Anyone Can Buy Google Glass April 15
An anonymous reader writes "Starting at 9 a.m. ET on April 15 anyone in the US will be able to buy Google Glass for one day. From the article: 'This is the first time the device has been available to the general public. So far, the face-mounted computers have been sold only to Google "Explorers," the company's name for early adopters. At first only developers could buy Glass, but Google slowly expanded the program to include regular people. Some were hand-picked, others applied to be Explorers through Google contests by sharing what cool projects they would do if they had Glass.'"
I'm often an early adopter of technology, but I'm not interested in this type of product until it's far more unobtrusive and obvious. I can perhaps see a time when having a HUD built into my glasses might be useful, and sure there are times when I wish I could snap a picture of something more quickly than I can by pulling out my phone, but I'm not about to pay $1500 for what amounts to a barely beta product. I won't even go into my concerns about all the data Google already gets from us.
This one day sale stunt is just that, a stunt. They are testing the waters and trying to stimulate demand.
Google glass seems like a really cool technology to me. It's weird that I have to qualify that statement with "and I mean this unironically."
Translation: "This is how you advertise a product as elitist." or "Shh, mobile enabled VR & AR gear does not exist yet!"
Sorry, don't care Google. I'll just keep developing for the 3D VR and AR gear I already use daily with my smart-phone, rather than pay for the over-priced less capable system Google's selling. When Google finally gets around to pushing out a run of hardware that is publicly accessible then I might port some software I personally use in my business to the platform it if it's not completely shit, and there is a market share to warrant the expenditure. I'm not holding my breath for something that is little more than vapor-ware.
Besides, that initial rejection of 3rd party apps for glass really turned me off, it seems they got the message but it doesn't bode well. Will I be able to use Glass apps with the Oculus Rift, or MS or Sony's offering, or Vuzix or True Player Gear, or the other umpteen hundred VR and AR headsets, many of which I've been using since the 90's when Quake and Descent came out, which STILL didn't attract a market? I don't think hardware should be tied to software, or that software should be tied to hardware needlessly. If that's the route Google wants then they can go fuck themselves. I already have AR and VR headsets for Android, and they work with iOS, Linux and Windows too.
Release a product or don't. This carrot dangling makes the Glass team seem like a bunch of incompetent self-important elitist sperglords.