[pavlov]

Based on my brief exposure, Spectacles is a very polished product. Everything about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from tech: the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine that displays a rendering of the glasses on your face; the yellow carrying case that doubles as extra battery for the glasses; the effortless installation experience; even the round video that invites peeking to discover hidden content at the edges.

I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.

[vm]

They're doomed by the slow UX for uploading: 1) record w/o really knowing how the content is coming out (it's like stepping back into the Kodak age after using an iPhone for 10 years), 2) open Snap app, 3) reconnect the Bluetooth for 1-2 min because the connection is crap from the glasses to my phone, 4) upload all the videos from my glasses which takes another 1-2 min, 5) select specific video snips to share, 6) select people to share / upload to story, etc.

Seemed to take 5 min when I did it. Enough to kill the moment. Sharp contrast to how fast Snap is on iOS.

Plus the glasses are uncomfortable and have large blind spots, so I can't wear them all the time (i.e. not good for driving)

[jjoonathan]

There's no UX that bluetooth can't ruin.

[Spivak]

And yet there's really no replacement. I mean if MS uses Bluetooth for their surface pens, when they completely control the hardware at both ends, then there's really no hope for getting rid of it.

[acchow]

Bluetooth working great for Apple AirPods. I think Snapchat is having a software problem.

[jjoonathan]

I agree that it's a software problem, but most vendors aren't in apple's position of controlling every single link of the chain.

I do think it'll get better over time. NFC/tap pairing will eventually replace Menu + Manual Madness, show-stopping bugs will get fixed, capability sets will stabilize, conventions will develop to smooth over variation in UI choices, "worse is better" decisions will be unwound, and eventually it'll be a smooth experience and people will wonder how they ever lived with wires. If my own experiences are typical of even a tiny minority of users, however, that day is still disappointingly far off.

[jorvi]

Apple will probably do the Bluetooth equivalent to what they did with earphones: they switched the mic and ground wire, forcing earphone manufacturers to either support iOS or TRRS on the built-in remotes. I love my Macbook Pro and iPhone, but Apple can be a truly infuriating company.

[pdimitar]

You must definitely add investor pressure in all of this, and if history is of any indication, that pressure can and will kill any creative efforts. It's all about being first to market, making a big buck and having a lucrative exit nowadays.

Nobody is interested in the tech becoming more comfortable.

[Rjevski]

I think the problem is that in this case Bluetooth is just not fast enough to transfer large amounts of video data. What they should do is use BT to negotiate details of an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network and use that larger pipe to send the actual data.

[cornstalks]

You basically just described Bluetooth 3.0 + HS[1]. The Bluetooth connection is used to establish an 802.11 link, over which data is transferred. It's only (up to) 24 Mbit/s, so it's still slower than some (direct) Wi-Fi alternatives, but it's much faster than normal Bluetooth connections.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_3.0_.2B_HS

[omtinez]

That is exactly how the Spectacles work. Bluetooth is only used for transfer as a fallback mechanism.

[acchow]

Yup. This is how Wifi Direct and Apple's Airdrop work.

[lathiat]

This random thing I found claims about 1-1.5MB/s possible at least using the multipeerconnectivity libraries. ~ 0.1MB/s for bluetooth-only.

https://github.com/thaliproject/Thali_CordovaPlugin/issues/1...

[semi-extrinsic]

FWIW I recently bought a $30 waterproof bluetooth speaker that goes on my bike. Paired it once on first power up, it Just Works (tm) since.

[jjoonathan]

I just bought $40 bluetooth earbuds that required RTFMing to pair, don't hold the pair between workouts, take a minute to perform the ritual, and use friction to anchor themselves to my ear so thy fall off the moment I start sweating. Oh, and they need to be recharged.

I have similar stories for every single bluetooth device that I have ever tried, which amounts to probably a dozen peripherals and half that many hosts. I've had fleeting moments of "it's magic" to punctuate the sea of crap so I'm fully on board with the potential of the technology, but it has continued to mature at an obnoxiously slow rate.

[schrodinger]

Try AirPods. I've been every happy with them!

[acchow]

Your bluetooth speaker setup works great for precisely your scenario - the speaker is paired with one only device.

It gets wonky if that single speaker has paired with multiple devices before. For example in a home, where you've paired it with your laptop, phone, iPad, etc. Try it out. Audio will cut off sometimes suddenly when it decides to switch pairing partners as another paired device appears in range.

[NKCSS]

I have a Sony bluetooth headset and it's amazing. It was around €65, lasts 40 hours of use (so charge once a week- every 2-3 weeks depending on usage), pairs with 3 devices and does it very well. I often move to another floor while having them on (construction work) or go out to the shed while the iPhone is in the bedroom on a charger, and it still works 10 meters in the yard. Best thing I've ever purchased, so there are good Bluetooth solutions.

[zild3d]

airpods aren't transmitting video, not a fair comparison at all.

[atomical]

I'm very impressed with Garmin's bluetooth implementation on the Forerunner series.

