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Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#181

Post by jfim »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #33
gonehome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too. I’d bet on Apple, FB, or some new entry (harder without the underlying OS). DeepMind is the most interesting thing coming out of Google imo.

It's not impossible to "focus" Google but lets not pretend Google is making these decisions to focus on something or not. It's small groups of people or singular people who make these decisions and those visionaries can easily change their focus or be offered a more compelling role at a start up doing the same thing after they spend 12 months learning how to do it at Google. I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks li…

> I don't love Facebook/Meta but it looks like they put a lot of eggs into the Metaverse bucket. Google has never really done that.

They did with Google Plus, and they eventually killed it.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#182

Post by more_corn »

Mine allow me to see a future where: The product is a flop because they forgot to make it cool, this is obvious to everyone with half a clue, but apparently not the super smart people who run the the project at google. The company throws good money after bad for years and then ultimately shutters the thing leaving behind a rabid handful of fans who (rightly) argue the google version was way better technology than anything else out there, but those fans are ultimately abandoned and forgotten just like all the other times.

Oh wait no, that was just me remembering the last five times they failed at something like this.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#183

Post by rl3 »

urthor wrote: post #171
rl3 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google, you’re charging into battle with Apple and Zuck and you got a dildo made of American cheese. Good luck. Zuck's vision is trash to the point I question whether the man's had an original idea in his life, so I'm not completely discounting the American cheese monstrosity as somehow prevailing. I don't really care for Apple either, but I suspect they're going to "win" by virtue of focus and culture alone. Of co…

Whilst I'm all for ragging on Facebook's missteps, their vision seems pretty good if I was in Zuc's shoes. They want to be vertically integrated, discount Apple in this space. They're deploying cost effective hardware combined with vertically integrated software stacks that "just work." And they are leveraging things Facebook does extremely well, targeting extreme volume for cost amortization, UX and building microtr…

>Whilst I'm all for ragging on Facebook's missteps ...

I prefer ragging on their very existence, but to each their own. :)

Certainly not disputing they know how to make money. I'm sure they'll make a killing on AR/Metaverse bullshit.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#184

Post by dougmwne »

jorl17 wrote: post #176
dougmwne wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently moved from more than a decade on Android to iPhone. Once the Stockholm syndrome wore off I realized how pathetically behind they are on mobile.

Hi! I'm a very happy iPhone user (and Mac + Apple Watch + AirPods, you name it...), but I'm surprised by your comment....could you elaborate? In what way do you think that google is pathetically behind? I've always seen it as just a different ecosystem with different ideas. I look forward to reading what you have to say!!

In short, android is a laggy mess. I was so used to it I stopped noticing. Lag while scrolling, lag while switching apps, lag while typing. The UI is also unpolished, and again I was so used to it I didn’t see it. On switching to iPhone, the SE, not a flagship 12 or 13, I realized that nearly every touch had an instant response. The UI also has very fine tuned visual and haptic feedback and overall polish and consistency. I still have my last flagship Moto and the moment I used it again I realized I had a 20% failure rate on UI actions like app switching because they were just badly designed. And lastly, the hardware is just top notch for a midrange phone, excellent camera and the very fast soc loads complex websites near instantly in a way I’ve never seen another phone or even windows laptop do. Android and iOS may do the same things, but iOS runs circles around Android while doing it. This is the premiere product of a trillion dollar company and it absolutely shows.

I had some weird Google loyalty from the good old days. I can’t believe i suffered on their second rate platform for so long. I’m currently still suffering on Voice and Gmail and should probably completely move on. I should probably go ahead and buy one of these M1 MacBooks people have been talking about too.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#185

Post by comp_throw7 »

sombremesa wrote: post #174
comp_throw7 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equity compensation at places like Google vests monthly with no cliff, and it's taxed as income. You get what you see on the tin.

> places like Google Which place aside from Google?

Facebook, Amazon (mostly cash bonus first two years, but still "vests" monthly with no cliff), Uber, Lyft (every 3 months), Snapchat, etc. It's not all of them but it's an increasing number.

