10 ms·

Why I'm Returning Google Glass

131 points by tanglesome 13y ago

pkfrank 13y ago
>It feels very prototype-ish and I can't help but feel that it's the precursor to something better Google might even be working on now as we try these. ^^ This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away now. He doesn't want to pay a substantial premium "just" to be part of a privileged set of early-adopters. Everyone knows that this is still a beta, and improvements are on the way, so he's just saying the current iteration can't push him over the hump to hold onto the device (as opposed to recoup his cash).
- Navarr 13y ago
  I'm trying to understand why or how he got it. Was he an #ifihadglass winner? Was he just a lucky individual at Google IO that decided to plop down the cash for what was definitely a developer-device? I can understand that he doesn't think it's worth the price - because for a normal consumer it isn't. But I don't understand why he would have gotten it in the first place when it was so clearly limited in scope.
  - mikeevans 13y ago
    Looks like he was an #ifihadglass winner: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&doc_id=261565 http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&...
    - ChuckMcM 13y ago
      And it was a "whim" and his idea was to write a journal (which presumably gets page views) and so he gets one, and now he's publicly returning it, and getting lots of page views and his money back. All in all, the cynic in me thinks things are going as planned. He is effectively out no money, and yet he's picked up a bunch of traffic. Internet win.
      - jojanos 13y ago
        This guy actually does that for a living. He is currently testing a new product called Helpouts that allows you to charge for support using Hangouts in G+. Looks mildly interesting and more useful then Glass.
        Flenser 13y ago
        I can't see anything about helpouts on that site. It might be useful for a friend. Where did you hear about it?
  - at-fates-hands 13y ago
    >>>>>I can understand that he doesn't think it's worth the price - because for a normal consumer it isn't. But I don't understand why he would have gotten it in the first place when it was so clearly limited in scope. Also keep in mind more and more places are banning them over privacy concerns. How bad would that suck you drop $1500 and you can't even use it most of the time since so many places are banning them? http://www.fastcompany.com/3009432/tech-forecast/tracking-the-ban-on-google-glass http://www.fastcompany.com/3009432/tech-forecast/tracking-th...
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      Let's not fall into hyperbole: there's a few places that have banned Glass, out of well, the entire world. That's a long way from "most of the time" or "many places." There's a lot more (and by that, I mean orders of magnitude more) places that ask you to not use cell phones than places that ban Glass (restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shop lines, airplanes, customs, etc). But nobody would claim that makes cell phones useless.
- rsl7 13y ago
  > While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. This is an unfinished product and he wants his $ back because the user experience leaves him cold. He's not investing in Google - he's buying an actual product. And clearly he is skeptical that this particular product will ever live up to its potential. Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.
  - larrik 13y ago
    > Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product. Which was over twice the price at launch, and then fell off the face of the Earth once the iPhone 3G was announced, and dropped from support a year later or so. (The 3G was SOLD longer than the original was even supported) I think the original iPhone is exactly what he wants to avoid, since no one thinks Google will give him a retroactive refund like Apple did.
    - hippee-lee 13y ago
      My first gen still work with the stuff I had in it at the time I moved on from to a different phone. My daughter will find it, charge it and ask me to install games for her on it so I keep hiding it from her. And, I paid $200 for it with AT&T contract.
  - Goronmon 13y ago
    >Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product. Or as someone else mentioned, contrast this to a console devkit. Imagine someone making a blogpost about how they are returning their Xbox One devkit because there aren't any good games for it.
    - baddox 13y ago
      Is Google Glass marketed as a developer kit, or even as a prototype or "first run" device? All the FEM I've seen is very polished (leading me to believe the company wants me to think the product is polished) and seems to be catering to a mainstream audience. Compare this to the Oculus Rift, which explicitly sells a "development kit" and even requires checking a box that says "I understand this hardware is intended for developers and it is not a consumer product." And, as an aside, the Oculus Rift development kit is a much more polished and functional product than the current generation of Google Glass.
- baddox 13y ago
  > This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. Is there any indication that this generation of Google Glass is intended as a prototype rather than a consumer-ready product, other than the reviews which overwhelmingly seem to describe it as such?
  - ben1040 13y ago
    The fact that it doesn't work for the >50% of people who wear corrective lenses would be a start. Also, the last three months have seen numerous software updates to add features and change functionality. It is an unfinished product and they are iterating based on user feedback.
    - baddox 13y ago
      Well, non-prescription sunglasses don't work for people with corrective lenses either. I wouldn't call that definitive evidence.
    - dedward 13y ago
      Was that fact noted by google pre-purchase? Because if it was..... again, google did nothing wrong.
      - DannyBee 13y ago
        Yes, it was noted that it was for developers and early testers: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-glass-lands-for-consumers-in-2014/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-g... (Note explorer edition is what the author of this post was testing)
- coldtea 13y ago
  >* This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away now.* And it's also something Google and Microsoft do all the time. Release or pre-announce half-baked stuff, just to get some publicity, years (or decades) before they are fit for consumption. That supposedly makes them look "innovative".
alanctgardner2 13y ago
