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For Some Would-Be Google Glass Buyers and Devs, Delays May Mean Giving Up
ErnieKey writes with a Reuters story that says Google's Glass, not yet out for general purchase, has been wearing on the patience of both developers and would-be customers: "After an initial burst of enthusiasm, signs that consumers are giving up on Glass have been building.' Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear? Or perhaps it's the invasion of privacy that is deterring people from wearing them. Regardless, Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers. From the article: Of 16 Glass app makers contacted, nine said that they had stopped work on their projects or abandoned them, mostly because of the lack of customers or limitations of the device. Three more have switched to developing for business, leaving behind consumer projects.
Plenty of larger developers remain with Glass. The nearly 100 apps on the official website include Facebook and OpenTable, although one major player recently defected: Twitter.
"If there was 200 million Google Glasses sold, it would be a different perspective. There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms, including the Facebook-owned virtual-reality goggles Oculus Rift.
Several key Google employees instrumental to developing Glass have left the company in the last six months, including lead developer Babak Parviz, electrical engineering chief Adrian Wong, and Ossama Alami, director of developer relations.
Google needs to change something quickly before they lose all their potential customers.
They might not be losing potential customers. Perhaps the market is just already saturated.
It's just taking to long to get released. People get over things eventually. It's been out of reach for the average person. I would have loved to have one, I think it's the future, more convenient, and people will get used to it.
But I swear it feels like it's been five years since these were announced. How long am I supposed to care before I go fuck it and move on to something else to play with and explore? I moved on. So did other people.
The only people waiting for them are the same people who are friendzoned and thinking it will change. Google, you have friendzoned us with your google glasses, and more men these days are getting the picture and moving on.
All the geeks that need the newest, latest, and greatest over something that actually makes life easier already have this good effort/poor implementation of techno-wear.
There is no market for something this kludgy, awkward, and privacy invading.
Shipping first is not as important as building a well designed product that consumers want. Google glass has a long way to go. To be fair, I don't think we have the technology yet.
Ummmm... Glass IS available for general purchase:
https://play.google.com/store/devices/collection/promotion_500013c_glass
We will have to wait until Apple makes an actual product out of this tech demo.
There's no market at this point," said Tom Frencel, the chief executive of Little Guy Games, which put development of a Glass game on hold this year and is looking at other platforms
And why do we need games for Google Glass?
Google Glass is a good example of the old saying "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD."
The problem here is that Google wants to invent the wheel (not reinvent) overnight. The fact that such is a lofty goal coupled with the fact that they're approaching the problem with impractical designs and methods assures failure. Google's business model of "throw enough crap at the wall and see what sticks" works fine with software, not hardware.
Calling it "Glass" instead of "glasses" is just too snobby, and it sounds dumb. Also, it's an overpriced gadget for the 80s Sharper Image crowd, not something anyone would actually use.
The market is probably saturated, but only because the item is only appealing to a very small market.
First and foremost, you need someone who'd want an always on cellphone display mounted right in front of his eye. Now, I could see me wanting this. Granted, I've been into wearable computing for a while now, but I could well see a lot of people who can't take their fingers off their cellphone long enough to hold down a sensible conversation to want a HMD. That certainly would not be the problem, I can well see a lot of technically interested people wanting something like this. And if the "group selector" ended here, there would actually probably be a huge market for this item.
Then there's the price, which pretty much eliminates the under-21 crowd, arguably one of the biggest early adopters today. Face it, if some cellphone has some new feature, rest assured some high school kid will bind itself to some cell company for longer than their average relationship lasts so they can afford it. Since there is no such thing with Google Glass and the item costs quite a pretty penny, what's left after these two are technologically inclined people with quite a bit of money to spare on what is essentially a novelty luxury item.
The last nail for the coffin is Google itself. Google now doesn't really have a reputation of not wanting to know everything their customers do. That's basically their business model. They sell information. And with Google Glass you'd not only not know where it's been, you also won't know where it is going. And even if they themselves don't really care about privacy, it also means that their friends and collegues must not care about it, or else ... why bother buying something that you can't really use as soon as anyone is nearby? Because the VERY FIRST thing I'd ask a Google Glass user to do is take the thing off while I'm around. Alternatively I'll remove it from his nose.
