4 ms·

I'm not convinced it broke any more than the newton or the palm pilot broke. It's just too early. palm pilots, newtons, and other PDAs were around for 13+ years

I'm not convinced it broke any more than the newton or the palm pilot broke. It's just too early. palm pilots, newtons, and other PDAs were around for 13+ years and were considered "for geeks only". It wasn't until iPhone that PDAs finally became popular with the masses. Personal HUDs or Google Glass etc will go through the same steps. Something, maybe not totally similar but something with a camera, a HUD, augmented reality, and hands free controls will happen someday and will become as mainstream as smartphones are today. It might be 5, 10, or 15 years down the road.

vacri 12y ago
We got a few at my old workplace, and the tone of this article really annoyed me because you had to be wilfully ignorant to think that Glass was a finished, polished product. The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly stated as being for finding the kinks in the system outside the lab. The people who claimed it 'worst product ever' were moronic linkbaiters. One of the problems it did have that I thought was a problem for adoption was that it didn't handle being lent out very well. If you calibrated it for yourself, it was pretty responsive, but hand it over to someone else, and it was out of whack in didn't really respond. I lost count of the number of times I'd show someone something cool, hand it over to them to try, and have it not work on them because the calibration wasn't suitable. Understandably, this left them with the opinion "this is shit". It was a marvellous bit of well-made kit, had a couple of problems, and as you say, was in the first generation of it's kind.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly stated as being for finding the kinks in the system outside the lab." Originally. Then they started to sell it on the play store for $1500 with a full marketing page and no explanation that it was a beta product.
  - msabalau 12y ago
    Indeed. It was one thing to release a prototype to people interested in experimenting and playing around. It was another to push it through a retail channel alongside designer frames. Certainly the time they released it to the UK market Google would have known that they were selling an evolutionary dead end as if it were a product. I would assume this was more an act of internal political cowardness at recognizing reality rather than grubbing for money.
- maccard 12y ago
  > It was a marvellous bit of well-made kit Marvelous other than the 1500 dollar price tag for an unfinished product, the lack of software, the abysmal battery life, and the obvious privacy concerns of this device being constructed by one of the most invasive companies on the planet? I agree with the fact that it's the first, but calling it marvelous is a bit of a stretch.
  - msabalau 12y ago
    Adjusted for inflation Glass was the price of an Apple One or the launch price of a Commodore 64 (which, if you preordered, came with a free cassette drive for storage: a $70 value.) It was priced correctly for for true early adoptors who wanted a prototype. Not as a consumer product. Google's stated target price for commercial release was "about the price of a smartphone."
    - yequalsx 12y ago
      It seems to me your adjusted for inflation price is talking about currency inflation and not the deflation in tech prices. $1500 is quite a bit of money for such tech in my opinion. This is especially so in light of Google's legendary poor customer service.
marincounty 12y ago
I thought the Palm was a great little PDA. I had a Palm Tx tethered to a (yellow cased-forgot brand) GPS. The setup relly worked well for me. I remember being at a Goodguy's closing sale at 9 p.m., and debating on buying 300 units of Halo 2 for $5 each. Drove to library, got a signal, found a price and happily went back and bought the games. At the time, I couldn't figure out why more people didn't carry around a wifi PDA? I wasen't a tech guy back at that time. I guess it's all in the marketing? It's funny--at that time--I felt for the first time I had a tool I could use to hedge the competition. Jump to a few years later, everyone is on the same playing field.
- ghaff 12y ago
  Yeah, the Palm Pilot was a reasonably successful device for its time. At a prior employer, in addition to lots of the engineers having one, not a few sales reps and marketing types (including myself) did as well. The syncing was admittedly a bit of a pain (my model was pre-WiFi) but I wouldn't put Palm Pilots in the same class as Newton or Google Glass. By today's standard it looks pretty limited but it was relatively widespread consumer tech at one point--though nothing like Smartphones of course.
rimantas 12y ago
You know, looking at everything through a HUD will give you diminished reality, not augmented :(
- viciousambition 12y ago
  I see this more as how phones are currently. You must divert your attention away from life to fiddle around with a device. That is diminished reality. Something like a mature Google Glass that integrates seamlessly with reality, having commands that can flow with day to day tasks--that is augmented reality.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

