Why I'm Returning Google Glass
internetevolution.com
internetevolution.com
^^ This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. 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. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away now.
He doesn't want to pay a substantial premium "just" to be part of a privileged set of early-adopters. Everyone knows that this is still a beta, and improvements are on the way, so he's just saying the current iteration can't push him over the hump to hold onto the device (as opposed to recoup his cash).
I can understand that he doesn't think it's worth the price - because for a normal consumer it isn't. But I don't understand why he would have gotten it in the first place when it was so clearly limited in scope.
Also keep in mind more and more places are banning them over privacy concerns. How bad would that suck you drop $1500 and you can't even use it most of the time since so many places are banning them?
http://www.fastcompany.com/3009432/tech-forecast/tracking-th...
There's a lot more (and by that, I mean orders of magnitude more) places that ask you to not use cell phones than places that ban Glass (restaurants, movie theatres, coffee shop lines, airplanes, customs, etc). But nobody would claim that makes cell phones useless.
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.
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.
And, I paid $200 for it with AT&T contract.
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.
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.
Source: My wife is getting her Glass in a few weeks.
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.
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.
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)?
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.
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.
Is there any indication that this generation of Google Glass is intended as a prototype rather than a consumer-ready product, other than the reviews which overwhelmingly seem to describe it as such?
Also, the last three months have seen numerous software updates to add features and change functionality. It is an unfinished product and they are iterating based on user feedback.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-g...
(Note explorer edition is what the author of this post was testing)
And it's also something Google and Microsoft do all the time. Release or pre-announce half-baked stuff, just to get some publicity, years (or decades) before they are fit for consumption.
That supposedly makes them look "innovative".
> "Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere."
He shelled out for a beta product and was disappointed when it was, well, a beta product. More than that, even -- it was a beta version of a product which is the very first of its kind. I'm glad he was able to get his money back, but I'm not sure why he was surprised.
I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate, you bias them towards strong positive responses - but they did cross "beta testing" and "luxury goods" wires.
The Catch-22 for Google was establishing the value adds for wider adoption. They did an amazing job of launching the beta, considering that challenge.
Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to create some sort of secret selective list for early access.
I would disagree. I'd say they're paying to get early developer access which could give them a significant advantage in the market.
Probably the 10k would be a bigger showstopper for people that are 'just curious' to even give it a try, but in this case this guy seems like someone interested in a sneak preview.
The devkit buyer hopefully plans to build stuff, _generate_ money with it. It should be an instrument to generate income, the money is spent on 'tools'.
Glass? That's a gadget. I said it elsewhere on the thread: I do like the comparison with a developer kit, but .. most people that seem to get one/use one (even the ones mentioned in the very article) look like end users, trying to get a sneak preview. Not 'I want to build my business on Glass apps' type of guys.
If he wanted an end product that was polished, he mislead google and misled himself.
I just got mine, and I'm 50/50 on keeping it. I don't think anyone is faulting Google for the device, it's just that the value is negligible at its current price point.
First off, I do not have toys to communicate with Glass. I realize that Glass is too early. There are not enough data dumping devices available at decent prices. Withings, vehicle data, health data, all the things people try to keep private. That kind of data is what would be useful with Glassware.
The lack of a SDK and depending on RESTful services. I want to toy with sensors too. Delayed gratification does not work. Where are my long nights of programming?
Battery life and destroying my cell's data plan are also issues. I'll miss watching people's faces light up when they try it on.
I have seen interesting manipulation of the Mirror API to make voice commanded games. I tend to get unreliable ping pong times for real time related materials. Sometimes a card opens instantly, sometimes it takes up to 15 minutes.
That was my basic idea. Device A connects through bluetooth and uploads data to Phone. Phone relays to web service. Web service relays to Glass. It works. Google App Engine/Mirror API is just not my cup of coffee.
Glass, or some offspring, has the potential to be amazing. I really cannot wait to see what comes of this. A beta device utilizing a RESTful API... I knew what I was getting into, but once I got it, there just was not anything I wanted to feed to Glass. Glass hungers.
