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Why I'm Returning Google Glass

internetevolution.com

71–80 of 135 posts

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#71
Imagine that you buy an Xbox or Playstation DevKit, they cost 10x as much as an actual console that is shipped. There is precious little software except samples and demos, and you are expected to be a tester of buggy and incomplete stuff as well as potentially develop.

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.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#73
post #28

The first paragraph says it all. > "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 be…

While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's beta testing . If you ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good. I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate,…

> they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good.

I would disagree. I'd say they're paying to get early developer access which could give them a significant advantage in the market.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#75
I had the unique experience of borrowing a pair of Google Glass for a multi-day hackathon. The very first thing I did was figure out how to develop and install actual Android apps on it, because the "card" system isn't conducive to developing interesting applications. Frankly I'd rather go with a smart watch if cards are all I could do.

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.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#76
post #29

I actually think industrial applications might be the hidden killer app for augmented reality. Imagine walking around a power plant and seeing your environment annotated: last inspection time for each inspection point, what is flowing through each pipe and its current pressure, etc. Construction sites could be truly amazing.

yes, going the way of the Segway, this is exactly how people rationalized their use too.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#77
post #6

One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy. (That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)

Yes, definitely something that became a mainstream product less than five years ago is The Final Innovation.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#78
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>>>>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? ht…

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.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#79
post #53
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's beta testing . If you ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good. I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate,…

I don't get this. The current release is meant for developers, journalists and "technologists." Google was very up front about this. It's not intended to be a consumer product. Complaining about it at this point seems akin to someone getting a console devkit and complaining there's no games available and those cost 10s of thousands of dollars. Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to…

Complaining about it did get his blog to (at least) the top 4 on hacker news.

Re: Why I'm Returning Google Glass

#80
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is not an augmented reality device.

Why not? (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 set…

For one, the positioning of the display and camera. The display is elevated so you don't see it directly in front of you. You have to actively look at it. The camera isn't centered in your face so it doesn't line up with your vision.
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