vacri 12y ago

We got a few at my old workplace, and the tone of this article really annoyed me because you had to be wilfully ignorant to think that Glass was a finished, polished product. The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly stated as being for finding the kinks in the system outside the lab. The people who claimed it 'worst product ever' were moronic linkbaiters. One of the problems it did have that I thought was a problem for adoption was that it didn't handle being lent out very well. If you calibrated it for yourself, it was pretty responsive, but hand it over to someone else, and it was out of whack in didn't really respond. I lost count of the number of times I'd show someone something cool, hand it over to them to try, and have it not work on them because the calibration wasn't suitable. Understandably, this left them with the opinion "this is shit". It was a marvellous bit of well-made kit, had a couple of problems, and as you say, was in the first generation of it's kind.

k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "The whole point of 'Explorers' was explicitly stated as being for finding the kinks in the system outside the lab." Originally. Then they started to sell it on the play store for $1500 with a full marketing page and no explanation that it was a beta product.
- msabalau 12y ago
  Indeed. It was one thing to release a prototype to people interested in experimenting and playing around. It was another to push it through a retail channel alongside designer frames. Certainly the time they released it to the UK market Google would have known that they were selling an evolutionary dead end as if it were a product. I would assume this was more an act of internal political cowardness at recognizing reality rather than grubbing for money.
maccard 12y ago
> It was a marvellous bit of well-made kit Marvelous other than the 1500 dollar price tag for an unfinished product, the lack of software, the abysmal battery life, and the obvious privacy concerns of this device being constructed by one of the most invasive companies on the planet? I agree with the fact that it's the first, but calling it marvelous is a bit of a stretch.
- msabalau 12y ago
  Adjusted for inflation Glass was the price of an Apple One or the launch price of a Commodore 64 (which, if you preordered, came with a free cassette drive for storage: a $70 value.) It was priced correctly for for true early adoptors who wanted a prototype. Not as a consumer product. Google's stated target price for commercial release was "about the price of a smartphone."
  - yequalsx 12y ago
    It seems to me your adjusted for inflation price is talking about currency inflation and not the deflation in tech prices. $1500 is quite a bit of money for such tech in my opinion. This is especially so in light of Google's legendary poor customer service.

marincounty 12y ago

I thought the Palm was a great little PDA. I had a Palm Tx tethered to a (yellow cased-forgot brand) GPS. The setup relly worked well for me. I remember being at a Goodguy's closing sale at 9 p.m., and debating on buying 300 units of Halo 2 for $5 each. Drove to library, got a signal, found a price and happily went back and bought the games. At the time, I couldn't figure out why more people didn't carry around a wifi PDA? I wasen't a tech guy back at that time. I guess it's all in the marketing? It's funny--at that time--I felt for the first time I had a tool I could use to hedge the competition. Jump to a few years later, everyone is on the same playing field.

ghaff 12y ago
Yeah, the Palm Pilot was a reasonably successful device for its time. At a prior employer, in addition to lots of the engineers having one, not a few sales reps and marketing types (including myself) did as well. The syncing was admittedly a bit of a pain (my model was pre-WiFi) but I wouldn't put Palm Pilots in the same class as Newton or Google Glass. By today's standard it looks pretty limited but it was relatively widespread consumer tech at one point--though nothing like Smartphones of course.

rimantas 12y ago

You know, looking at everything through a HUD will give you diminished reality, not augmented :(

viciousambition 12y ago
I see this more as how phones are currently. You must divert your attention away from life to fiddle around with a device. That is diminished reality. Something like a mature Google Glass that integrates seamlessly with reality, having commands that can flow with day to day tasks--that is augmented reality.

deleted 12y ago

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