So the market is for technically inclined people who have good enough jobs to afford this luxury who are neither worried about their privacy nor have coworkers or friends who are.
And that market is REALLY tiny.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I had initially been interested in Google Glass initially as well, though I didn't really expect to buy one soon. I figured I'd wait a generation or two and for the resolution to be Full-HD and all the kinks worked out. I had expressed my curiosity about Google Glass to my wife who flat out said no way because of the nerdy look in public. Still I followed the progress passively and it never came and it never came. I figured we be on generation 3 by now.
Now Oculus Rift is on my radar – my wife is less skeptical (mostly because I will be in the basement when I get my geek on). This one too is beginning to drag out, though supposedly now only months away.
These companies seem very hesitant to bring first generation products to market, evidently worried anything less than perfection will doom long term adoption. Seems to me Google Glass should have had a for-businesses version first that acclimated the public to its appearance. There would seem to be literally hundreds of uses business could put these things too, whereas there doesn't seem to be a killer-app for the general public yet.
As for Oculus Rift gaming is already a killer-app not to mention tele-sight-seeing and 360 degree immerse movies.
I wouldn't be surprised in the long run to see Google Glass conquer business uses, and Oculus Rift conquer entertainment uses.
Letter To Iran
From my observations putting a camera on it was a fatal decision. It really turned people off, myself included. Every time I met a glasshole the whole having a camera lense in your face, even if it wasn't turned on, was really annoying. All the focus on the device turned away from the innovative display and onto the stupid camera. I have hopes for the display technology in an improved form but Google needs to focus on that. Unfortunatly the damage done means it will take a bit until people take wearable computer optical devices seriously again.
I am aware of the research and development costs involved in making the glasses but when you can scrap together a near-identical kit for 80$, couple that with the near non-existent support from google, why would anyone actually want the things?
Bloated price tag (artificial scarcity when there need be none) + limited application (Neat concept, most aspects better fleshed out on smartphones) + limited development (developers leaving the platform already alongside the slim selection to begin with) + marginal resources (a 64 gb micro sd card is how big again? how much does that cost again? What was the capacity of these glasses? oh right... 12gb usable memory) + battery limitations (Recall that running them constantly can drain their batteries in under 30 minutes. Do not recall who ran the battery life tests) = Not a good way to launch a product, even worse is the likelihood that they will just drop it as a failure when the initial launch set the device up to fail miserably due to that line of +'s.
Developing a tech-toy and selling it pre-wrapped in its own glit coffin is unlikely to be a sustainable model. I say unlikely because Apple and their product line is still around.
Is it true that Google Goggles are simply not attractive to wear?
Partly. They aren't stylish nor are they useful enough to overcome that deficit. But that isn't really even among the biggest problems with Google Glass.
1) People who don't need corrective lenses don't generally want to wear glasses. I wore glasses for 17 years before I had lasik and there isn't a way in hell you would get me to wear glasses again except for safety, eye strain or vision correction.
2) People don't generally like to use voice interfaces particularly in public. You don't see a lot of people using Siri out in public so why should Google Glass be any different
3) People are creeped out by the privacy issues even if many of the critiques aren't really justified.
4) They don't fit gracefully into most people's lifestyle. Much of the functionality of Google Glass is already covered by smartphones. Why do I need this conspicuous and much more annoying device second device to do something I mostly already have? It doesn't scratch any itch I have.
5) The best uses for it are more industrial - particularly augmented reality uses. Think work instructions while building a complicated assembly. But Google seems to largely be ignoring these.
I think we do have the technology, just look at the size of a raspberry pi.
Doesn't matter. The problem isn't really the electronics. The biggest technology problem is the battery. We simply do not have battery technology that is sufficiently advanced to make a lot cool ideas practical. Hell we can't even make a smartphone that lasts more than about a day or two of heavy use.
The thing is, governments don't want smaller local players. They don't like them for many reasons - one being that they have morals and usually won't just give law enforcement agencies whatever they want. Or play ball with lawmakers. Or give politicians ruinous amounts of money.
It's turtles all the way down.