[acangiano]

Yes. My Garmin Fenix 3 HR isn't perfect but it consistently connects via Bluetooth faster than any other device I own. It has an "indistinguishable from magic" feel to it.

[atomical]

I have a Forerunner 235. I didn't buy the watch for notifications or anything like that, but it's really cool to get a Slack notification when you are halfway across the house.

The GPS also connects to satellites in a fraction of the time my Suunto watch did. It sucks when you're standing in the parking lot waiting to establish signal before your run.

[mcbain]

Edge 820 here. The Bluetooth connection to my iPhone just works every time. I'd basically given up on BT as a useful thing years ago, but now I never have to think about it, and only have to plug the device in to charge after a few rides.

Mini review: the GPS is also super quick to acquire compared to my (now bricked) 800 - but the touchscreen is awful.

[rodgerd]

I'd echo that experience - my time with a Fitbit lead me to assume it was normal for notifications to show up long after they arrived on the phone. It's clearly just something that only some manufacturers can get right.

[rokhayakebe]

Mouse? Keyboard? Earbuds?

[pavlov]

I think your issue 1 is actually this way by design. Spectacles are meant for recording without worrying too much about how the content is coming out. The idea is to let you concentrate on living the moment rather than how to frame it. That's how I interpreted it, anyway.

The upload takes place in the background, so usually it would be completed by the time you're done with whatever activity and go into the app.

[slackoverflower]

I don't think your the target audience. Snapchat UX is amazing and an entire generation uses for all communication purposes. Facebook of OUR time.

[Rjevski]

I disagree - there is no "target audience" for shit UX. Their "target audience" uses Snap despite its awful UX, not because of it. Those users wouldn't suddenly run away if the UX did actually improve.

[Gaelan]

Perhaps I'm just used to it, but I find SC's UI/UX to be quite nice to use. I would be disappointed if Snapchat's UI changed to be more like Instagram's; IG's UI may be more discoverable, but it just doesn't feel as smooth.

[Rjevski]

I liked the UI of early Snapchat (2013) when there was only a recent Snaps list and a camera view and you could swipe between them. It all went downhill from there, but the biggest blow for me was the stupid thing that you have to pull down when in the camera view to get access to your contacts. I wish the "designer" that had this stupid idea would be sentenced to several years of reading all text in nothing but Comic Sans.

[brazzledazzle]

The UX might be good but I've heard nothing but complaints about the app quality from teenagers and that's on iOS. They are starting to straddle snap and Instagram.

[eat_veggies]

Teenager here chiming in, Snapchat is great but kind of slow on my (Android) phone -- It takes like 5 seconds for it to even load who has new stories, and I used to be able to swipe up to show my stats and snap code but now it's a bunch of related/nearby content ("top stories") I don't care about. Ads between stories are kind of annoying but I understand they need to monetize somehow.

It's great for sharing photos and quick texts but no one uses snap maps, the sponsored content is cringe, and I have yet to see spectacles in real life because unsurprisingly, we don't have the money to buy $100+ camera glasses.

I should also add that a lot of my friends do use Instagram stories, but a lot of the time it's just a picture with the text "AMOS: {sc_username}" (AMOS means "add me on Snapchat") so take from that what you will.

[wonder_bread]

Same thing I've noticed, and even beyond that people still seem to feel the need to put a final layer of effort into their insta stories relative to Snap stories, I'd say Snap still has a definite role

[ramy_d]

It's been pretty great on android for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[astrange]

What I mostly notice about Snapchat is the ads on the right side are obnoxiously sexual or celebrity driven. Not so amazing experience there, it's like the checkout aisle at Safeway.

(ever noticed that magazine where the cover is always "how to lose 30 pounds in a day" and then a chocolate cake?)

[vm]

I meant the upload time for Spectacles, not sure if we're talking about the same thing? The UX for the Snap app is great. I was the most active Snap user I knew up until recently (hence why I have Spectacles)

[27182818284]

> Facebook of OUR TIME

Facebook and Snap are 7 years apart, calm down.

[pram]

I think the aesthetic of the glasses is flawed, not the technology. They look really goofy. They should have gone with a standard design like Wayfarers, and not something few people could realistically look good in. If they're aiming for mass appeal anyway.

[Osmium]

> They look really goofy. They should have gone with a standard design like Wayfarers

I'm not sure about that... if you have a technology that won't quite fit in a 'standard' design, but you try and force it anyway, it'll look bad regardless. Better to embrace the goofiness and make something a little fun instead.

[atom-morgan]

I've actually gotten compliments on my Spectacles from people who didn't even know they were made by Snap.

[Fricken]

The intent I think was to make it really obvious that the wearer has camera glasses on. They were marketed as a toy, not as spy glasses.

The problem was that nobody knew what to do with them, and Snap being setup the way it is, it's too hard to take cues from what other people might be doing with them because it's hard to find their videos.