Google even flat out stated at Google IO that the upcoming GDK will just be the Android SDK plus extra classes you compile against.
I can only run APKs on Glass while in USB debug mode? There is no way to actually execute the program again without being in the debugger, correct?
https://github.com/kaze0/launchy
There's also a Mirror API based Glass app that lets you launch apks, but it's a bit more work setting up. It actually requires you install a couple APKs as well: https://pontedivetro.appspot.com/
And then you go and complain about how you shelled out thousands and there was nothing to do, and other devices will cost a fraction in the future.
Do people not understand that Glass is primarily intended for developers and dogfooders?
I think the #ifihadglass program was a mistake. They should have kept it limited to people attending Google I/O or other bonafide developers. I understand they wanted to have it tested by a diverse group of people in the real world and not just developers, but the wide ranging audience they were seeking also happens to be the people who don't seem to understand what devkits are.
edit: The author mentions that he wasn't interested in developing an app for Glass anyways; I thought that was half the point of the Explorer program (unless you're a skydiver/ballerina/whatever who can produce awesome marketing content).
Or was the initial "purchase" actually structured as a rental or lease?
Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - you could say this is even more the case with hardware.
I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.
NB: I've seen plenty of these around but haven't actually played with one.
During my time with Glass I prototyped 3D interactive software where you could load up models of human body parts, physical structures, etc, and swipe the side to rotate them around and view from all angles. This ran pretty well on the embedded processor, and I was importing relatively large 3D models.
As well, I tried running computer vision algorithms on the device. This did not go so well. I could not run a basic Canny edge detection algorithm at more than 1 FPS. FYI this algorithm - and similarly complex ones - are fundamental to doing anything remotely useful in image processing. The alternative is doing all your image processing offline, which may be fine in the future as internet becomes super fast. Some people are doing facial recognition like this, at a whopping 2 FPS.
About the product. There's the issue of the screen size. Small, hard to focus on, and up to the right. Not really conducive to augmenting your vision. I think it's fair to say that Glass was meant as an information retrieval device - which again, makes me wonder, why not just use a smart watch? Frankly I think the screen quality could be better on the watch too.
All in all, the platform is an interesting foray into wearable computing but I reckon it will take multiple iterations (and years) to get it to the point where I can run more interesting CV and AR applications. In the meantime, I've been building my own wearable computing hardware to enable the types of software I want to build. The Alan Kay quote, and all that.
I implemented a (simple, not quite Canny) edge detector in GLSL and it runs fast enough not to be distracting (https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist).
I've tried using OpenCV (which isn't GPU-accelerated on Glass because I think OpenCV is only accelerated on Tegra) - this _was_ too slow.
At this point that's really it. If you sit at a desk all day you're going to have a bad time with the notifications, "oh great I got a notice on my face a minute after my phone buzzed and my laptop notified me". They work much better when you are active, out and about when even picking up your phone is a chore. If you already know your way everywhere you go (you don't travel) then one of the best features, directions, is lost on you.
This applies to the current device/software/apps, part of what we are trying to do with OpenGlass is push it past being a "beeper on your face" because that only applies to the segment of people to whom getting notifications faster than you do with your phone matters. Once they allow devs to push to the Play store (coming soon) it'll be a much more compelling product for end users. I think it'll ultimately be an amazing product, it's just the current feature list targets what I see as limited audiences.
We have all these things and yet none of them seem to be able to each other (and/or without serious battery consumption) where I am, what I am doing, and how best to let me know a thing has happened.
It is illegal, is not safer than a car docked phone and since it moves your eyes away from the road is extremely dangerous. Stop being so selfish and stop the car. Studies have shown that when you are distracted you are more likely to crash. So innocent people's lives are at stake here.
(To be sure, one can also do this with a GPS app on a smart phone, but having left a phone behind in a rental car, I see value in using a device that's attached to me.)
As a happy owner of a Pebble, I definitely get the value of going beyond the phone screen. And as a sci-fi reader, I fully expect that everybody's going to end up spending 99% of their time intimately connected to tech (and the broader world via that tech). But I don't expect head-mounted UIs to be popular outside of tiny niches for 15 years, if ever.