...Steve
Not a long time ago, I was just a normal internet user that surfed various news sites like Sladshdot, reddit, or wsj.com. I read a story, perhaps clicked onto some links it contained, and I was mostly happy with my life.
Then, one day, I surfed Slashdot. It was one of those days you will remember for the rest of your life. So, as I surfed Sladshdot, the title of a story got my attention. I read the summary. The topic seemed interesting, so I decided to read further. I read:
Read on below for the rest what Bennett has to say.
Usually I don't read first line of a story which contains the user who has submitted it. On that day, I didn't neither. As I've only read that bottom line, I asked myself: who is this misterious Bennett? I decided to click onto the "Read the comments" link to read more of the story that was, as it seems, written by some Bennett. During reading, I was already impressed by the clear and detailed but still concise structure of the text. As I finished reading, I was convinced it was the best story I've ever read on Sladshdot, or any comparable news site. I asked myself: perhaps this misterious Bennett has contributed more frequently than just once?
To find that out, I went to Sladshdot's search bar and searched for "Bennett". I clicked the second entry, and it began with:
Frequent contributor Bennett Haselton writes
I searched for the "Read on" line, and I was happy when I found it. As it seemed, he was a frequent contributor. However the story was on a topic completely unrelated to the topic of my article. Would the other article still be as insightful as the first? And the other stories in the search result? Would they be also by Bennett? Or someone else? I decided first to be happy to have found such an insightful article, and decided to make a photograph of me, before I read the second story.
I still have that photograph of me and I can see the hope and the satisfaction in my eyes, the hope that the other stories are also written by this brilliant author called Bennett, and the satisfaction of having read such an insightful article. As I've read the first couple of stories by Bennett, I couldn't believe what my eyes saw: all the stories were as insightful or even more insightful than the original story I read. I asked myself whether the spectators in the Globe theatre would have felt the same way when they watched a piece by shakespeare: Witnessing history of writing. I realized Bennett is one of histories great writers.
As I've finished reading all contributions by Bennett Haselton on Sladshdot, I went back to the first Bennett story, and read them a second time. I sat three days straight, missing all social events during that span, only reading Bennett's stories, and reading them again and again. During that time my eyes opened to the fact that my whole life, I've known nothing. Bennett's stories explained every aspect of very complicated things in such detail, that I formed something in my mind. First, I couldn't describe it what it was, but years later I know that, for the first time of my life, I formed something called "opinion" on a topic. Previously, I've only adopted opinions from others, but Bennett's stories enable people to make their opinions for themselfes, to form them. With his stories, Bennett gives you the material to form your own opinion on your own. I know you will say that you can form your opinion on your own, and that you don't need Bennett for that. I
disagree with you. What you call opinion, is in reality just ideology you imitate from others. You don't form your opinions, you don't have them.
Every time Bennett writes a new story on Sladshdot, I take a free day and spend it reading the story
3D printing is past peak, Glass is at the peak and heading down, private space never made sense.
The next innovations will be social, and maybe biological. But one thing I've noticed about so-called technophiles: they completely fall apart when faced with the possibility of extending human life. They turn into the crustiest pessimists the planet has ever seen.
Guess what, Google .... keeping a product in Beta for years isn't a cute little joke any more.
As far as I'm concerned, it means that you will probably never finish the product properly.
That might be sort of understandable for software, but for expensive hardware .... hell, no.
Twitter itself is becoming an advertising / corporate platform, perhaps not the social media magnate it once was. I'd argue that, if Glass is dead, so is twitter - or at least heading that way, and that perhaps while their assessment holds true, maybe they need to rethink their own business model.
To centralize things like push update APIs. So they're less resource intensive. Security, should be the best available. And a streaming interface, for high bandwidth apps. All of which needs to be done before it gets released to the open source community. Since it's all audio it could use very little bandwidth, less than 24kbps. I think it's a bad idea and I'd never use one, for trust issues, but google seems to be pretty good at OS design (Android, not chrome) and as a VOIP hardware provider ForeverPhone (only in Canada, sorry) I love being able to provide Android phones with custom Roms.
It is an axiom of sales that delays will always mean that some will give up. Whether it's a 5 second wait for a web page to load, or a 5 month wait for a new computer, a delay always means you will lose some customers.