The only thing I bring them out for now is to make little cooking videos for my friends, the hands free POV camera is really good for that, and uploading a little narrative is pretty effortless.

[dsacco]

I agree. I'm not a Snapchat user and generally dislike the app. But I have the Spectacles and recently took them to a trip to Six Flags to record point of view videos on a bunch of the rides. It was really fun, and I even installed the app so I could transfer the videos to my phone.

I also agree that the product design is excellent. There is absolutely a polish to the Spectacles that makes them enjoyable to use.

[rch]

The whole Spectacles concept is gimmicky, including the vending machine aspect, so it doesn't really matter how well executed the 'experience' was. They need to allocate their capital to people who have better ideas.

[gscott]

They needed to give those away like AOL did with discs.

[deftnerd]

Giving away hardware that hackers would love to play with is very different from giving away CD's that can only be alternatively used as drink coasters and for art projects.

Remember CueCat?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat#Failure

[gscott]

If they can make those glasses cheap enough, it would be good marketing. The CueCat people didn't want to drag that around and scan things.

[rayuela]

I still think there's a lot of potential to Spectacles. It seems like they fell to the wayside with all the distraction from the IPO, but I hope it's something they focus in on going forward. I think making it socially acceptable to wear a camera on your face is a problem that very few companies can pull off. I hope their tumbling share price lights a fire under their ass and forces them to take the risk necessary to pull this ace out of their hat.

[bjl]

Why in the world would you want to make it socially acceptable to wear a camera on your face?

[rayuela]

For AR to ever take off it needs to be ok to wear a camera on your face. I just happen to think the AR space is brimming with potential.

[tigershark]

AR doesn't need the capability of taking pictures or videos, it needs the camera functionality for SLAM.

[jpatokal]

Because companies that sell advertising, like Snapchat, would love to have all their users stream everything they see.

[swiftting]

Yes polished however what are the TRUE use cases for them ? What problem are they solving for the average consumer to gain wide adoption?

[nrhk]

Frictionless sharing of your life with the people who matter to you.

We've continuously reduced the friction it takes to share experiences with one another, spectacles is another step in that direction.

[losteric]

In my experience, the lack of friction has not been a positive... meaningful experiences and events are reduced to social media spam. Quantity over quality.

As a producer and consumer, I prefer the pre-FB days because the bar was high.

[ghthor]

The moments are extremely meaningful when I use my spectacles, because I experienced the moment too the fullest while I took the snap. It's so effortless that it never feels like spam when I upload the clips.

[Rjevski]

"never feels like spam when I upload the clips"

Did you ask your friends or the users that actually look at those? You are obviously biased so your own feeling doesn't count. ;)

[coldtea]

>Frictionless sharing of your life with the people who matter to you.

We have the opposite problem. How to add friction to that sharing...

[nrhk]

I think anyone who's not growing up in the world of frictionless sharing is gonna have a problem with that.

Spectacle and Google Glass's issue of having a camera on your face won't weird in another decade. When this generation's teenagers are living out their 20s.

Older people will find hyper-reality frightening though we'll get use to it, just never participate to the degree younger generations will.

[cocktailpeanuts]

I think this is a narrative created by old people who have no idea how "young people" think.

Nobody likes invasion of privacy, period. Especially young people. An old married couple in their 60 has not much to hide (also nothing much interesting to share), whereas a teenager does a lot of things they don't want to be made public.

If you don't believe me, go ask any teenager if they're cool with some random person "frictionlessly sharing" someone else's footage without consent. Google glass didn't fail because it was weird, it failed because people passionately hated when someone else was wearing a google glass.

[coldtea]

I think "used to it" has never been the same as it being right/useful/etc.

[ztjio]

Well they completely failed at that, then. They are anything but frictionless as described elsewhere in the comments. Bad user experiences abound after purchase.

[Balgair]

I'm happy that people will be using these instead of holding up an iPad during concerts to record something they'll never watch again. Less intrusive.

[rosstex]

Spectacles, the Juicero of photography.

[Spivak]

You at least have to give them points for actually trying something different.

Juicero was just an overengineered scam.

[wutbrodo]

Not that I'm a fan of Google Glass, but how do the Spectacles qualify as "something different" when Glass came out like 5 years ago? You can say that Spectacles are well-executed, but claiming that they're somehow "trying something different" makes no sense to me.

[uncoder0]

The only quality they share with Glass is that they have a camera, you wear them on your face and they tether to your phone. All of which had been done before Glass.

[wutbrodo]

Uh yea, isn't that the entirety of the product? What is the "something different" that you're imagining?

[fencepost]

> the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine

So that's what that yellow thing at the mall was! I thought it was some sort of bizarre Minions tie in for something.

[1_2__4]

> Everything about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from tech

Good lord please stop. Save that for marketing discussion places. I don't even know what this nonsense means, nor do I suspect most people.

[jjjensen90]

I knew exactly what pavlov meant and know absolutely nothing about marketing. We can describe experiences in ways other than technological