluetooth headphone / earbud analgy makes sense. The glasses are simply the camera; the iPhone does the heavy lift and dials out as needed. I'm guessing you'll need more power on the phone than for simple music streaming since the graphics, even if mostly processed remotely, are going to be more intensive and mutable in the same way that a 4k youtube vid uses more Mbps than soundcloud mumble-rap.
djtango 4y ago
Yep big believer that just as mobile was the huge step change in interaction vs the PC, widespread AR glasses will be next. Maybe that's too obvious, don't know. The when is maybe more interesting. The matrix dropped in 2000 (useful milestone for the usage of cellphones) but Uber only started to hockey stick around 2014. So finger in the air analogous reasoning suggests AR glasses maybe 10 years from now, with saturation maybe 20 years from now (marked by our now 20 years older parents owning a pair and being glued to tiktok) With all this chatGPT hype of late maybe we really will all be rocking JARVIS style glasses come 20 years from now
- reef84_ 4y ago
  I don’t understand why you are talking about The Matrix and Uber.
ericd 4y ago
Yeah, I have one of the Explorer models, it was also great to be able to wink to take a picture - it made it much easier to capture fleeting moments than pulling a phone out, especially when I didn't have hands free. It was also super easy to check emails/texts and decide if I needed to pull out my phone, which ironically made them less disruptive. Shame about the PR backlash, all I ever got from anyone was curiosity and a desire to try it out, which makes me think that the PR backlash was partly manufactured by trumping up an unrepresentative sample. It's not like these things were recording video constantly (though a query-able augmented memory made via transcription/abstraction of always-on video would be awesome).
- WeylandYutani 4y ago
  The issue was that people couldn't tell if you were recording them. We are all extremely aware that everything we do can end up on the internet and potentially damage us.
  - ericd 4y ago
    I believe they made it so something lit up on the front when recording?
Someone 4y ago
I would think Apple still exists precisely because it knows that, if they don’t cannibalize their own product, somebody else will. The Apple II paid for development of the Mac, the iPhone cannibalized the iPod.
pwinnski 4y ago
Apple famously cannibalizes their existing products deliberately, so I don't think that's what's holding them back. It's also strongly possible that Apple's eventual product will require an iPhone to function, so cannibalization might not even be an issue. Apple also famously tries not to release products first, waiting until they can deliver something that fits well into their ethos. How well they succeed at that is an open question, and whether it's a wise approach is an open question, but it's their approach. I'm not sure Apple can deliver another home run, but so far they've delivered more than anyone else I can think of, so I wouldn't bet against them either.

zikduruqe 4y ago

Same here. Was flown out to Google to pick them up. It was an awesome product, for hardly any of my use cases. But I could see where certain industries or applications they would excel at.

parthdesai 4y ago
That's exactly the direction google took: https://www.google.ca/glass/start/ https://www.google.ca/glass/start/
- wkat4242 4y ago
  They are just a bit glossier alternative to dealers and vuzix though which have been in this market for ages. There's nothing special about the Enterprise glass compared to those except the sightly cooler looking design.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    Sorry where it says dealers it should read RealWear. Damn you auto correct
    - reef84_ 4y ago
      You can edit your comments.

linkjuice4all 4y ago

I, too, was a Glasshole for a bit but I really didn’t try to “normalize” wearing them in everyday life. They weren’t quite ready for that and the software was pretty limited at the time - but they were interesting none the less. As others have pointed out in this thread people want full pass through wide field of vision AR and that’s not going to happen soon enough. I feel like the breakout application won’t be the home consumer but rather some industrial use. Augmented reality could easily level up an entry level assistant faster by visualizing the task they need to do. Disassembling and repairing equipment you’re unfamiliar with would be easier when the overlay tells you what bolt to turn on which widget.

sebzim4500 4y ago

Cannibalization is a non-issue when the product requires you to have an iphone as well, which depending on form factor and price point could be reasonable.

interestica 4y ago
Yeah the most likely form factor would be keeping all processing in the phone and keeping the glasses as a "thin client" of sorts. Wireless connection. And make the batteries part of the form factor (eg part of headband/strap to balance weight of glasses). A sort of AirPlay (ARPlay?).
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  The bluetooth headphone / earbud analgy makes sense. The glasses are simply the camera; the iPhone does the heavy lift and dials out as needed. I'm guessing you'll need more power on the phone than for simple music streaming since the graphics, even if mostly processed remotely, are going to be more intensive and mutable in the same way that a 4k youtube vid uses more Mbps than soundcloud mumble-rap.

djtango 4y ago

Yep big believer that just as mobile was the huge step change in interaction vs the PC, widespread AR glasses will be next. Maybe that's too obvious, don't know. The when is maybe more interesting. The matrix dropped in 2000 (useful milestone for the usage of cellphones) but Uber only started to hockey stick around 2014. So finger in the air analogous reasoning suggests AR glasses maybe 10 years from now, with saturation maybe 20 years from now (marked by our now 20 years older parents owning a pair and being glued to tiktok) With all this chatGPT hype of late maybe we really will all be rocking JARVIS style glasses come 20 years from now

reef84_ 4y ago
I don’t understand why you are talking about The Matrix and Uber.

ericd 4y ago

Yeah, I have one of the Explorer models, it was also great to be able to wink to take a picture - it made it much easier to capture fleeting moments than pulling a phone out, especially when I didn't have hands free. It was also super easy to check emails/texts and decide if I needed to pull out my phone, which ironically made them less disruptive. Shame about the PR backlash, all I ever got from anyone was curiosity and a desire to try it out, which makes me think that the PR backlash was partly manufactured by trumping up an unrepresentative sample. It's not like these things were recording video constantly (though a query-able augmented memory made via transcription/abstraction of always-on video would be awesome).

WeylandYutani 4y ago
The issue was that people couldn't tell if you were recording them. We are all extremely aware that everything we do can end up on the internet and potentially damage us.
- ericd 4y ago
  I believe they made it so something lit up on the front when recording?

Someone 4y ago

I would think Apple still exists precisely because it knows that, if they don’t cannibalize their own product, somebody else will. The Apple II paid for development of the Mac, the iPhone cannibalized the iPod.

pwinnski 4y ago

Apple famously cannibalizes their existing products deliberately, so I don't think that's what's holding them back. It's also strongly possible that Apple's eventual product will require an iPhone to function, so cannibalization might not even be an issue. Apple also famously tries not to release products first, waiting until they can deliver something that fits well into their ethos. How well they succeed at that is an open question, and whether it's a wise approach is an open question, but it's their approach. I'm not sure Apple can deliver another home run, but so far they've delivered more than anyone else I can think of, so I wouldn't bet against them either.