Google needs to make a glass without the camera. One that is OBVIOUSLY different to the average person so they do not mistake it for the one with the camera. That could take some of the stigma away from the device. It could look much more like a regular pair of glasses. Sure, half of the applications need the camera, but many ideas do not, and it would reduce the cost. The technology and the software could mature without the social stigma and would have a good chance.
I was walking in the park this summer and these two arrogant looking douchebags were wearing them. I then realized that I lumped them in with smokers as people who just don't give a crap about other people's rights. I have a right to a pollution free environment, and I have a right to not have my every move tracked by a mega corporation.
So my friend called them glassholes loud enough for them to hear and they didn't even flinch. Obviously not the first person to call them this. When people regularly abuse users of a product then maybe there should be a rethink of the use of that product.
I don't mind someone biking by with their gopro seeing that not every moment is being made available to a faceless corporation. Unless I burst into flames while the gopro person is going by the footage will doubtfully be uploaded. But with any google ass type technology there is a huge chance that some software is able to make a note of my face, place, time, the faces around me, etc. Then this can easily be used to compile a stunningly comprehensive summation of my life. If only 5% of people were wearing them then 1 in 20 people that you pass would be able to note your presence. Without any other information about me that would allow google to compile a map of where I live, where I work, where my friends and family live, who I am in a relationship with, that I have kids, where I shop, where I vacation, everything. Then as this technology gets better it could even start going nuts (and it isn't like google doesn't love more information) and gathering what I wear, what I am buying, etc.
While google glass isn't anywhere near that yet, these things are very close, and why wouldn't google gather this fantastically valuable information. They can swear on a stack of bibles that they won't be evil, but I don't remember ever hearing of google's massive storage being audited. Not to mention that they could use familiar weasel words like "Only collecting meta data."
So I for one am extremely happy to hear that this project is falling flat on its face.
Glass is a nice thing. It's also frustrating as all heck in it's limitations. I want the text on all the signs I read auto translated for me - and overlaid in such a way as to hide the original language text. I want to see the arrows on the ground/roadway showing me where to turn left, not get a tiny message up above my field of vision.
I want it to give me full on AR, not just auxiliary information.
Me, I'm hoping that Meta can get the price of these down a bit: https://www.spaceglasses.com/
Google Glass was doomed the second the term Glasshole was coined. They need a complete rebranding for these to be successful. I also think they should have promoted them as utilitarian objects instead of fashion items.
Couldn't be something to do with much of the world now hearing 'NSA' whenever anyone says 'Google'?
No-one wants the NSA watching everything they do when a Glasshole is nearby.
It was a minor fad. I have seen precisely zero people using it. Now they need to try the next thing.
Why would Google create this device without some sort of cover over the camera? Because they hoped people would get used to having cameras, whether on or off pointed at them at all times. The people rejected this crap. Maybe they should make the next model have a flip open cover for the camera.
It doesn't show.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I dunno. Perhaps the hype is wearing off. Most of the stuff you can do with glass you can do with a mobile phone. Spending $1500 for a whiz bang device that serves no real purpose other than make you look like a techno nerd and piss people off does not make a lot of sense to many. Of course it still will be the "must have" accessories for the hard core techno nerds. I can't see these ever becoming mass market devices you can assimilate your grandmother into being part of your borg tribe with.
My lean startup is still working on our google glass project and it's awesome! It's a reality augmentation program. Whenever you're looking at nice shaved snatch, it shows a variety of different trim styles -- 70s, 80s, 90s... classics like a landing strip, squirrel tail, even the hitler. And it lets you take a snapshot and upload it to twitter, facebook, instagram. Video can even be uploaded to youtube! Anyone interested in our early beta program, look us up at hairy-beavr.info!
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I was hoping that Meta's device would be an Eyetap, every time I see someone say "Me, I'm hoping..." in one of these discussions, that's what I'm hoping for. Simply not having to correct for parallax would be better than clever schemes which don't always work well. Although probably at this point we'll have to wait for it to be implemented as a contact lens
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you don't like it, you can take it up with the fact that I'm 6'3 and have done roofing, likely can prevent you from removing any of my technology and it would be at your own peril.
