Everything we know about Apple's smart glasses | Hacker News Reader

Everything we know about Apple's smart glasses

popularmechanics.com

In general, I find Karl Guttag’s analysis far superior:

https://www.kguttag.com/2020/05/20/analyzing-front-page-tech...

Wow. That is an incredible analysis and site. Thank you for sharing. I especially like the discussion around the design constraints implied by the rumored $499 price point.

That is a great analysis. But I'd put money down that he's wrong about the camera. It will have a "sensor package" which may actually include optics, but just like Face ID today, the raw data will be inaccessible to the user or applications.

I can't imagine privacy-focused Apple has any interest in selling a device that could be used to discreetly capture images. That caused no end of bad PR for Google Glass, and for the Apple of today it would be in service of a a marginally marketable feature at best.

I can certainly imagine Tim or Phil at the keynote: "When you want to take a picture, you have the best mobile camera in the world already in your pocket."

Which makes me sad. I would easily pay a lot of money for this feature alone:

My kid does something adorable. I click a button and the last x seconds are saved from my perspective.

Snap got close, even Google Clips tried. None of them nailed it.

I understand all the privacy implications, and all the dystopian hand-wringing, but to be honest, that one thing would be pretty awesome, and I can only imagine what it would be like to look back 30 years from now.

I think cameras will be the new guns, and some people will be ok with them and some will not.

The thing is, people with the cameras will wield power over their subject, and many will not like it.

I don't know if the answer will be laws, or polite norms, or further civilization of what people accept.

because the battery life requirements for recording continuous footage for a post-capture shutter button are pretty damn high, especially if you want the footage to look good.

i agree though, it's a killer feature for sure.

> The short version: nobody knows yet.

This is also the long version. The entire article is tantamount to Apple fanfic.

Better than slashfic? :)

But yeah this is bizarre “let’s invent things that we want” level stories

For now, I just want some reading glasses. Somewhat-smart-glasses wired to my phone that allow me to read books and textual internet on the go. Basic text editor would be nice to have too. Doesn't even have to be full colour. I can wait for all singing and dancing immersive AR. Is there anything like this available or near to market?

Same here. Just the ability to overlay text in the corner of your vision would be life changing. Combined with a Bluetooth keyboard and an ssh app, this could easily become the most mobile development device ever made.

Google Glass made strides towards the “text in the corner of your vision,” but they focused too much on developing a brand instead of roping in 3rd party devs. They released (limited) SDKs eventually, but by that point it was too late.

I think they would have had far greater success if they had set up a dev relations team before shipping.

Exactly this. Give me a simple but high res screen in each eye of my glasses and a split, flexible Bluetooth keyboard I can set down or strap to either leg (perhaps). I'm tired of being tethered to my laptop and would pay for the privilege of freedom to roam while remaining productive.

Hopefully the make them look indistinguishable from normal glasses. I'm not gonna walk around in public looking like I have a video camera strapped to my forehead.

Track down an old show called Denno Coil. Every character wears AR glasses, and there's practically a startup idea in every episode of the first season. It is so very Japanese that they used AR on a show from over 10 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennō_Coil

Am I the only who is not looking forward to any smart glasses.

I have been looking for Smartphone before iPhone launch. It was something obvious and would make big difference. I am not so sure about Glasses. I for one dont want to wear glasses any more having gone through laser surgery.

In 2014 I was not interested in any type of Google Glasses. Partly because I didn’t need glasses at the time. Now that I do it’s interesting enough for me to try. Sunglasses would be cool. Luckily for me I only have slight astigmatism and don’t qualify for contacts/surgery or glasses full time.

Apple products are abundant in my household but looking back the watch is easily my least favorite purchase. The glasses would need to be compelling.

So how would the vision correction work? I’m not seeing that.

Probably a bad communication. You have to assume that they will just be able to fabricate and install normal prescription lenses, like any other glasses.

It did mention a patent though.

Aside from the fact that companies often patent things they can't/won't/don't produce, it looks like even in the patent we have a system that allows for the insertion of a prescription lens into the glasses, creating a multi-lens or multi-surface display substrate.

I see an allusion to some other voltage-controlled liquid crystal technology that may be able to correct for vision issues as well, but in my opinion what we're probably seeing here is:

A) inside the HMD, there exists some form of micro-adjustment mechanism that can focus the content that is being displayed. For e.g. I may have good enough vision that I don't need glasses, but my IPD is such that the display is out of focus for me specifically. That's what I imagine is happening with the main glass. Remember, with something like "everyday glasses" there doesn't exist an IPD adjustment like you'd see in AR/VR headsets, and this setting can greatly affect the crispness of the display.

And then...

B) for customers that require more substantial vision correction, allow them to also introduce their prescription lenses in front of that main display.

Thanks for following up on that! So nothing too magical.

47 pixels per inch resolution? Surely that’s a typo?

It's 47 pixels per degree.

For comparison, the angular resolution of the fovea is about half an arc minute, or about three times as good.

It drops of fast with eccentricity, though.

So, you might be able to see individual pixels that size, but only in the center of your vision (might because I didn’t bother thinking about the difference between angular resolution, acuity, and effect of line length, color, intensity, contrast, flicker, adaptation, etc)

That would be fantastic, a bbc micro strapped to each eyeball

Tl:Dr we don't know anything

If these actually eliminate the need for prescription ground lenses, that's it: killer app that will eliminate the prescription eye glasses industry as we know it, immediately placing Apple at the revenue and control peak. With everything taking place in manufacturing, I'm surprised dynamic precision shaped lenses are not already here.

I've seen enough fascinating but impractical patents to be pretty skeptical of "big corp filed a patent, so their next product will definitely include it!"

Definitely. If dynamic prescription support adds $10 to the bill of materials vs. fixed, order ahead of time prescription support - then it ain't shipping. Patent is exciting, but making a popular consumer product isn't about cramming every patent into it.

I think the problem is that, if this changing the shape of the lens (as in https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/these-smart-glasse...) it means relatively soft surfaces, which means they’re easily scratched.

If it doesn’t, what does it involve? Dynamically adjustable gratings inside the lens? Varying the refractive index of the material? Is that possible? Without chromatic aberration?

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