Let me be the first to say: if you don't want it, feel free to sell it to me (seriously, email in my profile). I tried some out when I was visiting the Bay Area and I did think they were amazing and magical; YMMV. edit: The author mentions that he wasn't interested in developing an app for Glass anyways; I thought that was half the point of the Explorer program (unless you're a skydiver/ballerina/whatever who can produce awesome marketing content).
- srik 13y ago
  The TOS probitis reselling, loaning or transferring.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - TylerE 13y ago
    I don't think a TOS can override first sale doctrine on the physical hardware, can it? Or was the initial "purchase" actually structured as a rental or lease?
    - nhangen 13y ago
      They can't prevent you from selling it, but they can revoke your access to the API.
  - lnanek2 13y ago
    Google reps have stated you are allowed to "gift" it to someone else when you pick it up, though. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would privately gift you some money back.
    - alanctgardner2 13y ago
      It would be amazing if someone could confirm this; even if Google offered me an official pair I couldn't afford the flight and hotel (going back to school in the fall!). I'd love to write some apps for Glass, and it seems like a surprising number of Explorers don't want theirs anyways.
portmanteaufu 13y ago
The first paragraph says it all. > "Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere." He shelled out for a beta product and was disappointed when it was, well, a beta product. More than that, even -- it was a beta version of a product which is the very first of its kind. I'm glad he was able to get his money back, but I'm not sure why he was surprised.
- arkades 13y ago
  While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's beta testing. If you ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good. I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate, you bias them towards strong positive responses - but they did cross "beta testing" and "luxury goods" wires.
  - robg 13y ago
    In some environments (e.g., hospitals, military, probably police and first responders), $1500 is fair market value if the utility is there. Consider the rise of pagers. In 1950, at introduction, they were the equivalent of $100/month in today's dollars. The Catch-22 for Google was establishing the value adds for wider adoption. They did an amazing job of launching the beta, considering that challenge.
  - deelowe 13y ago
    I don't get this. The current release is meant for developers, journalists and "technologists." Google was very up front about this. It's not intended to be a consumer product. Complaining about it at this point seems akin to someone getting a console devkit and complaining there's no games available and those cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to create some sort of secret selective list for early access.
ambiate 13y ago
I'm actually wearing Glass for my last day too. First off, I do not have toys to communicate with Glass. I realize that Glass is too early. There are not enough data dumping devices available at decent prices. Withings, vehicle data, health data, all the things people try to keep private. That kind of data is what would be useful with Glassware. The lack of a SDK and depending on RESTful services. I want to toy with sensors too. Delayed gratification does not work. Where are my long nights of programming? Battery life and destroying my cell's data plan are also issues. I'll miss watching people's faces light up when they try it on.
- alanctgardner2 13y ago
  Can't you create a feedback loop with sensors, an android app and the mirror api? I know it's a kludge, but if your mobile app posted data to your web server, your glass could poll it that way. Of course, the data and battery life concerns only get worse...
  - ambiate 13y ago
    At this point, without voiding my warranty, I can basically poll data, reflect data through options, and use voice commands (that barely understand me) to reflect data. I have seen interesting manipulation of the Mirror API to make voice commanded games. I tend to get unreliable ping pong times for real time related materials. Sometimes a card opens instantly, sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes. That was my basic idea. Device A connects through bluetooth and uploads data to Phone. Phone relays to web service. Web service relays to Glass. It works. Google App Engine/Mirror API is just not my cup of coffee. Glass, or some offspring, has the potential to be amazing. I really cannot wait to see what comes of this. A beta device utilizing a RESTful API... I knew what I was getting into, but once I got it, there just was not anything I wanted to feed to Glass. Glass hungers.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  The Android SDK works fine with it. Turn on debugging mode on the Glass and code away. Sensors are no problem: http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-in-google-glass http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-... Google even flat out stated at Google IO that the upcoming GDK will just be the Android SDK plus extra classes you compile against.
jjindev 13y ago
One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy. (That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)
- stcredzero 13y ago
  Make them usable in bright daylight while you're at it.
  - aeosynth 13y ago
    That's possible today with e-ink tablets, like the Kindle.
    - stcredzero 13y ago
      The trick is to have both reflective displays and responsiveness.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- uptown 13y ago
  Tablets may be a dominant form for quite a while, but how can you possibly think tablets are all there will ever be?
  - acuozzo 13y ago
    The UI in the NCC-1701-D is basically thousands upon thousands of mounted iPads with a really, really advanced version Siri installed. I'd be OK with that kind of future.
    - PebblesRox 13y ago
      Yeah but don't forget what else was in that future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT-wfcujaNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT-wfcujaNE Wouldn't you at least want to try it out?
Zimahl 13y ago
I don't know if anyone has asked this yet but why does it have lenses if those lenses don't actually do anything? I mean, why not just the display portion in some sort of headpiece instead of including the glass?
- alanctgardner2 13y ago
  It comes with sunglasses lenses, and the option to have no lenses. OP is wearing them over top of regular, perscription glasses
- deleted 13y ago
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- lnanek2 13y ago
  The lenses on Google Glass are completely removable and replaceable. Most people wear Google Glass without any lenses. There are clear and sunglass lenses you can snap in, however.
lnanek2 13y ago
