Google Glass

[Darkflame]

Well, there is some importance. If someone is suing over something they don't have the rights too anymore, I think the case has to be dismissed. The rights might exist out there still, but I think the real owners have to show they care about it still.
Generally speaking I don't think you can sue on someone else's behalf.

It could just be a counter-suit. This happens a heck of a lot in the US, I'm not sure why. Perhaps to drive up costs and tie everyone up in depositions so they'll be more likely to abandon or settle. Perhaps so you can use those depositions to go on a fishing expedition and find some evidence of wrongdoing or untrustworthiness. Perhaps so when it goes to court it can be presented as "us vs. them" and come down to who seems most convincing, rather than legal facts

I think its mostly that if you can show the other side has done something wrong, it gives you much more leverage to negotiate out of court with them.

[pogo]

Yes, sounds most plausible. In criminal cases it's guilty or innocent, beyond a reasonable doubt etc.. But in civil cases it's balance of probabilities, then the award (i.e. how much you pay, the most common outcome) is decided by weighing up the costs, liabilities etc. of both sides, then adding some for good or bad behaviour (triple damages for wilful wrongdoing, lawyers fees awarded for vexatiously bringing a case etc.).

So anything you can find and prove that the other side's done wrong can only help your case, maybe reducing the award, maybe reducing the chance of triple damages or fees awarded against you. You're paying those lawyers anyway, may as well get them proactively working for you, not just defensively.

[pogo]

Anything else, apart from the creep factor, cost and impracticality that counts against them?

I Was Assaulted For Wearing Google Glass In The Wrong Part Of San Francisco

In retrospect what he did was pretty stupid. He's a reporter and was covering an anti-Google protest. Not just any protest but one of those class-based ones against a Google millionaire buying a property then evicting the tenants.

So SF is added to the list of places you can't wear them. In fact anywhere there are drunk people, angry people, desperate people. Probably a bad idea for a journalist altogether, unless you want to draw attention to yourself. While they cost $1500 and are rare as hens teeth things like this will happen, maybe not all muggings but incidents where you wish you'd left them at home that day.

[merman]

On sale tomorrow in the USA - for just one day. BBC reports UK developers will be getting access in May.

[pogo]

Report: Google Glass parts make up 5.3%—roughly $100—of $1,500 price tag

$79.78 more exactly, which makes sense. It's like a phone but without the expensive bits (large, retina screen, high mega-pixel camera) or an expensive Jonny Ive authored design.

So why charge $1500? Because they only made a few of them and wanted to keep them fairly exclusive. A high price would mean more developers would get them, as only they would be able to justify forking out so much. Some must have been bought by people with more money than [fashion] sense but they're hardly fashion icons.

Does that mean it will cost $100 at retail? I don't think so; I think they'll still keep a fairly high price, a few hundred dollars maybe. They can improve the design to justify it; make it look more stylish and integrated, less like a science experiment. Improve the camera specs, the storage, the battery life. Add Wifi. There could be quite a wide range of prices, from the very cheap to close to the current price or even more. Think not so much phones but watches and glasses. People pay from a few $ to many thousands for such a personal fashion item.

[Darkflame]

You really shouldn't underestimate the difficulty in putting things together though, that can add a lot to the final cost.
Particularly if any sort of precision is needed in the position of parts which might be the case with optics near the eye.

The $1000+ might be an inflated price, but if you look at the (now many) groups doing similar things, there all over $500. I am not sure you can get much cheaper until they are mass market enough for significant production line optimizations.
--
As for the design; I am honestly not sure anything you add would make it look better - I think the problem some people have its more its very nature. That is, its over just one eye in a odd place. I think if your trying to appeal to existing design aesthetics (rather then just let fashion adapt to you) then its going to need to be a two-eye device, or hidden in a normal frame.

[pogo]

They only make sense as mass market though, as that's what's needed for it to take off as a platform. It's not like Android phones or tablets; you can get away with selling far fewer as the platform already exists. Bug Google need for these to be such a success that they sell in large quantities, and they're not going to do that at $1000+ a piece. Otherwise they'll remain a niche and developers will largely ignore them.

As for stuff being near the eye you can get very good glasses now for $100 up, including lenses. Or very accurate digital watches for only a few dollars. Google Glass contains additional components but nothing that's fundamentally hard or expensive, and in some ways the parts such as the screen should be much cheaper than the retina display of a phone. Don't forget the price of things like the iPhone is highly inflated with a couple of hundreds of dollars of profit.

In some ways it doesn't matter what the cost to make them is. If Google can't find a way to make them cheap enough for the mass market, perhaps with large subsidies, they should give up now, as there's no future for them as a platform.

[Darkflame]

Sure, to be mass market you need an ecosystem of apps, which is sort of a feed-back effect.

However a niche market only needs the apps that, well, that niche needs.
If Google themselves can make a killer app or two, everything else might as well be a bonus.

I honestly think theres lots of very specific use-case's for Glass (and other AR HMDS). Certain jobs it might be useful for - anything where hands free access to information is useful.
Admitably, I haven't seen much apps on Glass focused on those more practical use-cases, which is a shame as I suspect it would be a much easier market to grab first. I mean, if you use Glass for your job your less likely to care about its style.

Remember the first mobile phones or laptops where very big, very expensive and not very stylish. For that mater, so was the first gameboy.
If Google can provide a function for their specs beyond "hands free smart-phone", then it will get a foothold regardless of other factors.

As for stuff being near the eye you can get very good glasses now for $100 up, including lenses. Or very accurate digital watches for only a few dollars.

