Google needed to do either of two things: make the software good enough to be acceptable, or provide source code so that people could fix the issues bothering them themselves. They did neither of those things. Instead, they took the open-source Android operating system, made a closed-source fork, and proceeded to go around breaking APIs to stop regular Android software from working.
When I got Glass in November 2013 (XE11), I could run an ssh client on it and use it with a Bluetooth keyboard, along with lots of other Android software. A month later (XE12), they somehow managed to break the dialog box API. And XE11 was configured with the most aggressive auto-updater you'll ever see, so you couldn't stay back. Four months after that, they released the brick-half-the-fleet update (XE16). (That happened because Glass was configured with no swap, all their users had 1GB memory devices, but all their internal testers had 2GB memory devices. The updater would run out of memory mid-update and die, leaving an unbootable system.) As a side effect, that update also flashes a hidden firmware so XE11 won't boot anymore. Also, it strips out everything related to bluetooth keyboard support. Also, it disables touchpad gestures for Android apps.
Also, the terms of service for the Glass SDK are incompatible with the GPL, ban charging for Glass sofware, and ban advertising in Glass software, so there's basically no third-party software and none coming.
Oh, and it sends all your photos to Google (can't disable auto-backup even by rooting and messing with internals). And if you pair it with a phone, it copies any text messages stored on that phone, and sends those to Google.
This is very sad, because the hardware itself is excellent, and it (almost) does something that I really really wanted. XE11 worked well enough that I invested considerable time and energy into it, and I ended up walking away feeling like Google was constantly sabotaging my efforts.
Meanwhile the pace of actually-useful updates is utterly glacial; there clearly aren't enough developers working on it to have any hope of fixing the outstanding issues. So yeah, I've given up hope on Glass. I'll revisit it if they open the source code or announce new management with someone who understands software at the helm.
I hadn't considered that use case. How nice would it be to have a terminal in one eye where you could sit in any position with a keyboard on your lap and never need a desk?
This was available in some (probably limited and gimmicky) form decades ago in devices like the Reflection Technology Private Eye. This is the best link I could find:
It sounds like a good "eye-dea", but its not. Reading any real amount of text on Glass gets tiring after a few minutes. It's really best for momentary use. They really did screw up the software. Why didn't it integrate more with the phone in the first place? So much wasted opportunity, even with the physical limitations like resolution, eye strain, and battery life. I've relegated it to large events and vacations, it works great for documenting that stuff!
The position is a little tiring, but its semi-transparent, and the text is small, and the resolution is low. Also, you are reading with one eye. That makes a difference after a bit.
Thanks! Semi-transparent and one-eye would be tiring. Fixing them (two-eyes + removable patches) would be a different product, almost an occulus. But it's helpful to see the keyboard...
I go bicycle touring, and a heads-up map while cycling would be convenient. Plus, it would require less room to use in a small tent/bivvy bag.
Here is where I've found it good use: biking, hiking, parties/wine tastings/weddings, parades, etc. Driving is a fairly good use case as well. If there is a clear use for it people don't seem to care I'm wearing it, and its pretty fun with Auto-Awesome.
The mention of steroids seems spot on. I'd imagine using the Oculus for long time spans and/or demanding tasks would have so many side effects, like severe eye-strain, lack of resolution of the environment, lack of reactivity to external inputs, and so much more.
In the future, we all (developers / engineers) go to work by getting out of bed and strapping on a helmet to join our team in a virtual office environment.
Um, no. This isn't easy to do, except in movies. Glass doesn't have the CPU power to do it, so you'd have to rely on cloud power; do you really think everybody wants all their key strokes sent to Google? And language models aren't that much help with terminal commands. And even humans can't do this; you're expecting Glass to be smarter than a human... not impossible, but think about what processing power and memory it has on board, both constrained by battery. And your head would have to be in an incredibly awkward position. So many reasons, no.
Yes, I'd send my keystrokes to Google if I could do this. Sure, this won't work for everyone but it will for most. Let's optimize the problem for the 80% and continue working on the other solution.
If all the problems could be solved, it would be awesome. But I'm very skeptical. And I misspoke about keystrokes, of course: what we're really talking about sending to the cloud is finger and hand movements; the keystrokes would be coming back from the cloud. Sounds laggy maybe, on top of all the other problems I mentioned.
It used to be possible to pair Glass with a bluetooth keyboard, and there are some very nice keyboards on the market which fold up to about the size of a cell phone, and unfold to about the size of a normal laptop keyboard. This is as good as a laptop keyboard if you put it on a table, pretty good if you rest it on your lap, and passable walking around if you hold your thumbs on the bottom to stabilize it while typing with the other eight fingers. The main caveats are that the Glass screen isn't very high resolution, so you can't get much more than 80x25, and it's not very usable while walking around even if you can manage to type, because head-vibration makes small text unreadable.
Unfortunately, this is impossible in versions of Glass since XE16 (April), and fraught with difficulty in the version before that (XE12, where dialog boxes don't work, so you need a modified SSH client and a modified Settings app to pair). I also had to modify the ssh client to fix some keybindings, and to add a left-margin because my device was missing 4 columns of pixels on the left edge. When it works, it's significantly better than ssh on a phone, because you can use a real keyboard without needing three hands or a surface to put things on. It's less nice than a computer, mainly because of the low screen resolution.
Wow! I never thought of paring a bluetooth keyboard. This could be an excellent use case for something like Ubuntu Edge. A full operating system, displayed through glass and bluetooth keyboard attached. Sounds prefect to me :D
Google actually demoed Glass running Ubuntu inside a chroot, with its GUI shown in VNC over loopback. Setting it up was a pain, but this gets you a working web browser, which Glass doesn't have otherwise. But it isn't possible anymore, unless you feel like decompiling and trying to fix Google's bugs for them.