Kind of weird he mentions the Recon Jet. You can't even remove the sunglasses part of that, so you certainly won't be reading emails casually at home on it. It doesn't seem to match his key complaints.
brandynwhite 13y ago
I've been wearing glass for a while now and am active in development (see http://openglass.us http://openglass.us), there are a few select groups of people I'd recommend it to at this point: developers (it's a fun/simple/exciting platform to write for), researchers (just like with the kinect, it makes it much easier to reproduce experiments), people who are constantly running around town while being in contact with others (business/sales people), who drive all the time (much safer/easier than a phone), who would use a gopro on a regular basis (sports), and who travel often (in the US due to mobile data). At this point that's really it. If you sit at a desk all day you're going to have a bad time with the notifications, "oh great I got a notice on my face a minute after my phone buzzed and my laptop notified me". They work much better when you are active, out and about when even picking up your phone is a chore. If you already know your way everywhere you go (you don't travel) then one of the best features, directions, is lost on you. This applies to the current device/software/apps, part of what we are trying to do with OpenGlass is push it past being a "beeper on your face" because that only applies to the segment of people to whom getting notifications faster than you do with your phone matters. Once they allow devs to push to the Play store (coming soon) it'll be a much more compelling product for end users. I think it'll ultimately be an amazing product, it's just the current feature list targets what I see as limited audiences.
- threeseed 13y ago
  DO NOT USE GLASS FOR DRIVING. It is illegal, is not safer than a car docked phone and since it moves your eyes away from the road is extremely dangerous. Stop being so selfish and stop the car. Studies have shown that when you are distracted you are more likely to crash. So innocent people's lives are at stake here.
  - brandynwhite 13y ago
    It is not illegal in most states (IANAL). I agree it is less safe than fully focusing on driving (as is talking to a passenger), but I'd much rather have people glance up briefly and speak out a text than look down at their lap like they do today. Each state will figure out where they draw the line on this, I personally think it is safe when used with care (like a navigation system).
api 13y ago
I actually think industrial applications might be the hidden killer app for augmented reality. Imagine walking around a power plant and seeing your environment annotated: last inspection time for each inspection point, what is flowing through each pipe and its current pressure, etc. Construction sites could be truly amazing.
- robg 13y ago
  Call it a professional environment and I think that's where we will see the first true impact of wearable computing. Your examples are two good ones. And of course people have mentioned hospitals. Just consider every profession where a desk jockey is not the norm. That's police, firemen, first responders, military, teachers, etc. Heck, why not cashiers and even bar tenders? Then again, I'm biased. We're building and selling our own version of wearable computing, but driven by your biological rhythms.
  - robg 13y ago
    Also consider that in professional environs, various pros get away with all sorts of silly attire and add-ons - from scrubs and stethoscopes to other uniforms and utility belts. You look ridiculous, but you have a job to do.
    - KeliNorth 13y ago
      Exactly, pros do it all the time. Eventually it becomes cool. I never buy into the hype about it looking bad for a few reasons: I wear glasses. Years ago people thought all glasses looked silly. And they were, with giant thick lenses. Now people buy non-RX glasses to look cool, even. I saw an animated sci-fi show from around 10 years ago (Denno Coil, Japanese anime) where in order to see the AR/VR world, you wore glasses. Every single kid wore glasses. You had to in order to see the VR/AR. Once something is common, the look factor doesn't matter. I think we're just seeing people being disappointed that Reality is still decades/centuries/possibly impossible behind Fiction, and Fiction is only pulling further away as Reality gets better computers to render Fiction with.
ChikkaChiChi 13y ago
If you are returning Google Glass, you weren't meant to have it in the first place. Bleeding edge isn't for everyone for a reason. This is the birth of a new form factor that has potential, not complete market realization.
l1ghtm4n 13y ago
I can't help but have a little CueCat-ish response to Glass. I don't wear glasses and don't care to. So Glass saves me from having to take my smart device out of my pocket by having something on my face all day? NB: I've seen plenty of these around but haven't actually played with one.
alxbrun 13y ago
I think the biggest problem is this swiping thing. Imagine Apple had released the first iPhone with a mouse plugged to it. It's a pure betrayal of the original Glass vision, where all user => machine communication goes through voice.
- robg 13y ago
  Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Just consider the challenge as an English speaker, with 18 years of experience, of traveling from Alabama to New York to London and Wales and Scotland and Ireland to Mumbai and Kerala to Cairns and Sidney and Auckland.
  - alxbrun 13y ago
    True, but in the case of Glass the speaker is always the same (it's the owner) so you can learn and adapt the acoustic model over time. I'm wondering btw if Google doesn't do that already for Android's built-in speech recognition, which accuracy is amazing. The other problem is that apps cannot (at least for now) change the language model, so Glass will always be in either "search" or "dictation" mode.
  - CamperBob2 13y ago
    Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Wouldn't the hardest HCI problem be a direct cortical interface?
- psbp 13y ago
  I really want to see glass interact with your phone so that you can perform minute actions like pinching and zooming or turning on certain camera features with your phone still in your pocket.
  - maffydub 13y ago
    The touch pad on the side of the glass is multi-touch-capable, so it can detect pinch and zoom. You can't use this function via the Mirror API, but you could do it by side-loading an APK.
mey 13y ago
I had the option to get a Glass through the #ifihadglass program, but after reading up on it's abilities and more on augmented reality, this is not the device I want to spend 1.5k on.
Zigurd 13y ago
