"Reportedly the new version of Google Glass also sports improved battery life, partly because of the Intel Atom CPU. The specific clock speed is unknown, but this tiny SoC has proven itself by powering most Android Wear devices."
...
NONE of the current Wear devices run Atom chips. They all run ARM Cortex-A7 chips, except Moto360, which runs a Cortex-A8 !
> So the "writer" is performing worst then a summary bot.
That's a pretty good business opportunity for TC then. Fire the "writers", replace by bots, nobody notices any difference (or actually an IMPROVEMENT!).
At least this time it has a clearer target, the enterprise market. Nice try.
I think last time Google Glass failed because Google didn't demonstrate any practical scenario using this product. It's like, Google was telling us, "this is a cool product but nobody knows the application of it, so, use your imagination!" Users get lost when you define such a big scope.
This time Google should definitely learn from Hololens. Show some killer apps on Google Glass and let users feel excited about it, not only because it is cool, but also useful.
I think it failed last time because they tried to make it an exclusive club [0], resentment for a product builds the moment you tell some groups of people that their money isn't good enough.
I was intrigued in the beginning, and I lost all interest when I saw Marc Andreessen wearing a pair. [1]
It failed because it was designed backwards by starting with the most impressive screen/camera/chipset possible and then unsurprisingly ended up with shit battery life. That is a deal breaker on a wearable who's killer apps are things like lifecasting and personal security.
The correct way to design a device like this is to start with battery life required and work forward with that as your primary constraint. If what you end up with isn't good enough you don't release the product and wait until more power efficient chips or better battery tech comes out.
I would have loved to try it, but I'm far sighted and anything closer than 2' from my face is blurry, I don't wear corrective lenses most of the time, and even if I did, google didn't have a solution for this.
I can think of a lot of scenarios where glass would have been a fit (if they got the cost down to even $500/pair)... the ability to have a context aware helper screen would work in a lot of scenarios... from parts pickers, to manufacturing, to presentations. Most of the ideas I have around google glass are pretty boring, but could really boost productivity in a lot of areas commercially, and this is probably where they should have started.
If you are paying someone $35k/year to do a job, and they could be 5-10% more effective with a given tool, that tool would be well worth $1000-1500. And I can think of a lot of jobs that pay over $12-15/hr that could be assisted/improved with this.
I was touring some places in UK. Some of them incredible beautiful. I wished i had a google glass to record those moments and show then to my folks back home.
Microsoft is doing a great PR campaign around Hololens but it makes me uneasy that what they show is basically an AfterEffects video and not what using Hololens will feel like. The FOV is very limited with Hololens, contrary to what all the promo video show.
I think that the Wii should be the platform Google & co get inspired from. Nintendo did an awesome job with it. Not only did they invent a new input device, but they also showed how to use it in their first party titles. Shipping the console with Wii Sports was also a great idea.
A relative who is in a professional field (not in tech) uses Google Glass to record YouTube videos live on the job. He has probably 300 hours worth of videos published and is now at the point where anything he publishes gets 5k+ views on YouTube.
Just saying this because I see applications like this really taking off. Perhaps security guards could use these on the job or even cops (eventually) for their own safety.
I've been saying that for a while. I bet Google could dominate the enterprise market with HUD data while everyone else is playing around with Unity3D gaming apps. Of course AR gaming will be huge but data doesn't need to be 3D to be useful, or we would already have 3D displays. 2d info is more useful than 3D info, focus on that. We all watched Johnny Mnemonic browse file systems in 3D (long time ago) and that never came to pass, because it's pretty much useless to see a file system in 3D.
The value for enterprise will be when technology be able to extract insights on the fly from it's client database.
Think of it like Siri + CRM + HUD = on demand insights about customer needs, immediate details when a particular problem can be fixed given stock in warehouse. Also this will incredibly strain the user as simply he will have less time to pause between client interactions.
Give it another decade and computer vision will be able to advise technicians that they are about to touch live wire, etc.
I somewhat agree with you, but I think 3d vs 2d for information usefulness has not been decided yet. You say if 3d was more useful, we'd have it by now. But we've never had the technology to make true 3d possible until now. It was tried in the 90s, but the tech wasn't ready.
Glass seems like it's far away from becoming a HUD. From my understanding, it's essentially just a mini-screen in your peripheral vision.
(This is also a big complaint I have of Google Glass. I don't think I've ever actually seen a single image from Google talking about how it looks from a wearer's point of view.)
Is the type of pictures I typically see. This is portion of your vision blocked by a semi-transparent area so it can reflect the very small and basic text projection.