Google dropped the ball. Give it 5 to 10 years and we'll see a fully polished Apple clone of Glass that doesn't suck for consumers... Which is unforunfortunate because Apple products sucks.
I was part of the first batch of Glass Explorers to receive the device in early 2013. I was extremely optimistic about Glass before getting one of my own, but it only took a couple of months for that optimism to fade, and I've only worn them two or three times in the past year.
As others have pointed out, the cost of using Glass is high, and I'm not just talking about the monetary cost. There's a social cost as well, as lots of people will stop you in public to have a conversation about Glass. Most of them are just curious, but I've encountered my fair share of people who are judgement or even overtly hostile. (I live in SF, which is a fairly forward-thinking city, so I imagine it was worse for people in other areas.)
Based on my experiences, it seems that when you merely possess technology, people tend to acknowledge and refer to it distinctly. However, when you wear technology, people increasingly conflate you and your character with the technology itself. The difference between walking around with a phone in your hand and walking around wearing Glass is the difference between carrying a tube of paint and painting your face green.
In my opinion this was predictable and Google should have anticipated it. (This is why studying psychology is important.) They should've focused on giving early Explorers an "excuse" to wear Glass, but they did the opposite. Ideally, we could've presented ourselves by saying, "I'm wearing this because I'm a tester. Want to try them on?" Instead, more often than not, conversations would begin with the other party saying, "So you paid $1500 for these?" That's not a great starting point in any way, shape, or form.
I've heard that things were similar when headphones first started catching on for mainstream use. The difference is that headphones were worth the cost. By contrast, the incremental improvements that Glass makes over a smartphone aren't worth the social/physical costs of wearing something on your face.
> it seems that when you merely possess technology, people tend to acknowledge and refer to it distinctly. However, when you wear technology, people increasingly conflate you and your character with the technology itself.
This is because things you choose to wear are fashion choices, and the whole reason people choose one fashion over another is to make a statement about who they are.
In this respect, Glass is no different than regular glasses; all regular glasses serve the same functional purpose of correcting impaired vision, but a pair of (say) Warby Parkers also make a particular statement about the personality of the person wearing them.
The chasm Glass has fallen into is that the fashion meaning of a particular thing is decided collectively by the culture, not by the people who created it. And the culture has collectively decided that the fashion statement Glass makes is "I am a turbo nerd."
I think some of the weirdness is the fashion aspect, but I think there is also more to it than that. Back in 2004 when I was interviewing for grad schools, I had an interview with Thad Starner [1], who wore a HUD eyepiece, and it was a distinctly weird experience. It wasn't weird because it made me think he was a nerd—that wouldn't make him stand out very much from the average CS student or professor who I talked to that weekend.
It felt more like this odd space where I wasn't sure what the socially appropriate behavior was. More than anything else it was like talking to someone with an obvious disability, where there are delicate social conventions around when to acknowledge or not acknowledge it. Sort of like a glass eye. Except that here it was deliberately installed, and not related to an injury or disability. It particularly disoriented me with regards to eye contact. I constantly felt like I was supposed to make eye contact with him rather than staring at his facial device, which took conscious effort to do. But at the same time, I found myself frequently trying to discern whether he was making eye contact with me or rather was looking at the display in the glasses. The normal eye-to-eye gaze part of conversation was completely disrupted for me. I find smartphones much less disorienting simply because it's much more obvious when someone is looking at the screen vs. at you, which simplifies the social conventions. So to me as the "other party" in a conversation, the HUD form-factor is a downgrade in functionality from a handheld screen.
I think the friction is because the statement is much worse than "I am a turbo nerd."
Glass (rightfully or not) has come to stand for both useless trinkets for the tech-wealthy and pervasive surveillance of the masses by a large corporation, so wearing it really comes off as saying "I have more money than you and I'm going to use it to let Google record videos of you too!"
A camera-less Google Glass at a lower pricepoint would simply say "I am a turbo nerd" and would probably be much more acceptable.
I tried taping over the camera in my Glass, because I don't use that feature at all, and I don't want anyone to think I'm using it. It turns out that there's also an ambient light sensor in there that adjusts the brightness, so you can't see anything if you do that.
So my Glass goes unused, because I don't feel comfortable wearing it anywhere.
Moot now if you're not using it, but you know, even if your tape was as big as a golf ball, as a passerby I'm not going to know or think that your camera is covered, because I avoid looking anywhere near the things. And for all I know it could be a hardware hacked version with the camera hole elsewhere. So your goal was not being achieved. And it still might be recording audio. If you're wearing it, I have to take your word for it. If you're not, I don't.
Unfortunately Google has already tainted the entire category of eye wearables. It will be very hard to establish acceptance because even if you use a device without a camera, people will think it does have a camera.
> By contrast, the incremental improvements that Glass makes over a smartphone aren't worth the social/physical costs of wearing something on your face.
Am I crazy for finding the smartphone form ideal? I want something I can fit in my pocket easily, take it out quickly and casually as many times as needed, but mostly it should be put away.
Are these $1500 glasses fragile? Can they be put in a pocket or will they break without a case? How big is the case? Likely much larger than a smartphone. I always have to be responsible for those glasses when I'm not wearing them one way or another.
I'm not interested in increasing the amount of time I spend online, just the convenience. Glasses won't solve that. I won't even be willing to use contacts when they're available in that form.
