Google Glass(es)

I’ve been wearing Google glasses [1] every day for almost three months now.If you’re excited enough about Google Glass to be reading yet another review of them then I shall proceed to burst your bubble.But I’ll start with the good parts!

These things are super light, comfortable, and indestructible.They’ve survived significant rain a couple times, and have even been stepped on (which caused them to helpfully take a picture of the perpetrator’s other shoe [2]).I wear them all day — long after the battery has died — and forget I have them on.

For anyone who hasn’t seen it, let me now bring your excitement to a fever pitch by pointing you to Google promotional video, “How It Feels, Through Glass”.And now I will yank you back to reality by pointing you to a brilliant SNL sketch skewering Glass, mostly funny because of how true it is.If you thought the Saturday Night Live skit was exaggerating, here’s a friend trying my Google glasses.

Actually I’d say the reality is pretty much dead center between Google’s version and SNL’s.They are genuinely useful, like when you can’t use your hands to take a picture of something.And the GPS navigation is quite slick, especially while biking.

As Amber Case puts it in an article on the Reality Augmented Blog, “The features of Glass are not ‘consumptive’, as in, they don’t cause you to get away from reality. … This is not a media device for sitting back and getting information to you. It’s a device that allows you to quickly act instead of pause and grab your device from your pocket.”I agree with that, mostly.And it’s nice that all the fears about trying to have a conversation with someone who’s seemingly staring into the void are unfounded.But I’m actually disappointed that that’s all you can do, glance at things that it flashes up there. They’re nowhere close to computer-augmented vision (overlays/annotations), no surfing the web as you walk around, no additional screen real estate while working on a normal computer. Just an exceptionally convenient camera, an excellent navigation device, and a handy way to get notifications. Not that that’s anything to sneeze at. Just not quite flying-car levels of futuristic awesome.

I shall conclude with a random assortment of impressions and links:

1. The navigation is like magical orientating fairy whispering in your ear telling you where to go — it seems better than handheld GPS navigation devices)
2. I’m too socially oblivious to know how uncomfortable it makes people but after one person, who clearly wishes to remain anonymous, expressed acute discomfort at having a camera pointed toward them, I’ve taken to pushing them up onto my forehead in social situations. I think that makes me look less bizarre and discomfort-inducing, but note my aforementioned social oblivion.
3. Other than that one time, everyone seems delighted with the concept. Especially since I hand them over to anyone who asks about them. People tend to be blown away on first impression, now that I’ve gotten the hang of talking newbies through taking their first picture on it.
4. The other day at a fast food restaurant there was a huge group of teenagers, a minority of whom had read about Glass. They all passed mine around and seemed to all be completely blown away by the coolness of it. Even so, I’m surely getting a highly biased sample of reactions. Everyone who thinks of it like a segway for your face presumably just turns their head away from me and rolls their eyes and I’m none the wiser.
5. Augmented vision pioneer Steve Mann wrote an article in IEEE Spectrum expressing disappointment at how far from his own state of the art Glass is. It is indeed disappointing in some ways. I think eye strain isn’t so much of a problem, but for a reason that’s even more disappointing: it’s designed so that you only ever want to briefly glance at things. So that’s definitely useful in some situations, but it’s not remotely close to being a viable replacement for a phone, and of course it doesn’t even function, other than the camera, without being bluetoothed to a phone.
6. Previous Hacker News discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5790719
7. You can take pictures without waking Glass up first. There’s a physical button you can press. It works great. Tilting your head up and down and then saying “ok glass take a picture” can still be convenient if you don’t have a hand free, or if you want to announce that you’re taking a picture.
8. Googling things on Glass is impressive but I haven’t found it useful so far.
9. Google Now is gradually getting useful and impressive (showing flight status right when you need it, upcoming appointments, weather, etc) and it’s especially useful on Glass.
10. I also just got a Pebble watch and find that to be a more convenient way to glance at incoming messages. Google Now for Pebble would be really nice.
11. I’m dying for an instant replay app, where it takes pictures (video is probably out of the question for a while, battery-wise) constantly but throws them away unless you tell it that something interesting just happened.
12. It works brilliantly for biking directions and I feel safe using it for that while biking. The current version has walking, biking, and driving directions. No public transit yet.
13. “One of the most magical things about Google Glass is its ability to get you the answers you want almost instantly. As soon as you think of something you want to search, all you need to do is ask.” 20 Searches, Through Glass. I can confirm that that video is perfectly authentic. I tried ones I was skeptical about, and variants, just in case they cheated, and it worked. But when it fails it’s especially annoying/embarrassing and all in all I think googling things on your phone works better.
14. Battery life is not great. Maybe 5 hours. Or 40 minutes if taking continuous video, not that it can handle uploading a video that long.
15. Rumor has it that Google is trying to bring Glass to the masses sometime in 2014, which sounds reasonable to me. I think the current version is already worth the money. Not that I know what they’ll sell for. But perhaps more to the point, they’re worth actually wearing them and keeping them charged and whatnot.
16. Misleading things about the Google promotional video: You have to tilt your head or touch the side to get the “ok glass” prompt, which adds a surprising amount of friction. Also, googling images of tiger heads while you’re making an ice sculpture works fine but it’s far too difficult to actually look at that screen. Again, it’s only good for glancing at things.
17. For all the gory details of what it’s like, the review on Android Police is spot on. Except maybe the “reading on Glass is just fine” part. I think you would quickly give yourself a headache trying to read more than a sentence. This is what Steve Mann is most disappointed about.

Illustration by Kelly Savage

Footnotes

[1]Grammatical note: It feels all wrong to refer to glasses as a singular noun, as Google would like us to do.If Google comes out with cybernetic pants next — even if it’s technically only in one pant leg — you’ll still put on your Google pants, not your Google Pant.So the technology may be “Google Glass” but when I’m talking about this specific smartphone-on-my-face, they’re a “they”, not an “it”.

[2]Not that it was anyone’s fault but mine.