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> 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 unfi
by 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 agoMy 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 agoIs 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.
- Finster 13y agoYes, I think Project Glass has been pretty clear about this being a first run device. That's why the participants are referred to as "Explorers". The point is to start mapping out use cases and fine tuning the UX. Source: My wife is getting her Glass in a few weeks.
- malandrew 13y agoThey should have avoided being cute and simply called it a "Developer Kit" instead of targeting it towards "Explorers". I don't know about you, but the use of "Explorers" is broad enough and appeals to the ego enough to be inclusive of a pretty large swath of society that is going to be disappointed by the device. "Developer Kit" pretty much describes exactly what audience it is actually ready for.
- dedward 13y agoThe real question is were it's capabilities misrepresented - did they sell you something that didn't do what they told you it would do? Because if not.. and if it was only your personal assumptions that were off despite google being clear about what it was you were buying.... that's your problem, not theirs.
- darklajid 13y agoI do like that comparison - but let's add a twist: He bought the console devkit, because he wanted to _play_ with the console and there wasn't a normal unit available. Okay, that was a bad idea and he (obviously?) isn't impressed with what is available right now: Should he still hold on to that expensive unit, or wait for the normal console to appear for a much more reasonable price (and maybe with actual features/'games' he'd be interested in)?
- dedward 13y agoFrom the consumer point of view, sure, sounds great. Why would the vendor be at all obliged to let them return the unit in the first place though? Outside of misrepresentation and fraud and things that are not fit for the purposes sold, sellers in general have no obligation at all to take a return. You see retail stores always taking returns, but that's a business decision to stay competitive... they are under no obligation to do so. If the terms of sale stipulates that you can return it for a refund, or if it was somehow completely misrepresented and then a fraudulent sale by default..... sure. So if you bought a console dev kit, and it worked as described for the purposes sold (which aren't necessarily the purpose you bought it for) - the vendor is under no obligation to refund you.
- BrainInAJar 13y agono, it's not like that at all. It's like he bought the xbox one devkit & returned it because the OS was crap and the controls were fundamentally flawed and he didn't think there was going to be a way to make good games for it.
- saraid216 13y ago> Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product. This amuses me, because I was building an iPhone app in 2008 for my then-employer, so I had a company phone. I barely used it. When I moved teams, I returned it and didn't bother owning a smartphone until 2011 when the entire market had matured. Sounds like a pretty apt comparison.