This mocking of Google Glass as something that only "geeks" would ever use, because it is awkward and fails too frequently in embarrassing ways, suggests the product and technology have a very long way to go before they cross the chasm into anything resembling mass-market appeal.
While I think that ever-more-personal Internet-powered products like Google Glass ARE the future, I can't help but see some parallels with Apple's original tablet computer, the Newton MessagePad, which never quite recovered from the drubbing it took in a Doonesbury comic strip, because its handwriting recognition software was awkward and failed too frequently in embarrassing ways.[1]
Google Voice recognition isn't anywhere near that bad. There are two times I have seen Glass fail to understand badly. The first was a woman wearing it over long hair, the hair might have been interfering with the mic. The second and more important case is with Indian accents.
Seems like the equivalent of MaxiPads to me. Once Google Apps get some killer apps, that you can't do with any other device, or not nearly as well, they'll come around.
Or someone who has never used it, mocking its imagined failures, shows that when people gets there hands on it, they will see it wildly outperforming expectations and achieve mass-market appeal.
You do know that plenty of people have given reviews on Glass ?
None that I have seen predict that it will have mass-market appeal. Quite the opposite in fact. Many believe that they would wait for a 3rd generation version to truly decide on its potential.
I own one. It's shit. Great idea which will ultimately have a place in society in some sleeker, more discreet and more responsive form,, but this iteration has some awful execution. It should not have gone to market yet. I don't know why Google rushed this out the door.
Fine. Why would a normal person need this, especially since this is in addition to his/her smartphone?
Instead of looking like a dork all the time with G glasses on, why not look at the phone for a restaurant or directions and then put it in your pocket /purse? How hard is to pull the phone again 5 minutes later if you aren't sure?
I'm on the treadmill and I just missed a call. I'd really like to know who it's from. That info could be on my HUD, but instead I have to grab my phone, hit the power button, swipe to unlock it, and swipe down from the notification bar.
I'm at a party, and a friend is demonstrating his juggling skills. I could snap a quick picture or take a video in a heartbeat if I had Glass. Since I don't, I have to go through the smartphone activation checklist again; take phone out of pocket, power button, swipe. Launch the camera app. Aim. But now I've missed the moment. I'm holding a brick in the air while the rest of my friends are applauding.
Damn, my car won't start - and unlike my dad, I've never been much of a mechanic. If I had Glass, I could give him a call and he could see through my eyes from 1000 miles away. Instead I'm cradling my phone on my shoulder while I'm leaning into the engine, looking for a relay box. I don't know what that is, or what it looks like. He says it should be somewhere on the left? Now I know how he feels when I'm guiding him through installing printer drivers.
I see a lot of use cases for a device like Glass. So I think you have it backwards - in the near future, the dorks are going to be the ones fumbling with their phones.
I'm on the treadmill and I just missed a call. I'd really like to know who it's from. That info could be on my HUD, but instead I have to grab my phone, hit the power button, swipe to unlock it, and swipe down from the notification bar.
Put more notification info on the lockscreen.
I'm at a party, and a friend is demonstrating his juggling skills. I could snap a quick picture or take a video in a heartbeat if I had Glass. Since I don't, I have to go through the smartphone activation checklist again; take phone out of pocket, power button, swipe. Launch the camera app. Aim. But now I've missed the moment. I'm holding a brick in the air while the rest of my friends are applauding.
On WP there is a dedicated camera button that you hold for half-a-second and it immediately launches the camera.
Damn, my car won't start - and unlike my dad, I've never been much of a mechanic. If I had Glass, I could give him a call and he could see through my eyes from 1000 miles away. Instead I'm cradling my phone on my shoulder while I'm leaning into the engine, looking for a relay box. I don't know what that is, or what it looks like. He says it should be somewhere on the left?
You can use your phone for this today. In fact in many ways its better, because you can wrap your arm around corners that you can't reach your head.
I'm sure we will figure out great use cases in the future, but I don't think these are them.
>> I'm on the treadmill and I just missed a call. I'd really like to know who it's from. That info could be on my HUD, but instead I have to grab my phone, hit the power button, swipe to unlock it, and swipe down from the notification bar.
As a treadmill user I can tell you that running with glasses on will in most cases will be worst, sweat and all.
>>I'm at a party, and a friend is demonstrating his juggling skills. I could snap a quick picture or take a video in a heartbeat if I had Glass.
You see no negatives going to a party with video /photo taking equipment always on?
>> Damn, my car won't start - and unlike my dad, I've never been much of a mechanic. If I had Glass, I could give him a call and he could see through my eyes from 1000 miles away. Instead I'm cradling my phone on my shoulder while I'm leaning into the engine, looking for a relay box. I don't know what that is, or what it looks like. He says it should be somewhere on the left? Now I know how he feels when I'm guiding him through installing printer drivers.
Very niche, even though it's harder to put your head inside, bottom, left or right an engine than to maneuver your iPhone to find that wire, leak, fuse or hose.