My experience is similar to yours; I got mine about a year ago and for the first 3-4 months I used them heavily, but I can't recall the last time I really used them. However, not being in SF, my experience with people's reactions has been very, very different. In CT and NYC, I had 100% positive responses; no exceptions. Everyone was interested and asked questions, and I'd often offer to let them try it out. In SF (and to an extent, Portland), I had many negative responses to it. Quite odd for being much more tech-centric places.
I disagree with the characterization of SF as forward-thinking. There are many people with big ideas and willing to undertake risky endeavors, but there are also many people who vehemently resent "techies." I think most SF citizens regard "techies" as mildly obnoxious. Overall, I find that SF is relatively tolerant of diversity, /except/ when it comes to people working in STEM disciplines, and so wearing Glass in SF is really asking for trouble.
I'm not surprised by that at all. I would theorize that there is a strong correlation between tech consciousness and privacy consciousness, and that where the presence of both is high, the privacy conscious aspect dominates.
I'm betting folks outside of SF wouldn't even know what it is.
I think they missed the market a bit - don't target the tech-fashion group with a device like that. Wait until you can get something actually slick. Something fashionable with some nice transition lenses for that market.
The spartan, minimalist headband-with-a-computer on it device? Market that thing at sporty types. Runners, hikers, cyclists. A lightweight hybrid of a GoPro and a smartwatch that's hands-free? People could look past battery, price, and fashion issues for that, and lots of extreme-sports-types already do wearable cameras.
People definitely know what Google Glass is, nationally. It was covered extensively by national news media, and featured (and mocked) on shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live.
Yes, but my point is that nobody has actually seen one IRL. If most folks saw one on the street today they'd have to rack their brains to try and recall some tech story from 2 years ago.
You don't really have to know much about what it is and is it Google Glass or Microsoft Eyepatch or Toyota Lens or whatever. If you are not just out of the forest you'll see that it's some very rare in your society tech-thing strapped to your face, that it's probably expensive and it's not what "normal guys" do, which already can make one hostile. It's pretty obvious and you don't need to study psychology to understand that.
But it's incorrect to assume that this thing being "weird" is the only reason to make people hostile. I myself would be hostile to someone wearing that stuff, not because I'm some swain who never saw a computer, but exactly because I know what it is, I know which company made it and what that company does, I know about their business model and remember all these stories about them grabbing WiFi traffic from years ago and all the other things that make them "evil" in some way. And I see you as this company's drone for filming and recording audio around you all over the world, and not some weirdo who spends $1.5K on useless things. The fact that it's you who pays $1500 to be the drone isn't the reason for someone like me to be hostile, it's just funny.
I saw one in my city in Scotland a while ago, having never seen one IRL. It looks extremely distinctive; it's not exactly sleek and hidden. It's the sort of thing that pattern-matches quite quickly.
(My immediate impression of the wearer, for the record, was that he was likely a director of an oil-related company looking to show off his wealth.)
> By contrast, the incremental improvements that Glass makes over a smartphone aren't worth the social/physical costs of wearing something on your face.
Yet... I personally think they launched without a killer app. Comparing against headphones, listening to music in a portable and private manner was novel and a "killer app." To your point, today's mobile devices cover off on a wide range of capabilities, and my sense is that Glass hasn't provided an app that was "killer" enough to overcome the stigma and eventually erode it.
Didn't help that a large % of the fashion-conscious out there felt it was ugly as sin. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes Apple to wearables sexy and acceptable. They are smart to start with a watch since the form factor is understood and not dramatically different.
> I personally think they launched without a killer app.
The killer app, the one that will override peoples fears (by praying on them) is 24/7 recording to the cloud. The first mugging/assault that is foiled (or perpetrators caught) cause their faces and actions were streamed realtime to not personal storage will get every paranoid parent and frightened wealthy person wanting one.
The next mugging where the perp's first move (way after donning a balaclava) is to disable the glasses with a baseball bat to the head, or by using a can of spray paint, leaving the victim sprawled on the ground with a gloss-painted face, will also make the news.
The whole point is that that would be ineffective with immediate cloud backup. Presumably you've already seen them by the time they destroy the glasses.
I had to google "balaclava", but I think even immediate cloud backup would be ineffective against masked person and/or surprise attack from behind.
It would be really good for dealing with police officers who go around destroying phones and other similar situations, so it wouldn't be completely useless either.
I have low vision. The Glass is a wonderful tool for me. The heads-up navigation that helps me walk around in areas I don't know well is great. I can't read the street signs very well and having the audio tell me and help me "see" them better is great.
I think this tool has a lot of potential to make people's lives better.
But instead, people crap all over it and stigmatize it. And that's why I can't really wear it much anymore. I find it useful, but people call me a "glasshole" - especially other developers.
Fact: If you look different, people will make fun of you. Apparently that isn't something you outgrow as an adult.
>Fact: If you look different, people will make fun of you. Apparently that isn't something you outgrow as an adult.
If Glass evolves to the point that it's mostly providing visual assistance for people with impairments, I don't think that people are going to make fun of it. But people make fun of tourists with their heads buried in maps, of people recording inane videos constantly, of people texting without paying attention to where they're walking, etc.
To rephrase that: people make fun of the behaviors that Glass seems designed to facilitate.
That was the real "killer app" for a device like this. Augmented reality is one thing, but even having a wearable reader that could both magnify and fix colour and contrast would be a huge help to an awful lot of people. Or one of the killer apps, at least; many's the time in my youth (as an avionics tech) when I would have killed for a HUD that "knew" what I was looking at when I had both hands busy while crammed feet-only-out into a dark space about the size of a small microwave oven deep in the guts of a military aircraft. I imagine that isn't the only kind of job where something like that would come in pretty handy. But that's not kewl or bleeding-edge, just practical and productive.
