The media had it all wrong
that's news!
Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt has complained that the end of the Google Glass Explorer program was misunderstood as being the end of the entire Glass concept, “which isn't true”. Following the announcement that Google had shelved the Glass Explorer on January 19th, the assumption was that the techno-specs have seen …
And the device sucks compared to HoloLens.
Yep, I'd agree with that. I gave a Glass a go (borrowed a pair) and couldn't see the point of it. Hololens looks like it might actually be able to do something useful. MS have maybe solved the motion sickness problem too; it is translucent so a wearer is less likely to get so disorientated.
Also it's not trying to be just a pair of spectacles, it is very obviously a Hololens, and you'd likely not be wearing it out and about; it's not going to raise the same social issues as Glass did.
I gave a Glass a go
Have you also given HoloLens a go? No? Could that be because all we've had a chance to find out about HoloLens are hardware mock-ups (they wouldn't let anyone show the *actual* hardware used) and the gushing of carefully selected tech media types (well known for their ethics and objectivity)?
it is very obviously a Hololens, and you'd likely not be wearing it out and about;
So then you admit that the two are completely different products, with completely different uses? In spite of them both being "things you wear on your face"?
Bicycles suck compared to M1A2 Abrams tanks. I tried a bicycle once, and couldn't see the point. At least with an M1A2 it's very obviously a vehicle, and you'd likely not be driving it to the shops.
> Have you also given HoloLens a go? No? Could that be because all we've had a chance to find out about HoloLens are hardware mock-ups (they wouldn't let anyone show the *actual* hardware used) and the gushing of carefully selected tech media types (well known for their ethics and objectivity)?
except that those journalists actually tried it. Even the Verge tried it and they're basically a marketing wing of Apple. Even the Register tried it and the Reg is where you come for your daily hate-chant, right?
Piss off back to Slashdot, you troll.
It's not dead until they have some other means of sucking up all information from billions of people all the time including where they go, what they see, what interests them about what they see, who they meet, what they say, what they don't know and what they buy when they're not even using the interwebs.
They were never Glassholes. They were tiny eyes of Sauron.
It was a vaguely interesting idea but, at this point, with Microsoft's announcement of Hololens and Google's own significant investment in Magic Leap, it's very unlikely that Glass will ever see light again, even if it's in Schimdt's present gameplan. That's especially true if the price point remains anywhere near the $1500 they wanted for the explorer program.
It was a vaguely interesting idea but, at this point, with Microsoft's announcement of Hololens and Google's own significant investment in Magic Leap, it's very unlikely that Glass will ever see light again
Why do people insist on comparing Glass to VR and AR headsets? Can people really not see any further than "it sits on your face therefore must be the same"?
Glass' closest equivalents - in terms of actual functionality for the general consumer - are actually smart watches.
For Industrial and medical uses (eg. use during surgery), however, Glass has no equivalent AFAIK.
"Why do people insist on comparing Glass to VR and AR headsets?"
I, myself, have been quite adamant that Glass is not AR every time I've seen it reported as such here on the Reg. That is part of the point. It may not be the same but the functionality it tries to provide can be better achieved with a true AR system and those systems appear to be coming down to the consumer level. At that point, Glass becomes less (probably fatally less) relevant in the same way that teletype machines quickly headed down the road to obsolescence when the terminal became commercially viable.
First time I did see glass on a head was last Oct 2014 and to be honest I was less worried then I initially imagined I would have been.
I must admit, the guy I was talking to was sorta familiar in my interest area so I guess I was ok with it.
I do believe this has huge potential for work related items, even driving a car or whatever. Not just to put on your head and do gardening..
The notion of some sort of HUD or Enhanced Reality as we go about life has been around for a long time in movies, many saw it as cool and some thought it would be useful, so well done to Google having a crack at it in reality. You really don't know what works and what doesn't until you give it a trial.
The first attempts will never be perfect; you learn your lessons, move on, improve what works, rework or drop what doesn't. The assertions that Google had simply canned the project seemed unlikely to me, and they certainly never said that in their earlier announcements. User trial done, experiences logged, on to Phase II, is how I read it.
I imagine the 'Glasshole hate' came as a bit of a surprise for those who did not see that coming but that wasn't really surprising when people get beaten up for their skin colour, race, clothing and other lifestyle choices. I don't know how, or even if, Google can address that hate of Glassholes, or to what extent it is their responsibility to have to. Perhaps they should just print "Je Suis Charlie" across the head band?
Movies portraying VR/AR in science fiction rarely, if ever, touched on the invasive corporate monitoring aspects of it, or if they did, they did so only the the most abstract sense. This is why the applications of face-recognition and metadata correlation seem to have taken everyone by surprise. It is this aspect, this misuse of the technology and not the technology itself, that brought about the global hostility to Glass.
It's not just that Glass was a wearable semi-hidden camera; it was the face-recognition software behind the camera and the fact of Google tracking everyone though it that was the main driver of opposition against it. Had corporations like Google NOT pursued this "we want to spy on everything you do so we can discover all your psychological weaknesses and exploit them for profit" mentality, had the Glass device used only local storage and allowed the user to control what data went where, I believe there would not have been such a hostile reaction.
Nobody likes to be spied on, no matter how noble the intentions of those doing the spying might be. Nobody likes to have their weaknesses probed so they can be more easily manipulated, especially when those doing the manipulating are solely interested in milking you for as much money as they can squeeze out of you. That's exactly what the marketing industry is all about - finding ways to bypass conscious decision-making processes in order to make people want to buy something.
And then there's the intelligence and police agencies, all scrambling for the delicious absolute surveillance and control this technology imposes, who are ostensibly there to protect us, but from what? They are there to enforce the laws, and that is all, and with the laws being less and less about mandating civilised behaviour and more and more about protecting the rich and increasing corporate profits at the expense of every other liberty we hold dear, who are those agencies really fighting for? Not our freedom, that's for sure. Not for a long time.
Everyone knows this, subconsciously if not consciously, and that is why any such technology will now be vigorously opposed no matter what form it takes. The technological utopias imagined by sci-fi authors aren't going to happen, not now, not ever. Corporate greed and intelligence-agency megalomania have seen to that.