Hacker News Reader

Comment by patrickaljord | Hacker News Reader

> It's not useful.

Have you ever tried one before making a judgement? I'm not saying I'll find it useful, just that for now it's too soon to tell.

> It provides no advantages over my smartphone and tons of disadvantages.

It provides a hand-free + display + sound experience you can't have with a cellphone (you can use a Bluetooth earplug but you still have to hold it to see the display).

> And it looks so, so stupid when you're wearing one. It's one of the only things you can put on and even though you founded Google 90% of the people looking at you will wonder if you're an idiot.

The same thing was said with smartphones and laptops you know.

See this quora post on how it could be useful: http://www.quora.com/Google-Glass-4/What-have-been-the-best-...

View on HN

> The same thing was said with smartphones and laptops you know.

And it's still true...

The hands free display is the only advantage and it's not worth it. If there were a market for hands free displays, there's nothing stopping us from having one for our smartphones just like Bluetooth earpieces.

The reality is that holding your smartphone in order to access the display is not a problem most of the time. In the cases where it is a problem (because your hands are otherwise occupied or you don't want to direct all of your attention to the display) you shouldn't be using a smartphone or smartphone-like device (i.e. Glass) anyway.

> The same thing was said with smartphones and laptops you know.

Yes, by a small fringe element of idiots.

The difference is those of us saying Glass makes you look stupid are not idiots and we're not a fringe. Pretty much any normal person you show a picture of Sergey wearing Glass will go "What is that on his face?" and not in a nice way.

EDIT:

One last thing.

Why do you think all of the Google hype videos for Glass show the same exact thing over and over again; somebody doing something exciting and videoing it with Glass? Because that's the ONLY use case for it. I would assert that it's a terrible use case too, but even if I don't argue that point, that single use case is not enough for Glass to see widespread adoption.

It's a stupid device and it's a waste of money, time and effort that should be spent on actually improving smartphones.

> The hands free display is the only advantage and it's not worth it. If there were a market for hands free displays, there's nothing stopping us from having one for our smartphones just like Bluetooth earpieces.

Right, because the only reason things don't exist is because there's no market for it. Google spent several years iterating and trying to get the Glass into a workable size (it was originally basically a smartphone strapped to a pair of glasses), and there was no way it could be in a small enough package until very recently.

> Yes, by a small fringe element of idiots.

Most people seem to either want one, or are relatively apathetic, so either most people don't think it looks stupid or they think the penalty of looking stupid is worth it for the benefits.

> Why do you think all of the Google hype videos for Glass show the same exact thing over and over again; somebody doing something exciting and videoing it with Glass? Because that's the ONLY use case for it. I would assert that it's a terrible use case too, but even if I don't argue that point, that single use case is not enough for Glass to see widespread adoption.

Except for the videos with people doing mundane things like biking, playing in the park, or trying to catch a train? If you ignore 1 or 2 sky diving videos, almost all of the videos with Glass I've seen were situations I'm in daily or frequently enough that they aren't exceptional situations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com