4 ms·

I doubt it, these devices have a serious user input problem. The cornerstone of computers is human-computer interaction. That's what makes these pieces of silic

I doubt it, these devices have a serious user input problem. The cornerstone of computers is human-computer interaction. That's what makes these pieces of silicon useful. They're tools for humans - meaning, it doesn't matter if the tool is better if it can't be used easier. Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways. Typing is slower. No mouse. Fingers are fat and imprecise. The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone. The trade-off was portability. Everyone can carry a smartphone, so it's okay that the human-interaction is worse in a lot of ways. Then, when we need that richer interaction, we can reach for a laptop. The problem with smart glasses is they go even a step further in how poor the interaction is. Speech as an interface for computers is perhaps the worst interface. Yes, it's neat and shows up in sci-fi all the time. But if you think about it, it's a very bad interface. It's slow, it's imprecise, it's wishy-washy, it context dependent. Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster. Smart glasses, however, are not more portable than phones. Not by much. Everyone already has a phone. So what do we gain from smart glasses? IMO, not very much. Smart glasses may become popular, but will they replace the smartphone? In my opinion, fat chance. What I think is more likely, actually, is smartphones replacing smart glasses. They already have cameras. So the capabilities are about the same, except smart phones can do WAY more. For most people, I imagine, the occasional "look at this thing and tell me about it" usecase can be satisfied by a smartphone.

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kgwxd 1y ago
i'll never wear them but i'm sure they'll have wireless conn for a keyboard, mouse, and other sane inputs, just like phones. for me the worst part of touchscreen is having to hold the device like a fancy glass egg (on a sane device i'd look up how to spell the word for that) no matter what i'm doing out of fear the wrong thing will happen if i don't. at least a plain monitor strapped to my face doesn't have that concern.
imiric 1y ago
> Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways. I was among the nerds who swore I'd never use a touch keyboard, and I refused to buy a smartphone without a physical keyboard until 2011. Yes, typing on a screen was awful at first. But then text prediction and haptics got better, and we invented swipe keyboards. Today I'm nearly as fast and comfortable on a touch keyboard as I am on a physical one on a "real" computer. My point is that input devices get better. We know when something can be improved, and we invent better ways of interacting with a computer. If you think that we can't improve voice input to the point where it feels quicker, more natural and comfortable to use than a keyboard, you'd be mistaken. We're still in very early stages of this wave of XR devices. In the past couple of years alone, text-to-speech and speech recognition systems have improved drastically. Today it's possible to hold a nearly natural sounding conversation with AI. Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now? > Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster. That's because you're imagining navigating a list on a traditional 2D display with voice input. Why wouldn't we adapt our GUIs to work better with voice, or other types of input? Many XR devices support eye tracking. This works well for navigation _today_ (see some visionOS demos). Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now? So I think you're, understandably, holding traditional devices in high regard, and underestimating the possibilities of a new paradigm of computing. It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future, even if it seems unlikely today.
- tyg13 1y ago
  For me, voice input is an immediate no-go because I don't want to have to talk to myself while I'm in line at the grocery store, or waiting for my oil change, or in the dozens of other situations where I typically use my smartphone to do things.
- bandoti 1y ago
  Curious to see how this goes. It seems to me it’s hard to match reality—for example, books, book shelves, pencils, drafting tables, gizmos, keyboards, mouse, etc. Things with tactile feedback. Leafing through a book typeset on nice paper will always be a better experience than the best of digital representations. AR will always be somewhat awkward until you can physically touch and interact with the material things. It’s useful, sure, but not a replacement. Haptic feedback is probably my favorite iPhone user experience improvement on both the hardware and software side. However, I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords. All options are going to be valid and useful for a very long time.
goda90 1y ago
Voice is slow, but it can be sped up with vocal macros. One syllable/non-word noise commands. There's also touch pads on the side of the smart glasses as another input option. And I could imagine some people liking little trackball-esque handheld controllers(like from the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You"). And there's also air gestures using cameras on the smart glasses to watch what your hands are doing. I don't think any of these has the raw data input bandwidth that a keyboard has, and for a lot of use cases even a touchscreen could be better. But maybe that can be made up by the hands-free, augmented reality features of smart glasses.
exac 1y ago
A lot of people spend hours consuming auto-playing short-form video content. I would guess the majority of young people, in the West.
MailleQuiMaille 1y ago
> The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone. Good point, and it could be argued the user soon followed that dumbification, with youngest generations not even understanding the file/folder analogy. I think we can go dumber ! Why need an analogy at all ? It will all be there, up in your face and you can just talk to it !
itsdrewmiller 1y ago
Eye tracking is a UI in its infancy but should be as fast as manual manipulation. Either form factor could use it but glasses are more motivated to figure it out. Headwear is also well situated for neural interfaces.
naveen99 1y ago
To play devils advocate, Speech is how humans delegate to other humans. Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person or over the phone than on email.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person That's because the communication is going from a person to a person and both are very highly tuned to not only hear the words, but the tone, context, subtext, and undertones. There can be all kinds of information packed in a few words that have nothing to do with the words. Machines, even LLMs, can't do this. I don't think they every will. So typing and shortcut commands and the like are far more efficient interacting with a computer.
  - naveen99 1y ago
    That’s my point. It’s not the interface that’s the bottleneck. Ai needs to get a lot better and faster …