When I think of HUD, I think of something that is able to overlay my vision like so:
Since neural manipulation or a screen being able to be on a contact lens are probably far away technology wise, that essentially leaves us with having to create something that can either draw or project a screen on a normal pair of glasses.
Once you can wear a prescription or prescription-less pair of fairly normal looking glasses that can draw/display image/shapes/text/color anywhere on the lens, then I think the actual "revolution" will take place and everyone will quickly buy and use them constantly.
Or just stick a GoPro on your head, or any number of other solutions. If you just want a wearable camera, there are tons of ways to do it. What does Glass add?
Doesn't glass automatically buffer the last X seconds allowing you to easily spool off videos of stuff that happened just prior to when you wanted to record?
Being in the enterprise market requires that you actually know how to sell into an enterprise. What has Google done where they have been successful at that?
This feels like Google scrambling to catch up to the Hololens and sort of making it up as they go along. Nothing to see here.
Google Glass never died. I don't understand how people come to this conclusion when they're also aware that it was handed off to Tony Fadell of the Nest division to manage.
Going on a tangent, to this day I fail to understand why Apple didn't even make a bid on Nest. At the very least it would keep someone with both good taste and a strong enough force of personality to make it happen, away from Google's hands. Instead Apple spends over twice as much on Beats... Did Fadell hate his tenure at Apple so much that he wouldn't even consider a bid from them or vice versa?
Apple doesn't bother with experiences unless they are a big part of most peoples' days. Fiddling with your thermostat is not a huge part of most peoples' days. Nest has yet to prove that they can make a product that plays a significant role in our lives. Beats has. People wear Beats all day.
If that's the case, then why is Apple bothering with Homekit? Nest isn't just about thermostats and fire alarms. Nest is going to encompass your whole house which is the same thing that Homekit aspires to do. I still feel that Apple made a huge mistake by letting Nest go to Google. The main difference between Homekit and Nest is that Nest's products and platform has already been battle tested.
Not to denigrate Nest but I don't think not having them is going to make Apple any less formidable in the home.
Nest's competence is design sense/simple ux which Apple already has plenty of but Google doesn't. That makes them far more valuable to Google.
Like just imagine a Nest-less world where Google and Apple both release smart thermostats in 2010. The Apple product might look like Nest and the Google one would prolly look like whatever Honeywell was selling at the time.
> Nest's competence is design sense/simple ux which Apple already has plenty of but Google doesn't.
I think this trope is rather out of date. If you look at Inbox, Google Play Music, Keep and a few other Google properties, it's not implausible to argue they are ahead of many Apple products.
Strange that you go right to Inbox as an example because, like Nest, it was the result of an expensive acquisition of a noted design team. Which just supports my point, that design isn't a core competence at Google. Are they improving? Sure. But, back to devices and Glass itself, Glass sticking out like a sore thumb, users being branded assholes and banned from use all over is an obvious example of just flat out design incompetence.
Isn't there a slight fallacy at the heart of your stance? You seem to be positing an innate, unchangeable taint that can never be eradicated by change - no matter how pervasive that shift becomes.
No I'm positing that this one particular characteristic not only hasn't been completely eradicated yet, but I don't think they're even trying to eradicate it (although they are trying to mitigate it).
Fundamentally Apple is still a company run by designers and Google is still a company run by engineering and yes companies can change what they are fundamentally about but no I don't see either of these two have done this. If anything, I see it being reinforced, with this being personified with moves like Jony Ive taking over Forstall's duties and Melissa Mayer needing to leave Google.
I don't like the term you've chosen here, "taint" because Google's culture and hiring preferences have certainly paid off for them in other ways.
> Nest's competence is design sense/simple ux which Apple already has plenty of but Google doesn't. That makes them far more valuable to Google.
Yes, that's my point. Apple buying Nest would keep Google from having better sense about simplicity when it comes to UX particularly when it comes to hardware.
I don't think "buy everyone who's good at X to keep the competition from being able to do X" is a realistic strategy generally.
For Apple buying Nest you also have to consider how does Tony Fadell, who has a Jobs type role at Nest, fit into Apple especially given that there are reports that he used to feud with Ive and that may have partly led to his departure.
Not to mention that it enabled them to quickly put together a good streaming service which has been highly praised so far (complaints all seem to centre on UI complexity, not the service itself). And if that didn't work out at least Beats makes enough revenue to earn back it's acquisition cost in a few years - Nest would've been a much bigger gamble.