"bouncer"
1)The big fat guy standing in front of the doorway of stripclubs. He doesn't want any trouble, but if you hit him, he has every right to pummel you to mush.
They also guard doorways to celebrity parties. The rich guy bouncers are less round and more built, and can easily throw you out of a bulletproof window, but can't overturn cars.
2) A bouncer is the first face you see when entering a bar, pub, or night club. They tend to be large and muscular. their job is to make sure that the bar is safe for the customers and bar staff alike. If you act like an asshole, chances are you will wake up in an ally in a pool of your own blood with serious head trauma.
bouncer
The definitive guide to not being a Glasshole
I bought a pair, hoping to explore using it to keep notes for my slides and help track time when I'm doing a presentation and the like.
I bought it right after Facebook did the Oculus Rift acquisition, when I canceled my dev-kit order, and I wanted a thing I could fiddle around for development purposes.
So far in exchange for my trouble, I mostly get to stop and answer questions about Google Glass several times a day when I wear them. That much isn't so bad.
Now I have a device I wear that has to maintain a constant link to my phone, draining its battery, so now I have to recharge two devices faster and I can't use it as 'more convenient' navigation without getting out my phone anyway to go to the app to turn on GPS, so its day-to-day usage is just flat-out painful.
Oh, and I have to carry an extra pair of glasses, despite having switched the Glass to prescription lenses.
Why? If I walk to work, which takes about an hour and a half, if I use the glass at all during the trip, it is typically out of juice by the end of the walk, so now I have to plug my glasses in at the office, which means I need to get out another pair so I can still see.
And I better remember to carry the case, because if I go to the movie, the MPAA will get me arrested if I forget and wear them in, but since they don't fold up, I have to choose between a huge hard case or a big bulky pouch I'm constantly worried will go crunch.
Oh, and I'd better switch to my real glasses when I drive, lest I get arrested for that, too.
Oh, and if I walk by a school I get paranoid parents who think I'm out to take candid shots of their precious children, despite having a third party lens cap on.
I've had some punk kid try to rip them off my face and run on the T, so there is an apparently increased theft risk.
Now, because they polarize the glass in the prism they use to reflect light to your eye you can't get the lenses polarized or treated with any sort of anti-glare, but if you walk around in sunlight light reflects off the bottom of the prism into your eye constantly.
There is a little bit of silver mirroring that is just deposited on the end of the prism -- not covered with anything. I went for a walk in Australia on a humid, high UV day. It just flaked off, which effectively dropped my screen to about 10% brightness. They did replace it, but it meant a few weeks without a device, during which I decided I didn't really miss the inconvenience.
So in exchange for $1700 or so (after adding prescription lenses) I get to get called a glasshole by the internet and get treated as a even evil child-stalker road-hazard pirate pariah by society, and have to carry another pair of glasses anyways.
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
What the Segway folks didn't count on was that top Segway speeds would never be compatible with walking speed on a sidewalk. What the Google folks didn't count on was that Google Glass would never be compatible with folks who don't want to feel like everyone is watching/recording them. Google Glass is going to end up s a niche product, just like the Segway.
Ya I bet everyone's in a hurry to be called a glasshole. Plus every place I would guess these people would want to use them, have said you cant use them . So What's to get excited about? that and you don't need theses to record your surrounding wearable recording devices have been around for ages.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Badoom-ching!
Being an old 55-ish jaded longtime sysadmin: I think that the primary issue is that if you're walking around wearing GG, probably 80% of the people you encounter are going to think that you're an idiot hipster, even if they don't know what it is and the latent privacy issues. Nobody needs to be THAT connected. Pretty sure that simple social ridicule is the biggest barrier to entry for that product, no matter how good. The whole thing has the reek of Executives poking at Newtons in the early nineties. Buy it; dork with it for a couple of months; put it on the shelf and never mention it again.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
People with an irrational fear of people looking at them shouldn't go out in public without properly psychological help.
Learn to love Alaska
Thanks to something called the "spotlight effect," everyone typically already has a sense that they're being observed much more than they are, but that's typically dismissed as the anonymity of public spaces set in. Being around people with recording devices attached to their heads is going to make that same effect a lot more uncomfortable, and a lot less temporary.