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kgwxd 1y ago

i'll never wear them but i'm sure they'll have wireless conn for a keyboard, mouse, and other sane inputs, just like phones. for me the worst part of touchscreen is having to hold the device like a fancy glass egg (on a sane device i'd look up how to spell the word for that) no matter what i'm doing out of fear the wrong thing will happen if i don't. at least a plain monitor strapped to my face doesn't have that concern.

imiric 1y ago

> Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways. I was among the nerds who swore I'd never use a touch keyboard, and I refused to buy a smartphone without a physical keyboard until 2011. Yes, typing on a screen was awful at first. But then text prediction and haptics got better, and we invented swipe keyboards. Today I'm nearly as fast and comfortable on a touch keyboard as I am on a physical one on a "real" computer. My point is that input devices get better. We know when something can be improved, and we invent better ways of interacting with a computer. If you think that we can't improve voice input to the point where it feels quicker, more natural and comfortable to use than a keyboard, you'd be mistaken. We're still in very early stages of this wave of XR devices. In the past couple of years alone, text-to-speech and speech recognition systems have improved drastically. Today it's possible to hold a nearly natural sounding conversation with AI. Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now? > Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster. That's because you're imagining navigating a list on a traditional 2D display with voice input. Why wouldn't we adapt our GUIs to work better with voice, or other types of input? Many XR devices support eye tracking. This works well for navigation _today_ (see some visionOS demos). Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now? So I think you're, understandably, holding traditional devices in high regard, and underestimating the possibilities of a new paradigm of computing. It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future, even if it seems unlikely today.

tyg13 1y ago
For me, voice input is an immediate no-go because I don't want to have to talk to myself while I'm in line at the grocery store, or waiting for my oil change, or in the dozens of other situations where I typically use my smartphone to do things.
bandoti 1y ago
Curious to see how this goes. It seems to me it’s hard to match reality—for example, books, book shelves, pencils, drafting tables, gizmos, keyboards, mouse, etc. Things with tactile feedback. Leafing through a book typeset on nice paper will always be a better experience than the best of digital representations. AR will always be somewhat awkward until you can physically touch and interact with the material things. It’s useful, sure, but not a replacement. Haptic feedback is probably my favorite iPhone user experience improvement on both the hardware and software side. However, I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords. All options are going to be valid and useful for a very long time.

goda90 1y ago

Voice is slow, but it can be sped up with vocal macros. One syllable/non-word noise commands. There's also touch pads on the side of the smart glasses as another input option. And I could imagine some people liking little trackball-esque handheld controllers(like from the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You"). And there's also air gestures using cameras on the smart glasses to watch what your hands are doing. I don't think any of these has the raw data input bandwidth that a keyboard has, and for a lot of use cases even a touchscreen could be better. But maybe that can be made up by the hands-free, augmented reality features of smart glasses.

exac 1y ago

A lot of people spend hours consuming auto-playing short-form video content. I would guess the majority of young people, in the West.

MailleQuiMaille 1y ago

> The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone. Good point, and it could be argued the user soon followed that dumbification, with youngest generations not even understanding the file/folder analogy. I think we can go dumber ! Why need an analogy at all ? It will all be there, up in your face and you can just talk to it !

itsdrewmiller 1y ago

Eye tracking is a UI in its infancy but should be as fast as manual manipulation. Either form factor could use it but glasses are more motivated to figure it out. Headwear is also well situated for neural interfaces.

naveen99 1y ago

To play devils advocate, Speech is how humans delegate to other humans. Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person or over the phone than on email.

Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person That's because the communication is going from a person to a person and both are very highly tuned to not only hear the words, but the tone, context, subtext, and undertones. There can be all kinds of information packed in a few words that have nothing to do with the words. Machines, even LLMs, can't do this. I don't think they every will. So typing and shortcut commands and the like are far more efficient interacting with a computer.
- naveen99 1y ago
  That’s my point. It’s not the interface that’s the bottleneck. Ai needs to get a lot better and faster …