I think your oversimplifying having a display kept in focus that close to the eye - and presumably made to a good enough standard to withstand years or use without changing much.

I admit, I am just guessing here, but I don't think its as simply as a LED and a good lenses. I know at least Vuzix have some wave-guide technology which I think is some method to channel light to the eye so it focus's correctly. That might be more necessary for "standard lens" look rather then the Glass style above eye display though.

[pogo]

Now though you need apps. It's almost the only metric that matters for phones and tablets, the quantity and (strictly secondarily) quality of apps. Google can only do so much, but a healthy ecosystem will need hundreds of of thousands of apps for which they need developers. They especially need them as independent developers are often the key innovators on new platforms. When Windows Phone 8 came out everyone knew what it needed: Twitter, Facebook, Angry Birds. But no-one knows what the Angry Birds for Google Glass is yet.

The other reason for making it mass market is to make it acceptable. The best example here is phones. Once it would have been socially unacceptable to e.g. get your phone out and browse it at a social gathering. But now it's commonplace - our family meal outings see phones just dumped on the table while eating so chat and news isn't interrupted. I'm sure there are places where phones aren't allowed, and social groups that frown on them, but many people just accept them, as almost everyone has one.

Glass now is seen elitist and creepy. It provokes a reaction in many people, often a negative one, from the disapproving to the outright hostile. The best way to deal with that is make Glass commonplace, which will only happen if it's cheap, so people get used to them. Then people might still disapprove, but as with phones it will depend on social context, environment. In particular once most people in a group have Glass it will seem normal to wear them and use them.

[Darkflame]

Now though you need apps. It's almost the only metric that matters for phones and tablets,

I think its a mistake to think of it as just a smartphone over your eye. Its something new. Its more like the first phones in terms of the social factors.

Imho, Its like expecting to jump to an iPhone when all you got is a big brick and the celltower has just been invented.
Its going to take awhile before its common place.
Maybe not decades, but certainly a few product cycles.

The other reason for making it mass market is to make it acceptable. The best example here is phones.

Indeed. Which started as purely functional things
Apps and style came wayyyyyyyy later.
It was the first users - the niche that didn't care for the downsides and expense at that time - that paved the way for the rest.

You are quite correct that the more people that have them the more acceptable they will be. Which is either a catch-22 or a feedback effect, depending if it goes positively or negatively.
But I think its wrong to think it cant be done gradually. That its a all-or-nothing thing. For most people theres going to be some sort of function/form/cost equation in their heads. I think previous communication tech has got into market via smaller groups first - presumably because the function for those groups was enough to compensate the others.

[RiK]

Thing is there are just *so* many situations where these just aren't going to be socially acceptable. I can't imagine many people being comfortable with anyone wearing them in any kind of social gathering, having a conversation with someone wearing them, even someone just wearing them around in public. Just try walking around pointing a camera at people everywhere you go and see how long it takes for someone to take offence..

[pogo]

But I think its wrong to think it cant be done gradually. That its a all-or-nothing thing. For most people theres going to be some sort of function/form/cost equation in their heads. I think previous communication tech has got into market via smaller groups first - presumably because the function for those groups was enough to compensate the others.

It is all or nothing in a sense though. It's not until there's enough that it will be worth it for developers, making apps it needs to be a serious platform. Aim for a gradual approach and it will always be a niche product, barely existing in the consumer space, used by a few geeks. A few companies and organisations will also find ways to use it, writing their own apps. You can imagine it saving time in a warehouse, perhaps being useful in a hospital operating theatre. But that will get you a few sales, a few hundred, maybe a few thousand at a time. Not the millions it needs.

That's why I think price is key. Make it cheap enough and it becomes like the PDA/GPS/webcam/tablet you bought, thinking you'd have a use for it but hardly used. Many people will pay around $100 for some interesting new tech that they're not sure they need, a second game console/set top box, a tablet when they have a phone or PC. $500 though and you're in iPhone/PS4 territory. Most people aren't going to pay that unless the thing is really useful. It has a lot of apps and/or they can use it all the time. Which means at $500 or more it will have a hard time getting any sort of traction.

I don't know what price it needs to be sold at to have a chance, but it's probably much closer to $100 than $500. Remember it needs a phone to work. iPhone owners aren't going to be keen to pay $500 again, bringing their total outlay to $1000, given their phone does most of what it does and better. People with $100 Android phones are going to be even less willing to fork out so much.

($500 as that will just about get you an iPhone/console, so it's easier to compare. More than that, such as the current price, and they're just having a laugh)

[Deckard]

So now available to anyone in the US for 1500 dollars so they are having a laugh . For me their main problem is no-one likes glasses, no one has their looks improved by them and most people, see Clarkson and Stephen Fry take them off as soon as they can. Hard to imagine me a tech head having a phone, smart watch and glass too. If they come in at less than 150 pounds then perhaps as in indulgence.

[ThetaReactor]

Build 'em into horn-rimmed glasses and all the hipsters will be winking at their food in no time.

[pogo]

Google Glass enters open beta, goes on sale to anyone in the US
Sale will last for "as long as we have it on hand." Is this a clearance sale?

Still $1500 dollars. Can't believe this is the price it will eventually sell at so maybe they are selling their remaining development units before ramping up mass production of a version for general consumer sales. Or maybe they've abandoned hope of it becoming a mass market product, and are selling what they have left while they can at a high price to at least make back their development costs. I guess we'll find out soon enough.