I'm pointing a camera at you when I read the messages on my phone too. After all, the camera on the back is facing you. Doesn't mean I'm using the camera.
The "camera in my face" is just an excuse. You're actually being recorded by other things. Anyone who takes the time to learn about Glass would know that the battery would last about 10 seconds if I had the damn camera on :)
People don't actually care about the camera thing. It is a stated reason to dislike Glass, but the average person gets recorded in all manner of forms while traveling in public that it is hard to believe that the camera aspect is really what matters to people, not to imply it is the same as a CC security camera or a smartphone.
It is a small computer that's strapped to your head with a titanium band. I've worn one for extended periods, and I want to make fun of people I see wearing one; it is jarring and looks absurd. It is also socially acceptable to make fun of it, and how often is that true for something that looks absurd?
The problem with Glass is first and foremost the price. All else would be forgiven if they priced it at $100. Think about this: the problem is that only a few people have it and they were "lucky" to pay $1,500 for it. Do you remember the kind of hate the original iPhone got when it cost $600 and up? Glass is almost 3x more expensive, pricing it right where most people cannot have it, yet don't like for others to have it either.
Now, I am not saying that this comes down to the sandbox "that's my toy" mentality. No, I am saying that the majority of people who are perpetuating the bad stigma associated with Glass have never used it themselves because it's simply inaccessible to them. Problems like "I can take a picture of you without knowing it" would be addressed much quicker if a larger slice of the population was using/misusing the device.
The secondary problem, the one that's much harder to fix, is that Glass provides no practical benefits. It's not giving you much extra information, it's not enhancing your life. If it showed me part numbers as I look under the hood of my car, or alerted me to lower prices at a different store as I look at a price tag, that'd be one thing. But its current tech is too limited. The "magic" is just not there. I don't care that I can capture an image of what I'm looking at currently, I can already do that. What I cannot do is quickly identify the type of timing belt in front of me, etc.
The worst part of the price is how incredibly unjustifiable it is relative to the hardware.
$100 is probably lower than they can go without using an Amazon Kindle style ad subsidy program but with relatively standard electronics margins they should be able to sell this for about $200.
Even with Appleesque margins they could sell it for less than $400. $1500 is just redonkulous.
A while back, I had the chance to work on a research project that used a prototype HUD much like Google Glass. The cost? $5000.
This is not mature, commoditized, mass-produced tech. If Google chooses to start mass producing these some day, that cost will come crashing down, but at the moment, I'd be a bit surprised if $1500 even covers their costs.
It occurs to me that if a company like Amazon could sell a competing device for like $300, they would. My guess is that nobody but Google currently sees a market for this type of product.
Google probably data mines all of the pictures and video from all users for commercially relevant information. Probably why they make users sign that horrible EULA -- to try to separate themselves from potential thorny legal challenges of users illegally gathering said commercial information (mostly unwittingly).
Funny, I told my friends who got into Glass early on that it will go way of the Segway, to be used for things like museum tours and not much else.
Always be weary of things that are hyped to be the next big thing. The real next big thing won't need any hype. I can't trust the judgement of someone who got into Glass early anymore.
I sometimes wonder if this is part of the overall strategy...
Over-design it to look too futuristic, and then start scaling back the design into a far more modern-day look and feel to create more adoption of the actual technology.
Maybe I'm giving Google too much credit, but maybe not
If that were the case, shouldn't there be a new version of Glass, or shouldn't Google keep it in people's minds? This is the first I've thought or heard about Glass in a very long time.
I think of the Android Wear watches as the new version of Glass. You get the phone notifications and status updates but in a more traditional form factor, just without the augmented reality potential.
I was really excited about Glass back when it came out. I bought one as a college student to develop on, and it helped me make connections that got me to where I am today, however I was a little disappointed with all the stigma that grew around it. It makes me feel like the true intentions of the Glass project was a social experiment by Google to introduce something quite controversial and see how it fared in the current social/technology climate in America. I could never bring myself to wear it in public due to the animosity and perpetuating "Glasshole" mentality. I recently sold it on eBay after living in its box for a few months.
> the true intentions of the Glass project was a social experiment by Google to introduce something quite controversial and see how it fared in the current social/technology climate in America.
Honestly I think the true intentions of Google Glass were exactly what they claimed to be. It's really a testament to the problems of letting engineers make decisions on consumer technology. The social problems of Glass were obvious as soon as they were exposed to real users, so the question is, how on earth did they manage to spend so much money and time developing the product without doing the slightest bit of user research beforehand? I mean really. I know Google has money to burn, but this is just ridiculous.
If the social problem of Glass were its only challenge, the product still could have launched properly. But that's only the beginning of the Glass troubles. I mean, they were demoing prototypes over two years ago and they still don't have a real product?
You know what's a great idea? A wearable bluetooth screen attached to glasses that lets you have always-visible time and GPS information and notifications fed from your phone.
You know what's a bad idea? Everything else they did with Glass.
Seriously, just kill the Glass project and hand the brand over to their wearables division to figure out how to get something actually to market.
I've always thought that glass didn't stand a chance in the consumer market; battery technology just isn't anywhere close to where it needs to be in order to make Glass a practical personal accessory. The last thing the consumer wants is another battery meter to manage, especially one that is inconvenient to charge because it's supposed to sit on your face all day.
I'm a little bit disappointed that it isn't going to make the enterprise. I work in a science lab, and it would be awesome to have it racked by the door so that I put it on as soon as I get in and I can verbally take notes, video, and photographs, seamlessly throughout the day, and then re-rack it at the end of the day.
Because it's all a matter of work, this also avoids most of the sticky issues of privacy, etc.