Also, even with a 1-year cliff, for most people it'll still basically be indistinguishable from cash? Leaving (or getting fired) before you hit the 1 year mark is pretty rare, and after the first cliff it usually transitions to something like every 3 months.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#186

Post by pjmlp »

rl3 wrote: post #183
urthor wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I'm all for ragging on Facebook's missteps, their vision seems pretty good if I was in Zuc's shoes. They want to be vertically integrated, discount Apple in this space. They're deploying cost effective hardware combined with vertically integrated software stacks that "just work." And they are leveraging things Facebook does extremely well, targeting extreme volume for cost amortization, UX and building microtr…

> Whilst I'm all for ragging on Facebook's missteps ... I prefer ragging on their very existence, but to each their own. :) Certainly not disputing they know how to make money. I'm sure they'll make a killing on AR/Metaverse bullshit.

Users of React, React Native, Folley, GHC, Flow,.... seem to appreciate their existence.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#187

Post by pjmlp »

Const-me wrote: post #172
gonehome wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google seems unfocused - AR is an example of this, their messaging platforms and failure to leverage Google voice for 10yrs after the acquisition are too. I’d bet on Apple, FB, or some new entry (harder without the underlying OS). DeepMind is the most interesting thing coming out of Google imo.

> harder without the underlying OS I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the current mainline Linux. There’re issues on desktop, sure. But VR/AR stuff is not similar to desktop, quite the opposite, it’s similar to embedded. For newer mobile GPUs, Linux even support Vulkan in addition to GLES.

But the tooling (vs Metal/DX/LibGNMX/...), oh my.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#188

Post by pjmlp »

bsanr2 wrote: post #23
Andrex wrote: post #14

Whenever I transpose my comments to HN, I usually do some light editing. The following comment is unedited because this headline kinda fired me up. Considering how Google’s treated AR and VR in the last 10 years, hyping people up then quietly pulling back support and finally cancellation after just 2-3 years, I don’t see this going well. They had a toehold 6-10 years ago which they could have easily kept iterating on…

Tango did, 7 years ago, everything ARKit does today. All they had to do was loss-lead on a showstopper of a phone with one killer app. They basically stripped down Tango to create ARCore, and lost the SLAM space to Apple and Niantic. No one realizes it yet, but this is about as bad as Microsoft losing the web to Google.

Mostly because ARCore tooling looks like desktop Linux UI/UX just like everything else that Google has produced in 3D tooling space for Android.

I guess SceneForm was the best that they could manage to come closer to Metal Frameworks, and they just killed.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#189

Post by pjmlp »

echelon wrote: post #143
mwattsun wrote: post #122

People laughed when Steve Balmer went on stage and started dancing around like a crazy man singing "Developers, developers, developers!" but that's what Microsoft gets right and Google gets wrong. As a developer, I have no confidence that Google will stick with anything. With Microsoft, I can still create a Windows Forms program. Heck, I could write a DOS program and it will still work in Windows 11. I'm currently le…

Microsoft bought Github and improved it. In addition to Visual Studio and C#, Microsoft developed VSCode and TypeScript. Microsoft pours a lot of love into Azure, WSL, and PowerShell. We know where they're going with things. Google considers us a stretch goal and will deprioritize and defund if developer revenue metrics aren't reached. Google developed Go (mixed feelings) and Dart (meh). GCP was once considered expen…

Microsoft mostly gets it, when WinDev vs DevDiv politics don't spoil the roadmap, like on WinRT/UAP/UWP/WinUI chaos, killing .NET Native and C++/CX without proper replacements (.NET 7 might get proper AOT back and C++/WinRT is a time travel to the ATL golden days), or the current war on which GUI framework is supposed to win the day.

They seem to have gotten infected with Google style management as new blood took the reigns of product development.

Re: Google is building a new augmented reality device and operating system

#190

Post by pjmlp »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #46
whoisjuan wrote: post #21

Google had the head start here with Glass, and then in classic Google fashion they let it die. I'm always baffled how bad is Google at playing long term games. Their biggest mistake with Glass was trying to productize it too fast and stopping when they saw it didn't have good consumer fit. They could have instead go more incremental by releasing developer hardware and learning from that. They could have kept that pro…

People start with the assumption that Google folks are very wise. Why? This assumption just makes it more difficult to explain their bad decisions.

The hiring process to become a Google employee helps with that assumption.
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