Then again, I'm biased. We're building and selling our own version of wearable computing, but driven by your biological rhythms.
I wear glasses. Years ago people thought all glasses looked silly. And they were, with giant thick lenses. Now people buy non-RX glasses to look cool, even.
I saw an animated sci-fi show from around 10 years ago (Denno Coil, Japanese anime) where in order to see the AR/VR world, you wore glasses. Every single kid wore glasses. You had to in order to see the VR/AR. Once something is common, the look factor doesn't matter.
I think we're just seeing people being disappointed that Reality is still decades/centuries/possibly impossible behind Fiction, and Fiction is only pulling further away as Reality gets better computers to render Fiction with.
Especially for artists, designers, and maybe even engineers. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to see what I was doing when I started to screw something up.
When you're walking around all the time, not having to hold something is a pretty huge selling point.
(I'm playing with it as an augmented reality device and have written a calibration library to get the display aligned with the camera - see https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist. I've been working on hooking this into OpenCV which I'm hoping to upload in the next few days.)
One valid answer to "why not" might be power/heat - if you run it for a long period of time, your battery dies and your hair sets on fire. ;)
The camera not being centered on your face is not insurmountable. (In fact, you'd want it to be centered on your right eye, not your face.) The project I linked to above aligns the camera with your vision. It doesn't currently work for different depths of field, but I'm working on that - this relies on your image recognition being able to determine the depth of the recognized object, e.g. by knowing its physical size.
I've worn one (very briefly) now, and let me be very clear: you can not superimpose labels or images on anything you see in daily life with Glass. This is a physical limitation of the hardware, and it is absolute. This hardware will never, ever, ever be able to do that.
And it's unclear to me if the hardware for Rainbows End/Halting State augmented reality will ever (or at least in this generation) exist if Glass-like heads-up-display hardware can not be successful in its own right.
There's also a little Easter Egg in it that lets you see the entire Glass team, and look around at them, up, down, etc. and it's pretty engrossing, so you can use it as limited VR as well.
Why would anyone want to wear glasses to see text-messages instantly?
I use to be a glass enthusiast, but this single limitation is discouraging.
"You mean we have all this stuff recorded and in a database, but I have to go look at it to get the info?"
The other problem is that apps cannot (at least for now) change the language model, so Glass will always be in either "search" or "dictation" mode.
Wouldn't the hardest HCI problem be a direct cortical interface?
(That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)
I'd be OK with that kind of future.
So yeah, development is serious work like stocks trading and you want a big interface like the Wall Street Journal.
I can see room for more devices, fitness bands, etc., but as sensors rather than media. I'm just not seeing them beat the form of the book, magazine, tablet.
I mean wrist-watches kind of overloaded their interface after time, date, and dive depth. It was technically possible to put a microfilm reader in a wrist watch, but a paper copy of National Geographic was just so much nicer.
I'd be willing to try a heads-up travel guide, but a cheap and light one in my pocket might be all I need.
(and no, I'm not interested in the MS Surface Pro, Windows 8 is terrifyingly poor by all accounts.)
Bleeding edge isn't for everyone for a reason. This is the birth of a new form factor that has potential, not complete market realization.
I'd be less sure that a watch is enough of an improvement over taking one's phone out of one's pocket.
Also, unlike tablets, which have the obvious business use case of liberating people from the "sit down with your computer" inhibitor to interpersonal interaction, nobody knows whether or how pervasive use of wearables could improve productivity or interaction in a business setting.
I've ended up loving it. One of the most annoying things to me about a modern phone is its intrusiveness. Text messages, calendar alerts, phone calls, and other interruptive communications. The Pebble makes all of those notifications a) quiet, and b) subtle. It's fantastic to be in a meeting, see who's calling, and decline the call, all without breaking flow.
I think it will also be good for a variety of special-purpose interfaces. E.g., one person already has built custom software such that when he starts moving on his bike (as triggered by phone-measured movement speed) it switches over to a bike computer display.
And the nice part is that it looks just like a watch. Unlike Glass, people are entirely ok with it.