[ChicagoBoy11]

I was one of the ridiculous-looking people who had a Google Glass when it came out. It was clunky, and lasted a very short time, and your face would get hot, and it had no real AR interaction with the real world.

But. If you could squint at the rough edges, and project forward what this could be like with more advanced tech, it was a no-brainer for me that it will be a far superior form factor for what we do with the phone. For 2 weeks, I tried hard NOT using a phone and just using it. While it was difficult (mostly because I couldn't have a conversation with anyone that didn't begin with them asking what was on my head), when I went back to the phone I so strongly noticed how much I was craning my neck, how annoying it was to interact with tech like that, and it kinda felt terrible.

[jeremyjh]

The Meta glasses don’t have a display, it’s just camera and audio.

[freedomben]

Wow dang, they really should make this more obvious. If I bought one and discovered that (despite being able to record and stream video) it had no display, I would be pissed.

[majikandy]

I agree this marketing is definitely misleading, this image is a clear representation of a screen. Very black mirror. https://ibb.co/HYpNzxD

[capableweb]

> Wow dang, they really should make this more obvious.

How? It's not mentioned anywhere that this is about displaying content, but it's very clear it's about capturing video and listening to audio only.

Or you want them to put "Notice: No display is included in the device" on the landing page?

[OJFord]

To be fair the second sentence in the short top description is about staying connected with calls and messages. I don't think many people's first assumption (without any other context/knowing more) would be that that means having them read out.

[capableweb]

The full quote is:

> Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.

Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.

Then later:

> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice.

[ImPostingOnHN]

The first part seems intentionally ambiguously worded to be interpreted as:

> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages) and (listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers)

vs:

> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks) through built-in speakers

So it's not clear from that wording that there isn't a display, or that the messages are read aloud. An unambiguous wording would be:

> listen to your favourite tracks and stay connected with hands-free calls and messages through built-in speakers

As, well, the below statement is true whether there is a screen or not, and also doesn't specify that the messages are read aloud:

> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice

That plus the image of the screen floating next to the glasses definitely make it seem like marketing is trying to trick people into thinking there's a display without explicitly claiming it

[justinclift]

> Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.

That's true. But it's not excluding display stuff.

It's along the lines of some product having multiple features, and some marketing point only talking about the advantages of the first feature. People would expect further marketing points to address the other features, and/or not even realise they'd not seen the other ("assumed to be present") features mentioned later on.

[dwighttk]

I don't use WhatsApp or Messenger, but the messaging apps I use are I'd guess at least 10% gif/photo/video content... some threads more...

[OJFord]

> The full quote is:

> > Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.

> Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.

I don't agree at all (I wasn't not quoting to hide anything, I was just typing from mobile with a crappy connection on a train) - that's not clear to me - but ok.

[jacobsenscott]

Meta is all about VR. VR means a display. Anyone would assume "meta glasses" are AR glasses. This is just a desperate attempt to boost the meta hype because they have made no progress on actual VR products.

They are also called "smart glasses", but they are just headphones and a camera. Nobody calls their bluetooth headphones "smart".

[Animats]

Huh? Then how do they deliver ads?

[SantalBlush]

They deliver ads to the people being filmed with the glasses, once they're identified and tracked by facebook.

[Gud]

I wonder if Zuckerberg one day will wake up and realize what he's doing to the world.

[ImPostingOnHN]

"To conclude, it’s worth noting that, at least for a time, product managers at Facebook — Russ’ job before starting DocSend — were required to read Snow Crash as part of their internal training."[0]

I think he knows.

0: https://www.deaneckles.com/blog/700_docsend_in_snow_crash/

[LASR]

Doesn’t he already? And that’s why he’s doing what he’s doing?

[surfingdino]

Knowing and reflecting upon what you know are two different things. And even then the outcomes may be different than what you would expect.

[_flux]

They'll quietly whisper them into your ear.. !

[jeremyjh]

Presumably they monetize by selling your real-time location and live video feed to your local surveillance authorities or political enemies.

[ponyous]

Is there any source that can back this up? I can't imagine my local police paying to have live locations at all times.

[smolder]

You can't imagine police departments that buy stingray devices and spy illegally with them to also pay for surveillance data? Anyway for real time tracking, police stations can likely get the feds involved which get that info from your telco, who are best buddies with the federal government.

[ponyous]

Yeah... but I am not american, but from a tiny european country. Police makes some requests for data after the fact every year, but as far as I know there are no deals between police and giant american corporations. I'm probably naive.

[itomato]

Somehow it didn’t stop millions of Angel and VC dollars from flowing.

I worked at a such a startup. It was vapor.

At least Glass had an API.

I wonder if any of the VPs at Essilor and Meta who shook on this are still with their companies and if their bonuses are linked to adoption.

[esafak]

You can talk to people with smart earbuds, with no invasion of privacy.

edit: All right, all right! It's a fair cop.