"Wearables" in general are going to be a much tougher nut to crack than tablets. Glass is, at least, radical enough to stand a chance. I'd be less sure that a watch is enough of an improvement over taking one's phone out of one's pocket. Also, unlike tablets, which have the obvious business use case of liberating people from the "sit down with your computer" inhibitor to interpersonal interaction, nobody knows whether or how pervasive use of wearables could improve productivity or interaction in a business setting.
- wpietri 13y ago
  You know, I bought a Pebble watch so I could help an organization I love (the Long Now) develop a Pebble watch face. I expected to hate it, as I hate most gadgetry. I've ended up loving it. One of the most annoying things to me about a modern phone is its intrusiveness. Text messages, calendar alerts, phone calls, and other interruptive communications. The Pebble makes all of those notifications a) quiet, and b) subtle. It's fantastic to be in a meeting, see who's calling, and decline the call, all without breaking flow. I think it will also be good for a variety of special-purpose interfaces. E.g., one person already has built custom software such that when he starts moving on his bike (as triggered by phone-measured movement speed) it switches over to a bike computer display. And the nice part is that it looks just like a watch. Unlike Glass, people are entirely ok with it.
bla2 13y ago
"Because a title like this is bound to drive traffic to my blog."
friendlytuna 13y ago
I know this is off topic, but how do I get one of those "<dev>" shirts?
mikekij 13y ago
"Peacock. Peacock." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM
cromwellian 13y ago
Imagine that you buy an Xbox or Playstation DevKit, they cost 10x as much as an actual console that is shipped. There is precious little software except samples and demos, and you are expected to be a tester of buggy and incomplete stuff as well as potentially develop. And then you go and complain about how you shelled out thousands and there was nothing to do, and other devices will cost a fraction in the future. Do people not understand that Glass is primarily intended for developers and dogfooders? I think the #ifihadglass program was a mistake. They should have kept it limited to people attending Google I/O or other bonafide developers. I understand they wanted to have it tested by a diverse group of people in the real world and not just developers, but the wide ranging audience they were seeking also happens to be the people who don't seem to understand what devkits are.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
liveinoakland 13y ago
1 year from now: "Why I'm Returning To Google Glass"
Schuback 13y ago
I had the unique experience of borrowing a pair of Google Glass for a multi-day hackathon. The very first thing I did was figure out how to develop and install actual Android apps on it, because the "card" system isn't conducive to developing interesting applications. Frankly I'd rather go with a smart watch if cards are all I could do. During my time with Glass I prototyped 3D interactive software where you could load up models of human body parts, physical structures, etc, and swipe the side to rotate them around and view from all angles. This ran pretty well on the embedded processor, and I was importing relatively large 3D models. As well, I tried running computer vision algorithms on the device. This did not go so well. I could not run a basic Canny edge detection algorithm at more than 1 FPS. FYI this algorithm - and similarly complex ones - are fundamental to doing anything remotely useful in image processing. The alternative is doing all your image processing offline, which may be fine in the future as internet becomes super fast. Some people are doing facial recognition like this, at a whopping 2 FPS. About the product. There's the issue of the screen size. Small, hard to focus on, and up to the right. Not really conducive to augmenting your vision. I think it's fair to say that Glass was meant as an information retrieval device - which again, makes me wonder, why not just use a smart watch? Frankly I think the screen quality could be better on the watch too. All in all, the platform is an interesting foray into wearable computing but I reckon it will take multiple iterations (and years) to get it to the point where I can run more interesting CV and AR applications. In the meantime, I've been building my own wearable computing hardware to enable the types of software I want to build. The Alan Kay quote, and all that.
- maffydub 13y ago
  How were you implementing the Canny edge detector? As a GLSL shader or on the CPU? I implemented a (simple, not quite Canny) edge detector in GLSL and it runs fast enough not to be distracting (https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist). I've tried using OpenCV (which isn't GPU-accelerated on Glass because I think OpenCV is only accelerated on Tegra) - this _was_ too slow.
  - Schuback 13y ago
    Yep, via OpenCV. If I still had access to Glass I'd love to try out your library. Do you have any first-person videos of your application? If you have an iPhone 5 you can hold it up to the prism in good lighting and record first-person (it's a real pain though).
wpietri 13y ago
My personal bet is that Google Glass is the Newton of wearable hardware. It's directionally correct, but way too early for the available hardware and the existing ecosystem, and too expensive as well. As a happy owner of a Pebble, I definitely get the value of going beyond the phone screen. And as a sci-fi reader, I fully expect that everybody's going to end up spending 99% of their time intimately connected to tech (and the broader world via that tech). But I don't expect head-mounted UIs to be popular outside of tiny niches for 15 years, if ever.
aptimpropriety 13y ago
In the summer of 2007 I was doing a bunch of research as to whether or not to buy a few shares of $100-$130 Apple stock. I knew the iPhone was coming, and I thought it was going to be big. The reason I eventually decided the iPhone was going to be a loss? Rumors of a Google phone, which I thought would be the end-all. Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware. I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.
avoidiam 13y ago
I bet it's really because Glass laughed at his mustache.
ivanbrussik 13y ago
finally some honesty - i knew it would be exactly the same as when I got my Nintendo Power Glove in the mail in 1989. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
- brandynwhite 13y ago
  "I love the power glove, it's so bad" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw
chenster 13y ago
My first reaction is someone finally decides to speak up aside all that marketing noise.
TeeWEE 13y ago
duh!!! Its a beta device and its priced that way so developers can start making their profitable apps already on it. Its an investment. Off course its to expensive for daily use.