Hmm. Not really. But privacy still comes into data management and storage. Where you back up to and when and what protocal it uses, when you are recording/taking pictures of whose work in what room. I might be allowed to take all the pictures I like of my work, but I might not have permission to do the same of my co-workers. Or a picture of my coworker eating a sandwich in the wrong place in a lab, might open up a univeristy/lab to a lawsuit.
For example I think not everyone would like anyone in their lab (including vistors) being able to record their work without permission.
Not being able to adapt the code to ensure that these will be followed without people needing to think about it, is a weakness.
It's obviously not consumer ready but Google has been saying that all along, I don't know why everyone acts like it's already failed when they clearly state this isn't ready for primetime yet.
I don't understand those self-balance things like segway. what do you get from this design other than coolness? I don't want to pay too much for coolness.
this reminds me http://rynomotors.com/
it's expensive and slow, but super cool, which I won't buy.
An important thing to keep in mind when Larry Page is going on about "investing in the future".
Relevant Buffett quote:
Evaluating that company is within what I call 'my circle of competence.' I understand what they do, I understand the economics of it, I understand the competitive aspects of the business. There can be all kinds of companies that have wonderful futures but I don't know which ones they are. I've given talks in the past where I carry with me a 70-page tightly-printed list, and it shows 2000 auto companies. Now if at the start of the 20 th century you had seen what the auto was going to do to this country, the impact it would have on the lives of then your children and grandchildren and so on. It just, it transformed the American landscape. But of those 2000 companies, three basically survive. And they haven't done that well, many times.
Segways just don't make sense in most of, for example, London.
Where Segways do make sense is places that have good cycle paths. But then you may as well use a bike. And for campuses / aircraft carriers / bases / etc, well, we're tryig to get people to do more exercise, not less.
Glass or similar displays could be useful in many places but Glass is currently fantastically expensive. A Haynes[1] manual is a few quid and Glass doesn't currently have much benefit. But it could.
First, note my premise- "as part of an autonomous transportation system". This is imagining that a couple decades down the road, transportation in general has been transformed and doesn't work the same way it does now.
You don't necessarily ride in a car door to door, unless that makes sense. If it doesn't make sense (for example, new construction hasn't emphasized roads, but instead 'segway-ways'), then you travel hub to hub and then finish that last quarter mile or so on segway. See something like Masdar City ( http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2013/12/features/rea... ), but with a segway-like system instead of bulky personal cars.
Entirely possible to imagine car-less towns, connected by public transport to the rest of the world, and segway like transportation inside the town.
Is it that horrible to imagine a world where people use their own two legs to walk that last quarter mile? I don't see what makes the segway necessary.
The only way I imagine it to be Segway-like is so different that it's no longer a Segway. Consider these high preference features for most transportation users:
- Protection from inclement weather
- Climate control
- Seating
- Storage
- Capacity to bring friends or loved ones
If you consider these preferences you get something closer to a Smart Car than a Segway.
I don't know - the Segway has a place, it's just a niche product. People who professionally move around on their feet all the time, like security guards and mail carriers, could make excellent use of these as long as the terrain isn't rough. But for the most part they're pretty redundant... electric wheelchairs are better for disabled folks and electric bikes are better for short commuters and errands. The Segway just doesn't have a broadly applicable use case.
I don't think that "driverless" segways have much of a niche in most versions of a driverless future.
The potential for segways or at least segway-like-transportation-vehicles are, it seems to me, in a rail-dominated world. The fundamental problem with rail infrastructure is that rail only takes you to stations, and that stations are expensive (along several axes) but since you can't take your car on the train, you're limited to a very small radius around the station. Segways would extend that radius dramatically, making a functional rail infrastructure de facto cheaper.
Most versions of "driverless cars" futures destroy rail-based infrastructure. They take all the advantages of rail and give them to the (already more popular) cars. At that point, your car can drop you off right next to your destination (and then go park itself elsewhere if necessary), so why do you need a segway?
The versions of "driverless cars" that don't destroy rail-based infrastructure, I think, make "driverless segways" unlikely as well.
See my comment above, but the idea would be that you build your architecture, from the building to the town/city level, around the more efficient segway-sized form factor as opposed to the bulkier car-sized form factor that's better suited for distance travel.
Predictions based on, "First, we'll completely redo our architecture from the ground up" are likely false.
It seems like you have a (pleasant!) vision in mind, but not like you've taken a lot of time with the practicalities of it or how we get from here to there.
So, first: the size of cars isn't principally about distance travel. Cars are built for speed (as soon as you're doing about 20mph, wind in your face becomes annoying for most people most of the time, and noise becomes high, and safety becomes an issue), for protection from the weather, and for cargo storage. Driverless cars may well become a little smaller, but there are plenty of reasons they'll stay fundamentally cars, not segways.
Second: you can't build your architecture from the building to the city around segways. We already have cities. We can change them incrementally, but redoing them from scratch is just too expensive (again, on a number of axes) to contemplate. And incremental changes aren't going to go your way. People will get the driverless cars that work with how the cities work TODAY, and then those people will become a constituency for incremental changes to the city that will make the city MORE car-oriented, not less.
Seriously, the full-featured, relatively cheap driverless car future is one in which public transit declines drastically in importance. It is absolutely not one in which people restructure their cities around transit.
Speed, weather, and cargo storage are mostly about transportation over...distances. For most shorter hops you need none of those things. Hence my statement.
Of course existing cities wouldn't be rebuilt from scratch. But cities change all the time.
Driverless cars certainly are better suited for the way cities are today. But as it becomes obvious that there are alternatives that don't require as much wasted real estate as cars use, and that crucially don't give up the personal freedom that cars provide, cities can and will adapt to that.