I don't feel Nest would be a gamble since Apple is also aiming to automate homes. At the very least, they keep good talent away from Google and have a mature platform to build on like what happened with NeXT and OSX.
It's dead as a door nail to any owner who wants an update after paying $1500. It's dead for any developer who wants to write a consumer app since consumers can't buy them. It's dead for any startup that wants investment to write something consumer facing.
B2B, well, there already are HMDs for B2B, so Google isn't really bringing anything innovative there. Hell, there are already HMDs made for specific uses like firemen and policemen vs. HMDs made for other things, so Google can't even beat all of them with one product.
After the poor support the original received, I can't really in good conscience even recommend a company go with Google, although I admit TI end of life-ing the OMAP and firing everyone didn't leave them much choice. I've worked on OMAP solutions after that and it is a nightmare, the only solution often being hiring an expensive consultancy that has some of the original employees who know things the manuals are light on.
This is not really a fair characterization. Glass was "dead" as a consumer product even before it was released. I'm old enough to remember the blowback that the first generation of cellphone users got ("coke-snorting 80s douchebags"). I remember people explaining how they didn't want to be reachable. It took a while for cellphones to seep into our collective consciousness, and glass will be the same.
After glass gains acceptance as a work tool, it will creep back into the consumer space. And people that threw around the term "glassholes" are going to look shortsighted and pathetic in retrospect.
I'm in my late thirties and was among the first generation of daily cell phone owners once the bulky bricks were replaced by flip phones. I don't recall the same reactions that you do.
There are still a lot of people who don't own or regularly use a cell phone and others who prefer not to be reachable all the time, that hasn't really changed.
Glass's popularity in the consumer market at some point in the possible future will hinge on whatever conversation a future generation has about the expectations of privacy in public spaces. Until that conversation happens, Glass isn't really viable as a consumer product.
That's because your cell phone at the time didn't come with a camera that faced the people you were talking to in real life (rather than on the other end of the phone or just facing your way).
I do remember being weirded out the first time someone walking parallel to me was talking to an ear-piece (out of sight) and I thought he was addressing me, hilarity ensued and he showed me his cell phone which I thought was absolutely wonderful (Motorola flip phone).
Re: "There are still a lot of people who don't own or regularly use a cell phone and others who prefer not to be reachable all the time"
Well, I'll grant you that there are still some people - but I think it's a stretch to say, a lot of people.
For example, in Singapore, it's inconceivable to not have a cell phone. Indeed, a ton of the businesses, banking, etc.. presume you have a cell phone for their two-factor authentication.
That Pew page states that 10% of American adults still don't own a cell phone, but of those who do, I would expect there's a healthy percentage for whom the cell phone is infrequently used as an emergency contact system, or just-in-case for road trips, or for the occasional phone call. (They don't have numbers on usage patterns though.)
I couldn't hazard a guess at what worldwide usage looks like. I'm surprised every time I hear about the creative ways that countries I would least expect to be heavy cell phone users are using cheap cells for things like currency exchange (http://www.cnbc.com/2013/11/11/cashless-africa-kenyas-smash-...).
I guarantee you that for at least the next 10, possibly 20 years, there will not be a consumer product that involves sticking a camera/tiny monitor on your face.
Google killed that product space completely with their initial incredibly flawed roll out. The number of news reports of people being beaten down in bars for being glassholes, and the picture of scoble in a shower wearing his google-glass burned into all nerds brains has scorched that product space for the forseeable future.
Which is unfortunate, because the concept of a HUD always available, and always recording, I think would be a really excellent technological innovation that I would totally take advantage of - if only I could avoid the extreme social outcast component.
I was talking about Google Glass as a platform and product line and not the very first model.
Correct me if my memory is wrong (it's been wrong before recently), but I remember Google explicitly mentioning that this is a beta product; kind of like the current Oculus Rift releases so I'm not really too surprised at the current situation.
It's hardly a scoop that Glass is alive - I've been seeing recruiting adds for "Software Engineer, Google (Glass)" on LinkedIn for a while. They're not exactly making a secret of it.
Enterprise market is where this needs to grow first. Not the consumer. There are great use cases in various professions, from law enforcement to medicine. Imagine a surgeon that can get a HUD with patient vitals and/or send a live feed to a remote surgeon for feedback during the procedure. I don't think consumers are ready, but there are so many industries that would readily shell out $1500 a piece for these.
Not just enterprise, but mechanical assembly, live training/retraining... deliver services (a step above typical gps), hell, making sure your order is correct.