131 points by tanglesome 13y ago

>It feels very prototype-ish and I can't help but feel that it's the precursor to something better Google might even be working on now as we try these. ^^ This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away now. He doesn't want to pay a substantial premium "just" to be part of a privileged set of early-adopters. Everyone knows that this is still a beta, and improvements are on the way, so he's just saying the current iteration can't push him over the hump to hold onto the device (as opposed to recoup his cash).

Navarr 13y ago
I'm trying to understand why or how he got it. Was he an #ifihadglass winner? Was he just a lucky individual at Google IO that decided to plop down the cash for what was definitely a developer-device? I can understand that he doesn't think it's worth the price - because for a normal consumer it isn't. But I don't understand why he would have gotten it in the first place when it was so clearly limited in scope.
- mikeevans 13y ago
  Looks like he was an #ifihadglass winner: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&doc_id=261565 http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&...
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    And it was a "whim" and his idea was to write a journal (which presumably gets page views) and so he gets one, and now he's publicly returning it, and getting lots of page views and his money back. All in all, the cynic in me thinks things are going as planned. He is effectively out no money, and yet he's picked up a bunch of traffic. Internet win.
    - jojanos 13y ago
      This guy actually does that for a living. He is currently testing a new product called Helpouts that allows you to charge for support using Hangouts in G+. Looks mildly interesting and more useful then Glass.
      - Flenser 13y ago
        I can't see anything about helpouts on that site. It might be useful for a friend. Where did you hear about it?
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  >>>>>I can understand that he doesn't think it's worth the price - because for a normal consumer it isn't. But I don't understand why he would have gotten it in the first place when it was so clearly limited in scope. Also keep in mind more and more places are banning them over privacy concerns. How bad would that suck you drop $1500 and you can't even use it most of the time since so many places are banning them? http://www.fastcompany.com/3009432/tech-forecast/tracking-the-ban-on-google-glass http://www.fastcompany.com/3009432/tech-forecast/tracking-th...
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    Let's not fall into hyperbole: there's a few places that have banned Glass, out of well, the entire world. That's a long way from "most of the time" or "many places." There's a lot more (and by that, I mean orders of magnitude more) places that ask you to not use cell phones than places that ban Glass (restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shop lines, airplanes, customs, etc). But nobody would claim that makes cell phones useless.
rsl7 13y ago
> While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. This is an unfinished product and he wants his $ back because the user experience leaves him cold. He's not investing in Google - he's buying an actual product. And clearly he is skeptical that this particular product will ever live up to its potential. Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.
- larrik 13y ago
  > Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product. Which was over twice the price at launch, and then fell off the face of the Earth once the iPhone 3G was announced, and dropped from support a year later or so. (The 3G was SOLD longer than the original was even supported) I think the original iPhone is exactly what he wants to avoid, since no one thinks Google will give him a retroactive refund like Apple did.
  - hippee-lee 13y ago
    My first gen still work with the stuff I had in it at the time I moved on from to a different phone. My daughter will find it, charge it and ask me to install games for her on it so I keep hiding it from her. And, I paid $200 for it with AT&T contract.
- Goronmon 13y ago
  >Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product. Or as someone else mentioned, contrast this to a console devkit. Imagine someone making a blogpost about how they are returning their Xbox One devkit because there aren't any good games for it.
  - baddox 13y ago
    Is Google Glass marketed as a developer kit, or even as a prototype or "first run" device? All the FEM I've seen is very polished (leading me to believe the company wants me to think the product is polished) and seems to be catering to a mainstream audience. Compare this to the Oculus Rift, which explicitly sells a "development kit" and even requires checking a box that says "I understand this hardware is intended for developers and it is not a consumer product." And, as an aside, the Oculus Rift development kit is a much more polished and functional product than the current generation of Google Glass.
baddox 13y ago
> This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. Is there any indication that this generation of Google Glass is intended as a prototype rather than a consumer-ready product, other than the reviews which overwhelmingly seem to describe it as such?
- ben1040 13y ago
  The fact that it doesn't work for the >50% of people who wear corrective lenses would be a start. Also, the last three months have seen numerous software updates to add features and change functionality. It is an unfinished product and they are iterating based on user feedback.
  - baddox 13y ago
    Well, non-prescription sunglasses don't work for people with corrective lenses either. I wouldn't call that definitive evidence.
  - dedward 13y ago
    Was that fact noted by google pre-purchase? Because if it was..... again, google did nothing wrong.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      Yes, it was noted that it was for developers and early testers: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-glass-lands-for-consumers-in-2014/ http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-g... (Note explorer edition is what the author of this post was testing)
coldtea 13y ago
>* This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away now.* And it's also something Google and Microsoft do all the time. Release or pre-announce half-baked stuff, just to get some publicity, years (or decades) before they are fit for consumption. That supposedly makes them look "innovative".

alanctgardner2 13y ago

Let me be the first to say: if you don't want it, feel free to sell it to me (seriously, email in my profile). I tried some out when I was visiting the Bay Area and I did think they were amazing and magical; YMMV. edit: The author mentions that he wasn't interested in developing an app for Glass anyways; I thought that was half the point of the Explorer program (unless you're a skydiver/ballerina/whatever who can produce awesome marketing content).