The city of 2035 will likely be moving down that kind of path, whatever the exact details look like. New development will be designed for it from the ground up.
Speed (at the ranges that we are talking about) is important at the distances that we are talking about. Weather and cargo storage are totally distance-independent.
But let's take a step back. We're imagining the sort of default rosy driverless-vehicle future, right? Driverless cars can be made that are fully autonomous, at least as safe as human drivers in essentially all conditions, and not terrifyingly expensive.
We agree that in that case the driverless car is strictly more attractive to riders than the drivered-cars of today are, right? So if the value that a person today puts on having a car is A, and the value that future person puts on having a future car is B, then B > A? Indeed, B is much greater than A?
And we also agree that today, cities are pretty car-oriented? So A is large ENOUGH that cities pander to it to a large degree? And there's a positive feedback cycle here where when cities pander to cars, that makes cars actually more valuable compared to the competition.
Now what you're saying is that when we replace A with B, where B >>> A, cities will (eventually) pander to cars less. Why?
The thing that you suggest is that cars waste real estate. Which, certainly, they do. I do note in passing that driverless cars might waste less real estate (for example, they could be sent to more distant and more inconvenient parking structures, or the utilization of people / car could go up with a rides-for-hire model). But whatever, at the very least the real estate efficiency of driverless cars is no worse than the real estate efficiency of regular cars.
So meanwhile, today, the rail + maybe something like segway model has value X. We agree that X < A, right? That in America at least cars provide more value than transit, and so people get cars, and so cities pander to cars. Now you seem to be envisioning that in the driverless future, rail + segways have value Y, and Y is not only > X, it's also > A, and in fact > B. Why? What is it about driverless segways that is so great? Unlike driverless cars, they don't seem like they provide much value for their users (you aren't going to read a book while your driverless segway takes you to your destination, and though maybe they'd be a little better when drunk).
And, further, we're saying that driverless segways are that awesome even if they have to reverse some inertia of cities currently being designed kind of "against" them, and indeed, even if they have to reverse yet more inertia because the FIRST thing that happens in our driverless future is people buy driverless cars and become a constituency for even more city-pandering-to-cars.
I don't see it. Maybe if it takes a long time to get to driverless cars, because right now I think that the car domination of the world is getting a bit milder. Maybe if the current trend continues for a few decades, and then cities have become more hostile to cars, driverless or otherwise, the increased value of cars won't be enough that it will get over the inertia.
But if we get good driverless cars in the next decade or fifteen years? In-city rail is just going to die in almost all cities. And once it's dead, it will be dead for a long, long time.
You're kinda taking the "faster horses" side of things, if you know what I mean.
You're comparing the real estate efficiency of cars to driverless cars, which is not what I'm doing. I'm comparing the RE efficiency of cars to segways, and segways win that hands-down, no comparison.
The other benefit is psychological. You transform a development from being centered around cars to being centered around people. Even a person on a segway is a person. A person in a car is a car. This, I would maintain, is the larger benefit to average citizen. It's a more desirable experience.
Developers win with more usable real estate, citizens win with a much more pleasant scale and experience.
The segways would be for intra-area transportation, the driverless cars for inter-area.
The bigger assumption you're making is that people will "have" cars, and I'm not sure that will be the case. For me, that's the biggest unknown about transportation in the next couple of decades. Will people own cars, or will they merely use cars from a large pool of cars (either civic or corporately owned)?
Uber, for example, is starting to promote the idea of not owning a car at all to young people. They've been doing a good job of hyping the convenience of that lifestyle, and a limited set of people have bought into it already. I also recently noticed they're starting to play a prestige angle with black SUVs and so on. They're actively playing that up, which fills the other need personal cars currently serve.
Uber's endgame is very clearly a fleet of autonomous cars, and some cities are making very early sounds about building their own fleets.
I don't know how that's going to shake out. There are powerful forces pushing both ways.
But, if personal car ownership does become a thing of the past, a lot of the pressure you imagine for city development to have an even greater universal (as opposed to limited areas) accommodation for cars goes away.
The other major unknown is if cities simply become less desirable in 20-30 years. Given increasing automation, the nature of work may change to a degree that some of the economic incentives for city living decrease. That trend, if it even builds at all, will be slower to develop, but potentially even more powerful.
I'm saying, "real segways are more space efficient than real cars. Despite that, people prefer cars to segways (by a gigantic margin)." So from there, I get to, "future segways will be more space efficient than future cars, but I don't see that turning people towards future segways -- because we can already tell that people don't value space highly enough to make them want segways, and it's going to be pretty much the same comparison in the future."
Here's another bit of pseudo math: real cars >>> real segways. Driverless cars >>> real cars. Driverless segways ~= real segways. Thus driverless cars >>>>> driverless segways.
I'm not taking a stance on the ownership model of cars, either. I don't know if in a driverless car world people would own them or rent them for hours or days at a time or rent them for the duration of a single ride. I'm just saying that people will USE them a lot. And regardless of who owns the car, if everyone USES the driverless cars a lot, then cities will be built around cars.
And cities that are built around cars are hostile to segways, driverless or otherwise.
You say this intriguing thing: "The segways would be for intra-area transportation, the driverless cars for inter-area."
I think that my fundamental point is that that doesn't seem true. If driverless cars are highly available to people, I think they'll just use the driverless cars end-to-end. Your driverless car trip will put you at the doorstep of wherever you're going. At that point you don't need a segway.
Segways are for when your inter-area transportation CAN'T get you the last mile of where you're going -- that is, they're for rail. And rail, I think, is dead if we get driverless cars soon.
