Sir I challenge you to a bet, $100 to our respective favorite charities.
In my opinion Google Glass is set to be a game changer from the start. I wager that when google glass is launched, it will be a cultural icon no more than 1.5 years later.
It's clear WHY google needs glass. Owning the channel between my eyes and the world is a huge potential pot of money. Targeted ads have a lot of potential to disrupt the ad space, and if facebook ever decides to make their own ad network (such as Google's ad sense) competition will be fierce. Google glass is a really good way to increase their competitive advantage, and cement their position in the advertising arena.
Additionally, of the companies that would be interested in making a product like google glass (facebook, microsoft, IBM etc) Google probably has the best mix of engineers to do it. I've always said that Google is an AI company first. Well a huge part of AI is machine vision, and a large part of successfully monetizing google glass is machine vision. Additionally, with street view, and other aggressive initiatives Google is in one of the best positions to actually understand what and where the world you are looking at. Finally, while google has proven in the past they are weak as a hardware company (nexus 1) they have demonstrated they are capable of bringing a consumer product to the mass market... though perhaps maybe not enough to make it anything less then a wild card.
Finally the last point is one of consumer adoption. The newton pad was not successful in part because the hardware was premature. But I would speculate it was also in part because consumers weren't at the point of understanding the value. The hardware in Google glass is unknown at this point, and potentially could under-deliver... and that will cause it to be a newton.. but for the reasons i said above I think Google is capable of delivering a quality product. However consumer readiness will not be an issue. 1 billion people are already on Facebook. Social interaction through technology is accepted today more then ever before. Using smartphones in public is not only accepted, its normal. Years ago using a PDA might have made you look like a yuppie, but today no one would notice.
What does "cultural icon" mean? Is the Segway a cultural icon even though only ~30,000 of them exist? Pretty much everyone knows what it is but most people have not benefited from them. I would be willing to take this bet if we determine some objective criteria.
I'll gladly take this bet. It is hard to frame since I don't think it will ever launch in any meaningful way (1.5 years from never, is still never). That being said, I think if they sell 20 million units globally before December 31, 2016 you will win the bet.
I was thinking the same thing. I think one of the biggest issues with the Newton was timing. We are a different people now than then. The timing is right. If they don't mess it up with weird looking hardware, then it will probably be a success.
2. you think all that for the same reason I also think all that: Wishful thinking... but deep inside i can see the truth. we are the hippies-yuppies who will buy it :)
put yourself on the shoes of people hearing about the newton back then: handwriting recognition!! how wouldn't want that instead of a 3x4 phone keyboard? Turned out 99.9% prefered T9. it's all the same. we are thinking as if the implementation and day-to-day use would be perfect on such a new concept on the first try. well, odds are it wont. but in one year can get back to it and see if my money goes to one of your charities or if your money will buy me something shinny (that's one bet i'd like to lose...)
So wait, you're morally against giving money to a charity but you're perfectly okay with betting his charity against your free money? Honestly curious.
Also - implementation and day-to-day use don't have to be perfect for it to be a game-changer/overnight success/cultural icon. As evidenced by... Well, pretty much every piece of successful consumer electronics ever made that has gone through multiple generations/revisions.
How do you make wearing a headpiece cool? I wear glasses and imagine some teeny tiny thing embedded in one of the arms. What could 20/20 people do that would be socially acceptable? Maybe a bluetooth headset looking thing?
Make them exclusive. Only let a handful of people wear them, so that they become a social status symbol. Make them so rare that people share photos of them "in the wild" like they were pictures of celebrities. The early announcement and slow public roll-out are necessary for pragmatic reasons -- you can't test Glass in the real world if you're trying to keep it secret -- but I think it's also a brilliant marketing strategy. Right now the only people who have worn them are high-level Google folks and a handful of Friends of Google. They're living in the future, and we're living in the past. Exclusivity breeds desire. I think that's the general idea.
Nope, as far as I'm concerned they're still gonna be dorky. Wearing electronics on your face is irredeemably dorky, and I don't see any way around that.