srik 13y ago
The TOS probitis reselling, loaning or transferring.
- deleted 13y ago
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- TylerE 13y ago
  I don't think a TOS can override first sale doctrine on the physical hardware, can it? Or was the initial "purchase" actually structured as a rental or lease?
  - nhangen 13y ago
    They can't prevent you from selling it, but they can revoke your access to the API.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Google reps have stated you are allowed to "gift" it to someone else when you pick it up, though. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would privately gift you some money back.
  - alanctgardner2 13y ago
    It would be amazing if someone could confirm this; even if Google offered me an official pair I couldn't afford the flight and hotel (going back to school in the fall!). I'd love to write some apps for Glass, and it seems like a surprising number of Explorers don't want theirs anyways.

portmanteaufu 13y ago

The first paragraph says it all. > "Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere." He shelled out for a beta product and was disappointed when it was, well, a beta product. More than that, even -- it was a beta version of a product which is the very first of its kind. I'm glad he was able to get his money back, but I'm not sure why he was surprised.

arkades 13y ago
While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's beta testing. If you ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good. I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate, you bias them towards strong positive responses - but they did cross "beta testing" and "luxury goods" wires.
- robg 13y ago
  In some environments (e.g., hospitals, military, probably police and first responders), $1500 is fair market value if the utility is there. Consider the rise of pagers. In 1950, at introduction, they were the equivalent of $100/month in today's dollars. The Catch-22 for Google was establishing the value adds for wider adoption. They did an amazing job of launching the beta, considering that challenge.
- deelowe 13y ago
  I don't get this. The current release is meant for developers, journalists and "technologists." Google was very up front about this. It's not intended to be a consumer product. Complaining about it at this point seems akin to someone getting a console devkit and complaining there's no games available and those cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to create some sort of secret selective list for early access.

ambiate 13y ago

I'm actually wearing Glass for my last day too. First off, I do not have toys to communicate with Glass. I realize that Glass is too early. There are not enough data dumping devices available at decent prices. Withings, vehicle data, health data, all the things people try to keep private. That kind of data is what would be useful with Glassware. The lack of a SDK and depending on RESTful services. I want to toy with sensors too. Delayed gratification does not work. Where are my long nights of programming? Battery life and destroying my cell's data plan are also issues. I'll miss watching people's faces light up when they try it on.

alanctgardner2 13y ago
Can't you create a feedback loop with sensors, an android app and the mirror api? I know it's a kludge, but if your mobile app posted data to your web server, your glass could poll it that way. Of course, the data and battery life concerns only get worse...
- ambiate 13y ago
  At this point, without voiding my warranty, I can basically poll data, reflect data through options, and use voice commands (that barely understand me) to reflect data. I have seen interesting manipulation of the Mirror API to make voice commanded games. I tend to get unreliable ping pong times for real time related materials. Sometimes a card opens instantly, sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes. That was my basic idea. Device A connects through bluetooth and uploads data to Phone. Phone relays to web service. Web service relays to Glass. It works. Google App Engine/Mirror API is just not my cup of coffee. Glass, or some offspring, has the potential to be amazing. I really cannot wait to see what comes of this. A beta device utilizing a RESTful API... I knew what I was getting into, but once I got it, there just was not anything I wanted to feed to Glass. Glass hungers.
lnanek2 13y ago
The Android SDK works fine with it. Turn on debugging mode on the Glass and code away. Sensors are no problem: http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-in-google-glass http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-... Google even flat out stated at Google IO that the upcoming GDK will just be the Android SDK plus extra classes you compile against.

jjindev 13y ago

One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy. (That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)

stcredzero 13y ago
Make them usable in bright daylight while you're at it.
- aeosynth 13y ago
  That's possible today with e-ink tablets, like the Kindle.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    The trick is to have both reflective displays and responsiveness.
  - deleted 13y ago
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uptown 13y ago
Tablets may be a dominant form for quite a while, but how can you possibly think tablets are all there will ever be?
- acuozzo 13y ago
  The UI in the NCC-1701-D is basically thousands upon thousands of mounted iPads with a really, really advanced version Siri installed. I'd be OK with that kind of future.
  - PebblesRox 13y ago
    Yeah but don't forget what else was in that future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT-wfcujaNE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT-wfcujaNE Wouldn't you at least want to try it out?

Zimahl 13y ago

I don't know if anyone has asked this yet but why does it have lenses if those lenses don't actually do anything? I mean, why not just the display portion in some sort of headpiece instead of including the glass?

alanctgardner2 13y ago
It comes with sunglasses lenses, and the option to have no lenses. OP is wearing them over top of regular, perscription glasses
deleted 13y ago
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lnanek2 13y ago
The lenses on Google Glass are completely removable and replaceable. Most people wear Google Glass without any lenses. There are clear and sunglass lenses you can snap in, however.

lnanek2 13y ago

Kind of weird he mentions the Recon Jet. You can't even remove the sunglasses part of that, so you certainly won't be reading emails casually at home on it. It doesn't seem to match his key complaints.

