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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

Year of smart glasses?

It's a half assed product, introduced years before it's any good for use, and it's main real utility is that of a smaller Go Pro-style live action camera.

Plus, it didn't even make any dent in the market.

It's not like Google search in 1996 or the iPhone in 2007, products that immediately changed whole markets.

So, no, 2014 would not be the year of "smart glasses".

With the display technology used and the battery life they have, those things are useless, except for showing off.

Except for the "eye level live action camera" part, you can do the same things with your smartphone, better and faster.

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Interestingly, a friend of mine who is a professional videographer and who tried Google Glass told me he could think of a few uses for it in his field, but he couldn't come up with any reason why he would use one as a general purpose device.

I predict a moderately successful app that scrolls random 6502 assembly code in your field of vision as you scan your surroundings.

I predict one which automatically makes everyone look naked.

Just for the sake of argument -- We tell software startups to get their MVP out as fast as possible in order gain feedback and improve the product... yet we smack down hardware vendors who have done exactly that?

Hardware != software - releasing half assed hardware early is completely different that releasing a half assed web app that can be updated almost constantly. But I think Google is mostly not getting smacked down for releasing Google Glass too soon - the opinion that Glass is ready for prime time is getting smacked down. IMO Glass is obviously not ready for prime time and won't be for a few years at least, but this is all just moot anyway, the article is obvious clickbait. People love a good "Next year is the year of the whatever".

>Just for the sake of argument -- We tell software startups to get their MVP out as fast as possible in order gain feedback and improve the product... yet we smack down hardware vendors who have done exactly that?

Well, something half baked is not always an MVP. Sometimes it's just half baked and should not have been presented in the first place.

Not to mention, software startups products don't cost hundrends of dollars to buy and test. In fact, usually they are free. So, pushing a half-arsed hardware to buyers? Not so wise.

The original iPod was a MVP launch ("no wireless, less space than a nomad, etc"). It took it several years to get large disks, video, wi-fi sync, etc.

Google Glasses? An ill-thought, hastily implemented product, merely combining non-optimally a few pieces of stuff you already have (voice recognition, eye displays, small video cameras etc) as "innovation theatre".

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