For that matter it would make a great sales tool... you can check inventory while interacting with a customer, not having to look away or turn your back. Presenters being able to have notes on screen while talking...
There are definitely commercial applications.. but not for a product you can't actually buy.
What happens inside google does not matter, what happens is when they release it next time and if they do as bad a job at this as they did with the previous roll-out then it might as well be dead. I'm curious how big a percentage of those who bought 'glass' the first time around are going to spend their money on the next round given what they know today.
55 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 89.7 ms ] thread...
"Reportedly the new version of Google Glass also sports improved battery life, partly because of the Intel Atom CPU. The specific clock speed is unknown, but this tiny SoC has proven itself by powering most Android Wear devices."
...
NONE of the current Wear devices run Atom chips. They all run ARM Cortex-A7 chips, except Moto360, which runs a Cortex-A8 !
"The chip is reportedly clocked somewhere moderately faster than current top-of-the-line Android Wear smartwatches."
So the "writer" is performing worst then a summary bot.
That's a pretty good business opportunity for TC then. Fire the "writers", replace by bots, nobody notices any difference (or actually an IMPROVEMENT!).
I think last time Google Glass failed because Google didn't demonstrate any practical scenario using this product. It's like, Google was telling us, "this is a cool product but nobody knows the application of it, so, use your imagination!" Users get lost when you define such a big scope.
This time Google should definitely learn from Hololens. Show some killer apps on Google Glass and let users feel excited about it, not only because it is cool, but also useful.
I was intrigued in the beginning, and I lost all interest when I saw Marc Andreessen wearing a pair. [1]
[0] http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com
[1] http://bgr.com/2013/04/26/marc-andreessen-google-glass-inter...
The correct way to design a device like this is to start with battery life required and work forward with that as your primary constraint. If what you end up with isn't good enough you don't release the product and wait until more power efficient chips or better battery tech comes out.
I can think of a lot of scenarios where glass would have been a fit (if they got the cost down to even $500/pair)... the ability to have a context aware helper screen would work in a lot of scenarios... from parts pickers, to manufacturing, to presentations. Most of the ideas I have around google glass are pretty boring, but could really boost productivity in a lot of areas commercially, and this is probably where they should have started.
If you are paying someone $35k/year to do a job, and they could be 5-10% more effective with a given tool, that tool would be well worth $1000-1500. And I can think of a lot of jobs that pay over $12-15/hr that could be assisted/improved with this.
I think that the Wii should be the platform Google & co get inspired from. Nintendo did an awesome job with it. Not only did they invent a new input device, but they also showed how to use it in their first party titles. Shipping the console with Wii Sports was also a great idea.
A relative who is in a professional field (not in tech) uses Google Glass to record YouTube videos live on the job. He has probably 300 hours worth of videos published and is now at the point where anything he publishes gets 5k+ views on YouTube.
Just saying this because I see applications like this really taking off. Perhaps security guards could use these on the job or even cops (eventually) for their own safety.
Trying to stay positive about this.
Think of it like Siri + CRM + HUD = on demand insights about customer needs, immediate details when a particular problem can be fixed given stock in warehouse. Also this will incredibly strain the user as simply he will have less time to pause between client interactions.
Give it another decade and computer vision will be able to advise technicians that they are about to touch live wire, etc.
(This is also a big complaint I have of Google Glass. I don't think I've ever actually seen a single image from Google talking about how it looks from a wearer's point of view.)
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/d-y3bEjEVV8/maxresdefault.jpg
Is the type of pictures I typically see. This is portion of your vision blocked by a semi-transparent area so it can reflect the very small and basic text projection.
When I think of HUD, I think of something that is able to overlay my vision like so:
http://www.niemanlab.org/images/behavio_hud.png (Just first image in google search)
Since neural manipulation or a screen being able to be on a contact lens are probably far away technology wise, that essentially leaves us with having to create something that can either draw or project a screen on a normal pair of glasses.
Once you can wear a prescription or prescription-less pair of fairly normal looking glasses that can draw/display image/shapes/text/color anywhere on the lens, then I think the actual "revolution" will take place and everyone will quickly buy and use them constantly.
You mean as a body camera?
http://www.amazon.com/Forestfish-Pixels-Recorder-Polarized-S...
Or just stick a GoPro on your head, or any number of other solutions. If you just want a wearable camera, there are tons of ways to do it. What does Glass add?
This feels like Google scrambling to catch up to the Hololens and sort of making it up as they go along. Nothing to see here.
Google apps.