> You say this intriguing thing: "The segways would be for intra-area transportation, the driverless cars for inter-area."
Yeah, this is the root of our disagreement. As I see it, the reason this doesn't happen now is a matter of convenience. As things stand now, there's the friction of transitioning from car to segway. In a fully automated world, I see that friction largely disappearing. You get out of the car, it goes away. The segway is waiting for you. It delivers you and goes away itself. There's very little friction.
It's true this only makes sense in certain kinds of living situations. Suburbs seem unlikely to go this way (though there was a brief trend last decade to more pedestrian-y suburban town center development). But for urban areas, this kind of development increases what people like about urban living, and decreases what they don't like. I don't think people know they want it, but I also don't think it's something they've been given much to consider. When they have, like 3rd St. Promenade in Santa Monica, it's been hugely popular. Segways would allow you to scale that up considerably, and expand it beyond retail and entertainment, possibly to an entire city center.
We're in agreement about the future of passenger rail. It looks bleak decades down the line. Interestingly, Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles said much the same just a few months ago. He wondered in public if it made much sense to keep building massive rail projects given that automated cars were coming.
Maybe for legacy applications where driverless cars can't fit. They didn't tear down and architect most of Europe to make room for cars so why should driverless cars be any different? It would basically be the Vespa of the driverless age.
As someone in the AR space, even I wouldn't use glass, BUT it has been amazing for getting the word out about what AR is and that has been invaluable. Instead of having to explain to people what AR is, all I have to say is "You know google glass?" and they immediately get it.
I think there are a couple of big problems with glass:
1. It doesn't do AR substantively, which is the breakthrough feature, instead its basically just a semi-transparent floating screen
2. Its got a photo taking camera on it*
3. Interacting with it is cumbersome/clunky
To do 1 effectively, it needs to be full field of view or at least the bulk of the FOV, which is a major issue with lenses that close to the eye and why I think they acquired Magic Leap.
2 is a fairly simple fix but would need a whole new re-branding and google may have burned this bridge already.
3 is really a tough thing to figure out but I think could be done with CV gestures that aren't physical touch based, but rather view orientation based. So for example if you look down, you immediately get your apps displayed and you can use your hand to select/type in a similar form function as people do now with phones.
*I make the distinction about photo taking because if the camera was only used for CV/tracking on device and had no "photo taking" feature, people would be less worried about it. And yes I am aware that images are still taken, its the distinction in what is happening by default that the public in general cares about.
To me the fact that it doesn't really do AR is the major problem. It only does what my phone does, with a slightly more convenient interface. It really needed a whole new set of features and benefits, not just somewhat improved versions of the existing mobile ones.
I think hands-free access to your phone's screen could have been sold to athletes and people who work with their hands. But that didn't need a camera and certainly isn't worth $1500.
It's very much a prototype project. The primary benefit is not so much in the product itself but rather that it makes the new concept viable and ready to exploit.
It's not that different from the first iPhone, which was really just a touch screen media player with a phone antenna.
True enough. And I realize we're a ways off from full AR, just for hardware reasons. But some token gestures in that direction would have helped. Something to show the promise.
In terms of social acceptance, that was probably mistake # 1.
Most of the negative stories have been about the potential abuse of the camera. If glass had been launched primarily as an AR device, then, once normalized, the camera could have ben introduced as an upgrade.
This has always seemed a little strange to me. Why is having a camera bad? I walk around with a camera attached to my face all day, just like everyone else. I don't see how having an electric camera is that different. Sure, I guess I can show a picture rather than explain it, and offer proof instead of my word, but neither of these differences seem substantial enough to explain the animosity I've seen.
The issue is an always-on-esque digital camera permits you to make a permanent record with limitless distribution anything you saw with your eyes in a way that isn't potentially falliable like an anecdote is, and you can share it with everyone and anyone at any time.
Most people out in public do not want this to be the case at your personal discretion.
To me, yes, the storyline is dramatised, but the core concept is real. One of the key problems of technology like Glass is that it creates another barrier in direct human interactions. That is why, personally, I'd prefer for it to be limited in use rather than ubiquitous.
I have a pair, and while I haven't had much time to experiment with it yet, the little bit I have done, I think they got several things right.
1) The 'viewport' is out of sight if you're not looking up and to the right. This gives it the non-intrusive aspect that allows someone to wear it while engaging in everyday activities.
2) The 'pairing' with another Android device I think allows the developer to leave heavy computation / work off of the small Glass device to conserve battery.
3) The form-factor. I think it's very lightweight, and again non-intrusive aspect that doesn't make it a burden to those who don't already wear glasses.
I haven't dug in deeply recently, but originally I had the sense that there's not enough integration with popular 3rd party apps. Engagement from Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. would probably help with adoption, though the pricepoint is definitely something I see most people struggling with. Perhaps tight integration with things like Google Apps might make it appealing to small or larger but agile businesses.
I think this could be both a consumer and business play in terms of adoption, though I think the path to business adoption may be more straightforward in terms of the kinds of apps that would need to be developed.
I can imagine alot of really interesting things might start happening once Google has made Tango available for mass adoption.
https://www.google.com/atap/projecttango/#project
Let's hope they don't shut the door on this too quickly. The idea is so new and different that it could take some time before folks really sink their teeth into how it can be used where there's real value to the consumer / business who is going to make the investment.
They could have fixed the privacy issues by simply making a loud noise and flash if you took a picture. That would bring it in line with european/japanese/chinese laws against creepers. The fact they never fixed that, made it seem like a "creeper product". Who wants to be seen like that? Who would buy ? Very limited number.