Not everyone has the same definition of "normal" or "looking like a dork" as you do. If you don't like how Glass looks, or if you don't think you'd have a use for it, DON'T BUY ONE!
I must have missed the announcement that Glass use will be compulsory.
>>If you don't like how Glass looks, or if you don't think you'd have a use for it, DON'T BUY ONE!...I must have missed the announcement that Glass use will be compulsory.
We're having a discussion, and no I wont buy one. I wont even wear one, unless I'm paid a large sum of money for it.
>>Not everyone has the same definition of "normal" or "looking like a dork" as you do.
That's obvious, they're plenty of socially awkward people out there.
Even a Garmin from 5 years ago works great with voice commands and great displays. Of course we have iPhones and Galaxys that do that too, no need for extra gadgets
It doesn't matter where it's displayed, looking at a map while driving takes attention away from the road.
In the days of paper maps everyone knew it was silly and dangerous to try to unfold and read one while driving. I don't know how this common sense has disappeared just because of LCD screens.
A HUD does steal from outward-facing attention. It's ok in aircraft because the forward environment for aircraft is far less cluttered than for a car. That's also why self-driving cars are so much harder to do well than self-flying aircraft.
John Pavlus, writing for the MIT Technology Review, made an outstanding point about wearable computing, and the basic problem with treating the body (which needs interfaces) as an interface itself.
I really don't get what the claim of the second half of the article is
> When you drive a nail with a hammer, you feel as though you are acting directly on the nail, not “asking” the hammer to do something for you. In contrast, “present at hand” describes a tool that, in use, causes you to “bump up against some aspect of its nature that makes you focus on it as an entity,” as Matt Webb of BERG writes. Most technological “interfaces”–models that represent abstract information and mediate our manipulation of it–are “present at hand” almost by definition, at least at first. As Webb notes, most of us are familiar enough with a computer mouse by now that it is more like a hammer–“ready to hand”–than an interface standing “between” us and our actions.
A mouse became “ready to hand” just like a hammer did. Have you every seen a child with a hammer or other tool? It's “present at hand” for them until they master it. So the real question is not "how is Glass different than hammer?", it's "how is Glass different than a mouse?"
> Still, a mouse is also like a hammer in that it is something separate-from-you that you can pick up and set down with your hands. What if the “mouse” wasn’t a thing at all, but rather–as in the Fjord example of “staring to select”–an integrated aspect of your embodied, phenomenal experience?
Do we really think that the thing that makes a mouse a good interface device is that it's a solid object? Look, I get the idea that if you try to overload bodily actions with new results on top of the existing ones (i.e. making thinks "selected" when you just wanted to look at them) you'll obviously get problems. But does anyone really think that, say, rubbing your fingers together would be some horrendous input method merely because it doesn't have a physical object? No, not as long as you rarely had need to rub things in real life at the same time as you were using the device.
"But does anyone really think that, say, rubbing your fingers together would be some horrendous input method merely because it doesn't have a physical object?"
It's a good question, but I don't think the answer is as clear as you make it out to be. Elsewhere, Pavlus has written about Brett Victor, and some of what he's saying here is an extension of Victor's ideas about interface design.
My own view of the camera in Glass is that it's the lynchpin for a good gestural interface. But when I imagine how this would work, I instinctively prefer the idea of using a pen (or something similar) to my empty hands. Perhaps it's because I've done a lot of painting and drawing, but I actually feel that the tool makes me more expressive, not less. In other words, it brings a level of precision to gestures that unaided hands don't supply - not unlike the way a conductor uses a baton when, strictly speaking, he could get by with just his arms and hands.
This is comedy, of course they exaggerate things so you can't take it literally. But they are spot on looking weird and talking to 'yourself.'
This is a great niche product, IMO, other than that it will suffer an embarrassing death. Most people do not need up to the second information while out and even those that do (say drivers) will probably be distracted by them.
Brin did make a fool of himself when he said that phones are emasculating, essentially saying that using Glass is cool. I guess that's an opinion, but I disagree. Unless it's part of your job, you'll look like a pretentious, know-it-all @sshole. And unless you're careful you can subject yourself to physical harm, like if used in bathrooms, bars, getting in people's faces with it etc.
This got a lot of press because tech bloggers, professional "early adopters" and wannabe cool techies are bored, they needed a new product to hype to death and to show how hip they are. It's been a while since a new gadget came out.
While I think that ever-more-personal Internet-powered products like Google Glass ARE the future, I can't help but see some parallels with Apple's original tablet computer, the Newton MessagePad, which never quite recovered from the drubbing it took in a Doonesbury comic strip, because its handwriting recognition software was awkward and failed too frequently in embarrassing ways.[1]
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[1] Here's one of the Doonesbury comic strips mocking the Newton MessagePad: http://fortunebrainstormtech.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/db9... and here's a NewsWeek article from 1993 discussing it: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/1993/10/10/the-handwri...