Going on a tangent, to this day I fail to understand why Apple didn't even make a bid on Nest. At the very least it would keep someone with both good taste and a strong enough force of personality to make it happen, away from Google's hands. Instead Apple spends over twice as much on Beats... Did Fadell hate his tenure at Apple so much that he wouldn't even consider a bid from them or vice versa?
Nest's competence is design sense/simple ux which Apple already has plenty of but Google doesn't. That makes them far more valuable to Google.
Like just imagine a Nest-less world where Google and Apple both release smart thermostats in 2010. The Apple product might look like Nest and the Google one would prolly look like whatever Honeywell was selling at the time.
I think this trope is rather out of date. If you look at Inbox, Google Play Music, Keep and a few other Google properties, it's not implausible to argue they are ahead of many Apple products.
https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/524968589489479680
Fundamentally Apple is still a company run by designers and Google is still a company run by engineering and yes companies can change what they are fundamentally about but no I don't see either of these two have done this. If anything, I see it being reinforced, with this being personified with moves like Jony Ive taking over Forstall's duties and Melissa Mayer needing to leave Google.
I don't like the term you've chosen here, "taint" because Google's culture and hiring preferences have certainly paid off for them in other ways.
Yes, that's my point. Apple buying Nest would keep Google from having better sense about simplicity when it comes to UX particularly when it comes to hardware.
For Apple buying Nest you also have to consider how does Tony Fadell, who has a Jobs type role at Nest, fit into Apple especially given that there are reports that he used to feud with Ive and that may have partly led to his departure.
http://www.cultofmac.com/262334/feud-jony-ive-keep-tony-fade...
According to wikipedia both acquisitions were $3.2 billion. Beats revenue was 5 times Nest's though.
B2B, well, there already are HMDs for B2B, so Google isn't really bringing anything innovative there. Hell, there are already HMDs made for specific uses like firemen and policemen vs. HMDs made for other things, so Google can't even beat all of them with one product.
After the poor support the original received, I can't really in good conscience even recommend a company go with Google, although I admit TI end of life-ing the OMAP and firing everyone didn't leave them much choice. I've worked on OMAP solutions after that and it is a nightmare, the only solution often being hiring an expensive consultancy that has some of the original employees who know things the manuals are light on.
After glass gains acceptance as a work tool, it will creep back into the consumer space. And people that threw around the term "glassholes" are going to look shortsighted and pathetic in retrospect.
There are still a lot of people who don't own or regularly use a cell phone and others who prefer not to be reachable all the time, that hasn't really changed.
Glass's popularity in the consumer market at some point in the possible future will hinge on whatever conversation a future generation has about the expectations of privacy in public spaces. Until that conversation happens, Glass isn't really viable as a consumer product.
I do remember being weirded out the first time someone walking parallel to me was talking to an ear-piece (out of sight) and I thought he was addressing me, hilarity ensued and he showed me his cell phone which I thought was absolutely wonderful (Motorola flip phone).
Well, I'll grant you that there are still some people - but I think it's a stretch to say, a lot of people.
For example, in Singapore, it's inconceivable to not have a cell phone. Indeed, a ton of the businesses, banking, etc.. presume you have a cell phone for their two-factor authentication.
That Pew page states that 10% of American adults still don't own a cell phone, but of those who do, I would expect there's a healthy percentage for whom the cell phone is infrequently used as an emergency contact system, or just-in-case for road trips, or for the occasional phone call. (They don't have numbers on usage patterns though.)
I couldn't hazard a guess at what worldwide usage looks like. I'm surprised every time I hear about the creative ways that countries I would least expect to be heavy cell phone users are using cheap cells for things like currency exchange (http://www.cnbc.com/2013/11/11/cashless-africa-kenyas-smash-...).
Google killed that product space completely with their initial incredibly flawed roll out. The number of news reports of people being beaten down in bars for being glassholes, and the picture of scoble in a shower wearing his google-glass burned into all nerds brains has scorched that product space for the forseeable future.
Which is unfortunate, because the concept of a HUD always available, and always recording, I think would be a really excellent technological innovation that I would totally take advantage of - if only I could avoid the extreme social outcast component.
Correct me if my memory is wrong (it's been wrong before recently), but I remember Google explicitly mentioning that this is a beta product; kind of like the current Oculus Rift releases so I'm not really too surprised at the current situation.
For that matter it would make a great sales tool... you can check inventory while interacting with a customer, not having to look away or turn your back. Presenters being able to have notes on screen while talking...
There are definitely commercial applications.. but not for a product you can't actually buy.