brandynwhite 13y ago

I've been wearing glass for a while now and am active in development (see http://openglass.us http://openglass.us), there are a few select groups of people I'd recommend it to at this point: developers (it's a fun/simple/exciting platform to write for), researchers (just like with the kinect, it makes it much easier to reproduce experiments), people who are constantly running around town while being in contact with others (business/sales people), who drive all the time (much safer/easier than a phone), who would use a gopro on a regular basis (sports), and who travel often (in the US due to mobile data). At this point that's really it. If you sit at a desk all day you're going to have a bad time with the notifications, "oh great I got a notice on my face a minute after my phone buzzed and my laptop notified me". They work much better when you are active, out and about when even picking up your phone is a chore. If you already know your way everywhere you go (you don't travel) then one of the best features, directions, is lost on you. This applies to the current device/software/apps, part of what we are trying to do with OpenGlass is push it past being a "beeper on your face" because that only applies to the segment of people to whom getting notifications faster than you do with your phone matters. Once they allow devs to push to the Play store (coming soon) it'll be a much more compelling product for end users. I think it'll ultimately be an amazing product, it's just the current feature list targets what I see as limited audiences.

threeseed 13y ago
DO NOT USE GLASS FOR DRIVING. It is illegal, is not safer than a car docked phone and since it moves your eyes away from the road is extremely dangerous. Stop being so selfish and stop the car. Studies have shown that when you are distracted you are more likely to crash. So innocent people's lives are at stake here.
- brandynwhite 13y ago
  It is not illegal in most states (IANAL). I agree it is less safe than fully focusing on driving (as is talking to a passenger), but I'd much rather have people glance up briefly and speak out a text than look down at their lap like they do today. Each state will figure out where they draw the line on this, I personally think it is safe when used with care (like a navigation system).

api 13y ago

I actually think industrial applications might be the hidden killer app for augmented reality. Imagine walking around a power plant and seeing your environment annotated: last inspection time for each inspection point, what is flowing through each pipe and its current pressure, etc. Construction sites could be truly amazing.

robg 13y ago
Call it a professional environment and I think that's where we will see the first true impact of wearable computing. Your examples are two good ones. And of course people have mentioned hospitals. Just consider every profession where a desk jockey is not the norm. That's police, firemen, first responders, military, teachers, etc. Heck, why not cashiers and even bar tenders? Then again, I'm biased. We're building and selling our own version of wearable computing, but driven by your biological rhythms.
- robg 13y ago
  Also consider that in professional environs, various pros get away with all sorts of silly attire and add-ons - from scrubs and stethoscopes to other uniforms and utility belts. You look ridiculous, but you have a job to do.
  - KeliNorth 13y ago
    Exactly, pros do it all the time. Eventually it becomes cool. I never buy into the hype about it looking bad for a few reasons: I wear glasses. Years ago people thought all glasses looked silly. And they were, with giant thick lenses. Now people buy non-RX glasses to look cool, even. I saw an animated sci-fi show from around 10 years ago (Denno Coil, Japanese anime) where in order to see the AR/VR world, you wore glasses. Every single kid wore glasses. You had to in order to see the VR/AR. Once something is common, the look factor doesn't matter. I think we're just seeing people being disappointed that Reality is still decades/centuries/possibly impossible behind Fiction, and Fiction is only pulling further away as Reality gets better computers to render Fiction with.

ChikkaChiChi 13y ago

If you are returning Google Glass, you weren't meant to have it in the first place. Bleeding edge isn't for everyone for a reason. This is the birth of a new form factor that has potential, not complete market realization.

l1ghtm4n 13y ago

I can't help but have a little CueCat-ish response to Glass. I don't wear glasses and don't care to. So Glass saves me from having to take my smart device out of my pocket by having something on my face all day? NB: I've seen plenty of these around but haven't actually played with one.

alxbrun 13y ago

I think the biggest problem is this swiping thing. Imagine Apple had released the first iPhone with a mouse plugged to it. It's a pure betrayal of the original Glass vision, where all user => machine communication goes through voice.

robg 13y ago
Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Just consider the challenge as an English speaker, with 18 years of experience, of traveling from Alabama to New York to London and Wales and Scotland and Ireland to Mumbai and Kerala to Cairns and Sidney and Auckland.
- alxbrun 13y ago
  True, but in the case of Glass the speaker is always the same (it's the owner) so you can learn and adapt the acoustic model over time. I'm wondering btw if Google doesn't do that already for Android's built-in speech recognition, which accuracy is amazing. The other problem is that apps cannot (at least for now) change the language model, so Glass will always be in either "search" or "dictation" mode.
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Wouldn't the hardest HCI problem be a direct cortical interface?
psbp 13y ago
I really want to see glass interact with your phone so that you can perform minute actions like pinching and zooming or turning on certain camera features with your phone still in your pocket.
- maffydub 13y ago
  The touch pad on the side of the glass is multi-touch-capable, so it can detect pinch and zoom. You can't use this function via the Mirror API, but you could do it by side-loading an APK.

mey 13y ago

I had the option to get a Glass through the #ifihadglass program, but after reading up on it's abilities and more on augmented reality, this is not the device I want to spend 1.5k on.

