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Comment by pkfrank | Hacker News Reader

>It feels very prototype-ish and I can't help but feel that it's the precursor to something better Google might even be working on now as we try these.

^^ 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).

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> 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.

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.

> 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.

My first gen still work with the stuff I had in it at the time I moved on from to a different phone. My daughter will find it, charge it and ask me to install games for her on it so I keep hiding it from her.

And, I paid $200 for it with AT&T contract.

>Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.

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.

Is Google Glass marketed as a developer kit, or even as a prototype or "first run" device? All the FEM I've seen is very polished (leading me to believe the company wants me to think the product is polished) and seems to be catering to a mainstream audience.

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.

Yes, I think Project Glass has been pretty clear about this being a first run device. That's why the participants are referred to as "Explorers". The point is to start mapping out use cases and fine tuning the UX.

Source: My wife is getting her Glass in a few weeks.

They should have avoided being cute and simply called it a "Developer Kit" instead of targeting it towards "Explorers".

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.

The real question is were it's capabilities misrepresented - did they sell you something that didn't do what they told you it would do?

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.

I do like that comparison - but let's add a twist:

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)?

From the consumer point of view, sure, sounds great.

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.

no, it's not like that at all. It's like he bought the xbox one devkit & returned it because the OS was crap and the controls were fundamentally flawed and he didn't think there was going to be a way to make good games for it.

> Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.

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.

So what's wrong with the early generation iPhone since you think the dumb phone was still way cooler?

Cooler? No. I just didn't find it remarkable. I like my tools to be useful rather than mere status symbols.

I'm trying to understand why or how he got it. Was he an #ifihadglass winner? Was he just a lucky individual at Google IO that decided to plop down the cash for what was definitely a developer-device?

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.

Looks like he was an #ifihadglass winner: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&...

And it was a "whim" and his idea was to write a journal (which presumably gets page views) and so he gets one, and now he's publicly returning it, and getting lots of page views and his money back. All in all, the cynic in me thinks things are going as planned. He is effectively out no money, and yet he's picked up a bunch of traffic. Internet win.

This guy actually does that for a living. He is currently testing a new product called Helpouts that allows you to charge for support using Hangouts in G+. Looks mildly interesting and more useful then Glass.

I can't see anything about helpouts on that site. It might be useful for a friend. Where did you hear about it?

>>>>>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...

Let's not fall into hyperbole: there's a few places that have banned Glass, out of well, the entire world. That's a long way from "most of the time" or "many places."

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 totally the point of this run of Google Glass.

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?

The fact that it doesn't work for the >50% of people who wear corrective lenses would be a start.

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.

Well, non-prescription sunglasses don't work for people with corrective lenses either. I wouldn't call that definitive evidence.

Was that fact noted by google pre-purchase? Because if it was..... again, google did nothing wrong.

Yes, it was noted that it was for developers and early testers:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57462641-1/brin-google-g...

(Note explorer edition is what the author of this post was testing)

>* 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.*

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".

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