| Cost and interface mostly. Also to some extent privacy issues. Phones being $1000 is already an issue, and they're by default more robust. Glasses, assuming we can get them to a similar cost, are probably even more likely to be lost or broken. For comparison think of foldable smart phones, which exist, but are mostly seen as a trendy luxury item due to their durability issues. The interface, I think is huge. Smart phones took off because apple figured out a good interface. People like to rip on them for just copying an idea that already existed and hadn't taken off, but they ignore that apple nailed the hell out of getting it so the average person could use it. You need it to be clear, obvious, and responsive. All the examples i've seen of these smart glasses (website isn't loading for me so I can't check this) are the sorts of things that nerdy people like me (typing on a cornish zen) would find fine, and will never be smooth enough for the average user, ESPECIALLY at current costs. While things like the air pods pro have changed my opinion on the average user adopting tactile controls, I still think that voice activation and mostly reference-less tactile controls is NOT mass adoptable. And this is before we get into just the hassle of glasses (smudges and the like). From what I can tell, these are basically just "headphones + camera" on your face. So it's not displaying anything, at which point this is like airpods with a camera. Is there a group of people who want that? Sure, this looks tailor made for luxury influences. Is that a use case for the average person? I don't think so. |
Not a feature I like or endorse, but one that's clearly in the interest of both device vendors and much of the online advertising and commercial sector.
In a world in which credible attestations of interest and potential commercial value are difficult to assess without the manifest signals of a high street address and the visual assessments made possible by physical presence, owning a < 2 y.o. piece of $1,000 kit is a highly reliable market segmentation signal.
This is a key reason why websites (especially commercial ones, but also anything advertising-related) are on such a relentless treadmill of ever-escallating resource demand. Got to keep those undesireable old-cheap-Android and 15-year-old desktop plebes out somehow.
Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410503> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29612296> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959819> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530274>