Zigurd 13y ago

"Wearables" in general are going to be a much tougher nut to crack than tablets. Glass is, at least, radical enough to stand a chance. I'd be less sure that a watch is enough of an improvement over taking one's phone out of one's pocket. Also, unlike tablets, which have the obvious business use case of liberating people from the "sit down with your computer" inhibitor to interpersonal interaction, nobody knows whether or how pervasive use of wearables could improve productivity or interaction in a business setting.

wpietri 13y ago
You know, I bought a Pebble watch so I could help an organization I love (the Long Now) develop a Pebble watch face. I expected to hate it, as I hate most gadgetry. I've ended up loving it. One of the most annoying things to me about a modern phone is its intrusiveness. Text messages, calendar alerts, phone calls, and other interruptive communications. The Pebble makes all of those notifications a) quiet, and b) subtle. It's fantastic to be in a meeting, see who's calling, and decline the call, all without breaking flow. I think it will also be good for a variety of special-purpose interfaces. E.g., one person already has built custom software such that when he starts moving on his bike (as triggered by phone-measured movement speed) it switches over to a bike computer display. And the nice part is that it looks just like a watch. Unlike Glass, people are entirely ok with it.

bla2 13y ago

"Because a title like this is bound to drive traffic to my blog."

friendlytuna 13y ago

I know this is off topic, but how do I get one of those "<dev>" shirts?

mikekij 13y ago

"Peacock. Peacock." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM

cromwellian 13y ago

Imagine that you buy an Xbox or Playstation DevKit, they cost 10x as much as an actual console that is shipped. There is precious little software except samples and demos, and you are expected to be a tester of buggy and incomplete stuff as well as potentially develop. And then you go and complain about how you shelled out thousands and there was nothing to do, and other devices will cost a fraction in the future. Do people not understand that Glass is primarily intended for developers and dogfooders? I think the #ifihadglass program was a mistake. They should have kept it limited to people attending Google I/O or other bonafide developers. I understand they wanted to have it tested by a diverse group of people in the real world and not just developers, but the wide ranging audience they were seeking also happens to be the people who don't seem to understand what devkits are.

deleted 13y ago

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liveinoakland 13y ago

1 year from now: "Why I'm Returning To Google Glass"

Schuback 13y ago

I had the unique experience of borrowing a pair of Google Glass for a multi-day hackathon. The very first thing I did was figure out how to develop and install actual Android apps on it, because the "card" system isn't conducive to developing interesting applications. Frankly I'd rather go with a smart watch if cards are all I could do. During my time with Glass I prototyped 3D interactive software where you could load up models of human body parts, physical structures, etc, and swipe the side to rotate them around and view from all angles. This ran pretty well on the embedded processor, and I was importing relatively large 3D models. As well, I tried running computer vision algorithms on the device. This did not go so well. I could not run a basic Canny edge detection algorithm at more than 1 FPS. FYI this algorithm - and similarly complex ones - are fundamental to doing anything remotely useful in image processing. The alternative is doing all your image processing offline, which may be fine in the future as internet becomes super fast. Some people are doing facial recognition like this, at a whopping 2 FPS. About the product. There's the issue of the screen size. Small, hard to focus on, and up to the right. Not really conducive to augmenting your vision. I think it's fair to say that Glass was meant as an information retrieval device - which again, makes me wonder, why not just use a smart watch? Frankly I think the screen quality could be better on the watch too. All in all, the platform is an interesting foray into wearable computing but I reckon it will take multiple iterations (and years) to get it to the point where I can run more interesting CV and AR applications. In the meantime, I've been building my own wearable computing hardware to enable the types of software I want to build. The Alan Kay quote, and all that.

maffydub 13y ago
How were you implementing the Canny edge detector? As a GLSL shader or on the CPU? I implemented a (simple, not quite Canny) edge detector in GLSL and it runs fast enough not to be distracting (https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist). I've tried using OpenCV (which isn't GPU-accelerated on Glass because I think OpenCV is only accelerated on Tegra) - this _was_ too slow.
- Schuback 13y ago
  Yep, via OpenCV. If I still had access to Glass I'd love to try out your library. Do you have any first-person videos of your application? If you have an iPhone 5 you can hold it up to the prism in good lighting and record first-person (it's a real pain though).

wpietri 13y ago

My personal bet is that Google Glass is the Newton of wearable hardware. It's directionally correct, but way too early for the available hardware and the existing ecosystem, and too expensive as well. As a happy owner of a Pebble, I definitely get the value of going beyond the phone screen. And as a sci-fi reader, I fully expect that everybody's going to end up spending 99% of their time intimately connected to tech (and the broader world via that tech). But I don't expect head-mounted UIs to be popular outside of tiny niches for 15 years, if ever.

aptimpropriety 13y ago

In the summer of 2007 I was doing a bunch of research as to whether or not to buy a few shares of $100-$130 Apple stock. I knew the iPhone was coming, and I thought it was going to be big. The reason I eventually decided the iPhone was going to be a loss? Rumors of a Google phone, which I thought would be the end-all. Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware. I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.

avoidiam 13y ago

I bet it's really because Glass laughed at his mustache.

ivanbrussik 13y ago

finally some honesty - i knew it would be exactly the same as when I got my Nintendo Power Glove in the mail in 1989. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

brandynwhite 13y ago
"I love the power glove, it's so bad" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw

chenster 13y ago

My first reaction is someone finally decides to speak up aside all that marketing noise.

TeeWEE 13y ago

duh!!! Its a beta device and its priced that way so developers can start making their profitable apps already on it. Its an investment. Off course its to expensive for daily use.