I don't love the idea of smart glasses and I'm definitely very concerned about the implications of their widespread adoption. And yes, most of what we've seen hasn't looked very good.<p>But when I see a headline like "tacky men with ridiculous glasses" I get a sense that the intent is more to persuade via bullying than anything else, which...I dunno. Doesn't feel great!
It also seems incredibly shortsighted. No fashion conscious person would have been caught dead wearing a smartwatch circa 2012, then Apple partnered with Hermes and eventually things changed. There are all sorts of valid complaints against this tech, but fashion is something so ephemeral that it's a silly to act like it is a long-term hindrance to adoption.
No fashion forward person wears an Apple watch. Anyone, who remotely cares about what's on their wrist wears a whoop and a traditional watch.<p>Problem with the Apple Watch is it does too much. They should have never enabled Apps on the Apple Watch. Kept it super simple. I hope they'll come up with a new version with an improved form factor and better battery life soon.
Ignoring the fashion context (to which, no comment), totally agree.<p>I have an Apple Watch SE that I got the battery refurbed after 5 years, 95% of my use is a quick check on my next calendar, setting timers, managing the morning alarm, and tracking medication and exercise. Oh, and constantly putting it into power save mode after I take it off the charger.<p>It's not a cellular model, so the other 5% is basically letting me know my phone has something to tell me. I have in the past tried to put games on it, but purely as a novelty.
I find it to be an acceptable use of mockery, one of the most powerful cultural methods of exposing that the emperor has no clothes
The point of that story was that everyone was going along with something that was obviously nonsense, and the kid who breaks the spell simply tells the truth.<p>In this situation most people don't buy smart glasses because they don't look good or have a killer use case. It's not the same thing.
They are literally deforming his ears, as you can see in this near-profile photo. If you wear these for more than 5-10 minutes at a time you will either find them painfully uncomfortable or you will damage your ear cartilage. The might have worked great as part of an integrated helmet or something, as glasses they completely fail.<p><a href="https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/snap-specs-launch-live-latest-updates" rel="nofollow">https://www.tomsguide.com/news/live/snap-specs-launch-live-l...</a>
it is spiritually the same even if its not exactly the same
I'm not finding it to be any different from "Four eyes!"
In this instance, it's directed at people who are literally at the top of the world, having amassed almost unthinkable power and influence, and want to start a fashion trend specifically to grow their business empires.<p>So yeah, it's a tiny bit different than bullying a classmate for having bad eyesight.
> it's directed at people who are literally at the top of the world<p>The very first sentence in the article associates people who wear these with "pervs".<p>So no, this is not merely directed at "the top of the world".<p>As an aside: VRs were "the cool thing" in the 90's and 00's. They never became practical, and fell out of favor. "Normal" people never stopped mocking those who used them. Now that Meta has made glasses that actually come close to looking normal, tech folks mock back ...? I just don't get it.<p>Yes, I get all the privacy concerns. But making fun because of very subjective reasons like appearance? It undercuts all the privacy concerns.<p>People need to grow up.
zuck is trying to push bad, ugly glasses to profit at the expense of causing nefarious social impact. the blog is mocking the ugliness of the glasses. it represents how out of touch zuck is. i’m not sure how you got to “four eyes” from there
although it's true and funny that rich assholes often have terrible taste, it's important that criticism of pervert glasses doesn't make their ugliness load-bearing. what happens if the next gen looks good, we're suddenly okay with them?
> zuck is trying to push bad, ugly glasses<p>...<p>> i’m not sure how you got to “four eyes” from there<p>I'm guessing you're younger than me. In my youth, having glasses meant being ugly.
It doesn't mean that anymore. But having "smart glasses" does mean "jerk".
i know what it means. you’re projecting something completely inappropriate, i’m guessing from your own life, onto the blogs criticism.
Prescription glasses are a <i>medical device</i> that corrects for a <i>disability</i>.<p>This shit ain't it.<p>Why are you trying so hard to shoehorn inappropriate criticism of people with disabilities... Into appropriate criticism of this technocrap?
But they are ridiculous glasses. They're so big that they're visibly crushing the top of the Snapchat guy's ears. As a lifelong glasses wearer, this is a billboard size red flag.<p>This is an emperor's new clothes kinda situation. You could say 'our royal personage seems to be experiencing a sartorial deficit' or you could say 'the emperor's butt naked.'
I think there’s a difference between full-on “bullying” and what I’d call “blunt criticism”. I think bullying requires an intent to silence or otherwise coerce through fear. Blunt criticism is more about skipping the niceties and saying it plainly, and accepting that your subject might get offended as a result. Calling someone “tacky” is way more in the blunt criticism camp I think. It’s certainly not “nice”, but there’s no way that I read this blog article as trying to change Mark Zuckerberg’s mind through fear. Nobody is getting pilloried for being tacky, and tackiness can even be repositioned as desirable through the lens of nostalgia or similar.
Slips past the filters when “Voyeur glasses let you record your creepy interactions with females” gets flagged.
Does it make you feel like getting them out of spite? Real question.
Real answer: more than I'd like. I am a contrarian who has intentionally worked to temper that impulse.<p>But...nah, not really.<p>I will say though: The only time I know for sure I knew someone had a pair of Meta Ray-Bans was in my kid's youth baseball league; The coach would film the kids batting while he pitched and shared the videos with us. People loved it. There are definitely cases where hands-free video recording would come in handy.