[freeflight]

You can talk to people with smart earbuds, but you have no clue if those smart earbuds are recording what you say or not.

The person wearing them could be on a call, and the caller on the other side would hear what you say.

The person wearing them could be streaming to twitch, and everybody watching that stream would hear what you say.

All while you assume that you are having a private conversation with earbud person.

[JohnFen]

> You can talk to people with smart earbuds

Which I don't do. If someone is wearing earbuds, that's an unambiguous signal that they don't want people talking to them.

[parl_match]

Google Glass user here as well, and the one thing that form factor is missing is input (possibly solved by AVP with its eye and finger gestures).

[_ea1k]

I remember having similar thoughts about Google Glass despite never using it and never really wanting to use it.

I mean, the concept seemed amazing, but it seemed clear that it needed to be combined with vastly more AI capability. All of the things that people imagined it doing were basically impossible.

But now it seems like something much more powerful shouldn't be that far away.

[hinkley]

I wonder if we will see an inversion of the clip-on sunglasses design but with corrective lenses.

Clip your prescription to a pair of sunglasses instead, or to your smart glasses.

You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out. But in that case variations in lens shape will be less visible, because sunglasses.

[smeej]

If the sunglasses sit a normal distance from the face, most people's corrective lenses won't fit behind them.

There's a reason over-glasses sunglasses are so big and clunky and ugly.

[hinkley]

These days, at least if you can afford designer, they use rare earth magnets and the frames are exactly the same shape.

Since most glasses only grind the back side of the lens, they fit pretty closely together.

Which is also why you wouldn't be able to reverse the position of the lenses without changing how they're ground (also thick lenses hidden behind the frame conceal just how bad your eyes are, which some people get self conscious about.

Point was, if you wear a pair of glasses that people require you to take off regularly, you still need to be able to see, and that means carrying two pair of glasses. Transitions lenses exist in large part because people can't be arsed to carry around two pair of glasses.

[smeej]

You're missing the point. Corrective lenses have thickness. For the frames that use magnets to add a sunglass layer, they only work because it can go on the outside, with the lens already set in the frame at the right distance from the eyes/lashes. It just wouldn't work in reverse, to take a sunglass lens at the right distance and snap something in behind it. You'd get oily lash streaks all over the corrective layer constantly.

It's even worse if you wear really thick glasses, because sometimes they even have to sit slightly proud of the frame in the front.

Your solution just isn't viable for this problem, as any longtime glasses wearer could easily tell you.

If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?

[hinkley]

No man. Look.

Take a pair of glasses. Attach sunglasses to them. Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses. The geometry of the glasses or frames don’t matter, it’s whether there’s enough distance from the eye.

My glasses have almost always sat proud of the frames. And there’s plenty of distance behind them. (I’ve had sunglasses that brush my eyelashes though, when I was young and they were cheap, and that bugs the hell out of me).

> If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?

First of all, that's an Appeal to Authority, and you know where you can stick that. Two, you think I'm trying to solve a very old problem, which means you missed the point.

Putting something on your face that vastly outsizes and outcosts your glasses is a brand new problem.

Scientists get eyepieces for microscopes with prescription lenses. That's not on your face. Skiers just buy goggles with prescription lenses, which cost almost as much as VR goggles. That's basically a luxury market, not a consumer market.

Also the whole fuckin' point is that none of these solutions (to people insisting you take your glasses off) work because a rounding error of people are going to carry two pair of glasses with them, and even the workaround is unwieldy. You're lost in the weeds talking about the physics of it, which aren't a problem and aren't the real problem.

[smeej]

What you actually said was: > Clip your prescription to a pair of sunglasses instead, or to your smart glasses.

You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out.

And what does "Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses" even mean? Bows?

You can't take a glasses frame that is designed to be worn at a normal distance from the eye and then clip something to the back side of it, between the original lens and your eye. There's not enough space to add a corrective lens back there.

Even if there were, it's still unfeasible, because the part you have to take off is the smart part or the tinted part not the prescription part.

Never mind that it's only a rounding error of people who are willing to carry around a clip-on layer either, because it requires nearly as much protection as a full pair of glasses to avoid breaking it.

Making the prescription part the clipping part is inane on every level. Nothing about it works.

[ojbyrne]

Maybe I'm not sure what you're getting at, but you can order these with prescription lenses, either tinted or not.

[dwighttk]

prescription lenses for most people are extremely inexpensive to produce... the only reason glasses cost a lot is the luxottica cartel

[nickthegreek]

I found google glass to be great. It had real world AR in directions. I used it several times in other cities to move about. I never really had any heat issues. I do wish we could have gotten a couple iterations, but that's Google for you.

[toast0]

Google Wear is the second iteration of Google Glass, pretty much the same UI, but on your wrist instead of awkwardly up and to the right.