Electronics in your pocket: cool
Electronics in your hand: cool
Electronics hanging out of your ears: cool
Electronics on your head, face, or built into your clothing: irredeemably uncool.
I can't explain why in words, all I can tell you is that the world sees these things differently. If you don't understand why computer-enabled glasses are unavoidably dorky then I can't explain it to you, but I'm pretty sure it's the case.
edit: That's not to say they won't sell well, to certain people. I envisage engineers on building sites walking around with 'em, or travelling salesmen, or police officers, or... I dunno, there's gotta be lots of good use cases for these sorts of things. But the very utility of 'em makes 'em desperately uncool, like Bluetooth earpieces.
Smartphones used to be dorky (less than a decade ago!). So did computers and even wrist watches. I'm pretty sure "electronic eyewear" (which ARE dorky now - see oakley's nerd product, the Thump) will follow suit. Dorky, then widespread, then sexy and desirable.
A lot of people used to carry pens on their shirts. Many still do. Now using bluetooth earpieces is commonplace. I am sure people will get used to using very tiny gadgets on their clothing or ears if they assist them in meaningful ways.
I really don't see as much earpiece fashion anymore. To me it always screamed "extra device" which is the opposite of luxury or convenience. Or maybe I'm just blind to a common trend now.
If it works well enough, of course it will be cool. Once everyone has one to get shit done with, "cool" will be one of the biggest differentiators to determine which one to get.
If it doesn't work well enough, then it will be the new Newton—and even then, here we are 20 years later, and tablets are cool.
Given where Lasik is at, aglasses are going to be a purely optional fashion statement in 10 years. It will be perfectly acceptable and fashionable ( at times ) to wear them.
When were they not cool? As a teen in the late 90s, everyone I knew had a discman. (Mine was bright orange, and got plenty of comments on how cool it looked. :) )
I remember my parents called all mp3 players "iPod" long before the appstore was announced. The first generations of iPods might have been easier to use than the other mp3 players at the time, but that alone does not explain the huge adoption by the general population. Marketing definitively had a lot to do with it, probably more than the quality of the product.
For me, the fantastic thing about the first iPod was immediate access to any track, combined with shuffle play. It changed the experience of listening to music. It was like my entire collection had a single, superfluid interface. And the thing FELT great.
Even if you credit marketing with bringing this to people's attention, it's a mistake to think that marketing closes the deal. That credit goes to the experience, which was as imaginative, compelling, and well-designed as the object itself. As the (very) old ad agency joke goes "Nothing destroys a bad product faster than good advertising." Clearly that's not happening here.
I will never understand people ignore the product itself while insisting success is "just" marketing (as though this were an invariably witless task). Usually this is followed by "to people who are idiots." Perhaps you just don't appreciate things that are carefully considered and well made. There are people like this, and there always have been. And they suck. Or as Shakespeare put it "you blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things."
itunes and appstore is monetization of the post marketing success. you convert them to switch, and then lock them there.
hard drive was a step back. for the same price (and 5 months before ipod launched) you could get a creative flash memory mp3 player with 2/3 of the size. again, same price, you give away 1/3 of the storage for NO gravity or dropping of issues. far superior if you ask me... yet, bad marketing on creative. (btw, ipod evolved some 5yr later and what? 1/2 of the space and flash memory, so yeah, even apple consumers agree it was better without it.)
A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone? For every frame (such as in a video) the amount of work involved to reduce boredom increases. Raw video of people's lives is utterly, unimaginably boring, even if the person is a celebrity.
Still photos work b/c they capture a whole moment, with just enough detail to inspire the imagination and to ground the imaginings in reality.
My personal favorites are the slightly grainy and oversaturated images taken by the camera in the blackberry I had about 5 years ago. Still photos bring out the best parts of the human experience, while raw video makes everyone as boring as the worst video blogger.
It's not the device, it's the applications people will crave. Think about these apps for your glasses:
- adBlocker to remove ads from your view
- first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture.
- architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed.