I wonder if the camera is actually needed. They made it the key feature in the advertisements, but anecdotally it appears people are not using it. So why not remove it?
I'm a bit of a google fan boy and even I have no interest in buying one. I think glass is a bit ahead of its time and something (if not a new version of glass) will eventually take its place. The chances of people becoming less connected in the future than we are today are very low in my opinion.
Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. When I saw first glass I thought using a prostheses as a dream object was not such a good idea.
Glass jumped stations to reach the head, a point still in premature interaction with a long distance of motion travel of the hands to control it. The head is like in another planet to be reached compared to a watch even a cellphone.
Google went all-in directly to the head when the way to go was wrist, arm, shoulder, neck and then head. In any of the cases the glass experience provided Google with rich information about wearable and its adoption.
I am not sure if Brin will compromise his figure that much in the future with early developed technologies. Even should have been discouraging as leader, but was not his fault since he believed.
So Glass has been available to developers for close to two years, there's still no release date, and it's a surprise that no one wants to develop for it? At this rate, it's unlikely it will ever be released to consumers and even if it is, that's the assumption anyone investing time and money into developing apps for it should be thinking about. All other issues aside--and from the comments here there are quite a few--investing in Glass is essentially a horrific idea outside of possible niche commercial markets. By extension at this point, so would releasing Glass to consumers without software. Yet another bungled google product poised to join the deadpool before release.
For consumers the device is not ready but I would wager that a fair amount of value could be gained from using it in an enterprise context. All sorts of jobs get easier if you have access to data hands free - surgeons being the most obvious case.
I got Glass in April 2013. I realized that I used Google Glass to solve two problems:
1) Taking pictures and video of my day.
2) Telling the time.
The notifications features were not useful to me and being seen in public with the device on was embarrassing. I ended up deciding to make my own version of Glass (called Lambda Hat) that was more discrete and solved the first problem above and left the second to my cellphone.
I recently ran into Ivy Ross. I asked her why she was not wearing glass. She said that she's prepping for a shift. I don't know what exactly she was eluding to; but I feel optimistic abut the future of glass.
a lot of people get contact lenses and lasik to get rid of glasses.
the only really accepted form of glasses is sunglasses, because hiding your eyes is a nice feeling. people can't read you. our brain aims for the eyes to read emotion.
genius idea to pick that spot of the body to interfere with tech.
That's exactly why I really dislike sunglasses and am not usually impressed with people wearing them where none are needed (as in, when the sun is shining directly into your eyes). Sunglasses are creepy.
Google Glass is a lot like Apple Watch. The cost is too steep to risk becoming the next bluetooth earpiece d-bag. Plus, glass gets pretty boring after 20-30 minutes of use.
The fact is, users can engage in activity with Google spyglass which puts them at a legal liability. They can unwittingly engage in commerce, violating rules of commerce of parties they record. This makes spyglass userbase a ripe new target for lawsuits.
Record traffic in an out of a retail business? Congratulations, your analyzing commercial activity. Better watch what you do with that footage, there are rules for that.
Record something that ends up being controversial and potentially costs someone business? Congratulations, you can count on being taken to court over that.
Record something innocent and then accuse or hint that someone is doing something criminal and posted it online? Well if you didn't specifically hand over the footage of the deed in question to the authorities, then you could very likely be hit with a defamation suit.
You're just one big market for bored lawyers as a spyglass luser.
I KNOW! Federal criminal law basically applies commercial rules to an individual natural person's behavior. Google glass users are blissfully unaware of how many opportunities they have to unwittingly fall afoul of that and become another notch in a bored, shysty federal prosecutor's belt. Hell, look what happened to Swartz. Great example of how AUSAs go after low hanging fruit.
The plain fact is, you can get glasses with cameras built in as COTS hardware. They don't have the garish google spyglass design, they don't cost a fortune, and they don't compromise the USERS privacy.
The Magic Leap technology uses lightfields as the starting point to seamlessly blend virtual and augmented reality together. Those guys have a significantly larger scope of vision than the Google Glasses. Not surprised folks within Google are getting bored of it. The pivots from Glasses by third party developers are a red herring. Why keep developing Glasses when there is someone who is way further along?
When I got Glass in November 2013 (XE11), I could run an ssh client on it and use it with a Bluetooth keyboard, along with lots of other Android software. A month later (XE12), they somehow managed to break the dialog box API. And XE11 was configured with the most aggressive auto-updater you'll ever see, so you couldn't stay back. Four months after that, they released the brick-half-the-fleet update (XE16). (That happened because Glass was configured with no swap, all their users had 1GB memory devices, but all their internal testers had 2GB memory devices. The updater would run out of memory mid-update and die, leaving an unbootable system.) As a side effect, that update also flashes a hidden firmware so XE11 won't boot anymore. Also, it strips out everything related to bluetooth keyboard support. Also, it disables touchpad gestures for Android apps.
Also, the terms of service for the Glass SDK are incompatible with the GPL, ban charging for Glass sofware, and ban advertising in Glass software, so there's basically no third-party software and none coming.
Oh, and it sends all your photos to Google (can't disable auto-backup even by rooting and messing with internals). And if you pair it with a phone, it copies any text messages stored on that phone, and sends those to Google.
This is very sad, because the hardware itself is excellent, and it (almost) does something that I really really wanted. XE11 worked well enough that I invested considerable time and energy into it, and I ended up walking away feeling like Google was constantly sabotaging my efforts.
Meanwhile the pace of actually-useful updates is utterly glacial; there clearly aren't enough developers working on it to have any hope of fixing the outstanding issues. So yeah, I've given up hope on Glass. I'll revisit it if they open the source code or announce new management with someone who understands software at the helm.