- ...
You're suffering from a serious lack of realism if you discard them based on the camera quality. The iPhone drove R&D for cameras we have now, same will happen for these gizmos.
Edit: The only real opposition I see is another wave of reports on the impact of having a non-stop wireless RF device next to your skull.
I think the augmented reality aspect is going to be awesome, I just don't imagine wanting to watch the video someone else is seeing in real time -- though after some editing it could be very fun to watch.
I hate ads, but not quite enough to go round blocking portions of my vision just to avoid seeing 'em. I envisage myself getting run over by an advertising-covered bus.
first person shooter missions with google maps integration. All you need is an empty cow-pasture
Sounds fun, but niche. Laser Tag isn't a big industry.
architects/renovators guiding people through their new/renovated house before the contract' signed
That's more the sort of application I'd envisage.
Or how about this? Imagine a store you'd walk into, get issued a pair of glasses, then you could walk around, look at things, and have information about 'em magically appear? How cool would that be? Answer: awesomely cool... the first time. In year one, that store would be the coolest thing on the planet. But the fiftieth time you go in there.... meh.
Or how about this? Imagine a store you'd walk into, get issued a pair of glasses, then you could walk around, look at things, and have information about 'em magically appear? How cool would that be? Answer: awesomely cool... the first time. In year one, that store would be the coolest thing on the planet. But the fiftieth time you go in there.... meh.
"A camera that takes images comparable to a picture taken on a current iPhone?"
I will be intrigued to see what pops out when this really becomes a priority. You may not be able to stick a single small camera in a glasses frame and get anywhere, but what about having 4 or 8 relatively cheap cameras and some image processing? With the cameras tuned to the needs of the image processing. Perhaps not even 4 or 8 identical cameras. Can we play games with optical interferometry [1] to extract surprising amounts of visual data from surprisingly small cameras? There's a crapload of optical tricks we've learned that we've not really needed to apply yet, and ahem IT IS OBVIOUS TO ONE SKILLED IN THE ART THAT THESE TECHNIQUES MAY BE USEFUL ON AUGMENTED REALITY GLASSES. (ahem)
Not sure there's a filter in Instagram that botches up your photos as much as early-2000's blackberry. So soon we forget the years of yellow skin tones, movement blur and jarring LED flash.
One day my kids are going to look at our old photos and ask "why did photo quality go to crap from 2002-2007? Did you lose the technology?"
This is a good comment. Google Glass is technologically amazing, but the demo video was incredibly distracting. You only want augmented reality when you want it. You don't want random notifications and messages from other people cropping up and making you walk into a lamppost.
On the other hand, if they can lick the distraction problem or even make the tool something that improves focus (say by reminding you unobtrusively of what you need to get done that day) it could be very cool in subsequent iterations. I don't think the product manager is thinking about minomizing distraction though.
really? I post photographs on G+ entirely out of network effects - that's the site that my friends check reliably. Flickr is like a black hole, now, socially.
But the Flickr user experience is still nice compared to G+'s clunky too-much-javascript.
Yes. In the early weeks of G+ it was really weird. I had mainly people from flickr in my circles, they were very easy to find because they actively pointed at each other. Posts like "if you're into this kind of photography you should add these people" - this was before you could share circles. They also posted how-tos on using picasa images in posts and such. They really jumped on it.
One of the reasons I often heard was that facebook reduced quality too much (bad compression) and this resulted in bad press for FB among photographers. Apparently, many were on the lookout for something like fb with an integration of something like picasa.
I'm less on flickr now because of the "please post this in our group" spam. They really need to get a grip on that.
The only complaint I have about G+ photos is that it emphasizes albums instead of individual photos. If I want to share a single image, I have to create an album for it, and then have that album-containing-a-single-picture hanging around forever. I find it much easier to "scp photo.png jrock.us:/var/www/jrock.us" and host it myself.
a new world promise, but in reality totally uncool and only used by a few san francisco hippies-yuppies. And then forgotten.
With a chance of a decade later becoming a game changer.