> I get a sense that the intent is more to persuade via bullying than anything else, which...I dunno. Doesn't feel great!<p>Most advertising persuades you with less-than-rational means. It's just fighting fire with fire.<p>And it's quite justified, because in this case, it punches up against a technology with a net-negative social impact.
I, of course, could never confirm intent in an online comment thread, but I suspect that some people like to give themselves permission to be mean.<p>(This suspicion hasn't been lessened by some of the replies I've received.)
They are billionaires, so it’s fine for us to make fun of them (because the joke is on us)
Lack of bullying is exactly why the world is now run by sociopathic dorks like the ones pictured in the article
[dead]
This feels like I'm reading a comment written by anti-video game moms in the early 90s talking about the stupid unfashionable nerds and how they were ushering in a frightening new age of fewer values and greater social isolation.<p>I dunno, I'd love to have elf-like abilities to see systems of energy in the world around me that the human eye can't see, like wind patterns, and be able to zoom in on plants and animals in the garden and woods where I hike. I can't wait to see the skins people create for themselves, just walking around the world on holidays with fun appearances. And I'm excited for all the identity crises coming. Philosophy as physical reality.<p>But I guess this is as diverse of a human experience as y'all are willing to tolerate. :/
That’s not what you see when you wear the glasses, you will see a symbol, a series of symbols, a facsimile of life that you will convince yourself is real.<p>It’s not elf like, it’s not magic, it’s not a sense, quite the opposite, it’s replacing sensing and processing with reading. The death of aptitude, prowess, and the human experience.
> replacing sensing and processing with reading. The death of aptitude, prowess, and the human experience.<p>Replacing something all animals do with something uniquely human, perhaps the most important thing that sets us apart, is the death of the human experience?
> That’s not what you see when you wear the glasses, you will see a symbol, a series of symbols, a facsimile of life that you will convince yourself is real.<p>aka the "Digital photos aren't real photos!" argument.
it’s not wrong. it’s what is unique about the AR medium in particular. “heightening reality” is whats in discussion. we can talk about it, but its not the sane discussion as photos, or video games, or VR.
<p><pre><code> > a facsimile of life that you will convince yourself is real
</code></pre>
This already describes our base experience of "reality". It's a predictive sensory hallucination.
I wouldn’t say that “what if the world was digital!” is some kind of apex creative insight.<p>More practically the people in power <i>need</i> to own real estate. The metaverse, VR, AR, you’re giving these builders way too much credit by connecting it to creative expression.<p>They want to own the land.
Technically speaking, yeah, those things are cool. What’s not cool (anymore?) is that people like Zuck and other similar billionaires are behind such tech. I didn’t give a shit of the millionaires of the 80s/90s… but these billionaires of today, simply suck big time. So fuck them
I'm actually looking forward to AR glasses getting more mainstream. My dream is glasses with displays that show live captions for people speaking. My auditory processing kinda sucks, and live captions would be a huge help in conversations. I'd also see the appeal of a HUD with some basic information like compass direction, clock, and weather, but really just captions would be awesome.<p>But all of the mainstream glasses are basically just bad earbuds and cameras. The idea of permanent cameras on my face feels creepy as hell, and there are a million better options for earbuds. It also feels ridiculous to get a device with a permanent connection to one single company's AI. It's like a dedicated Hulu button on a smart TV's remote, but several cranked several notches dumber.
Industrial use cases will be huge once software+AI are firing on all cylinders.<p>I’m a skeptic on the consumer side of this being a runaway hit like smartphones.<p>Enterprise and industrial and the trades use cases in physical space is big.
You should be skeptical of industrial use case as well. Allowing any device with internet access and a camera on it onto the floor of most electronics manufacturing facility is a nonstarter, phones, smart glasses, or anything of that sort. The other thing is, smart glasses buy nothing over having PCs/assembly line machines with screens for HMI, and standard operating procedures can be printed on paper. Also, if you are actually an operator on an assembly line, wearing these glasses for 10 hours a day is the last thing you want at your job.<p>The case for them gets even worse for heavy manufacturing industry/trades, since you have to think about safety and liability now: what if these smart glasses fall into the machines and cause an accident? Can these smartglasses can withstand the environmental conditions in the workshop?
Industrial use-cases could end up as fundamentally different product, ex:<p>* Guiding someone through a complex assembly, it's going to be on pretty much all shift, with effects on thermal management and battery capacity.<p>* You'll want to swap batteries so that it can be used by another shift, which will take priority over fashion.<p>* It may also need to incorporate positioning markers and QR codes and external sensor data from a particular environment, sometimes taking preference over any general object recognition.<p>* Facial recognition won't figure very much.<p>* Ruggedness and repairability may be prioritized over miniaturization.<p>* Little to no tolerance for letting the vendor have footage or vague "telemetry" when trade secrets are involved.<p>In other words, it's like kind of like how the design/use/adoption of freight trains isn't necessarily indicative of the design/use/adoption of pickup trucks. Sure, they both move large things on wheels using diesel power, but...
I think something like this might be implemented as part of the helmet for jobs that require it, definitely not built into glasses that will likely always be ridiculous just like riding penny-farthing is kinda ridiculous now.
> * Ruggedness and repairability may be prioritized over miniaturization.<p>repairability? in what trend are you seeing that being a thing? they'll just make you buy an expensive warranty/insurance plan for replacements. i really don't see tech allowing for repairability
Job sites don't want downtime. Companies aren't going to futz around with a bin of spare replacement glasses if they freeze or the battery dies every four hours.
Industrial and consumer electronics are <i>entirely different</i> industries. Industry isn't typically tolerant of the kind of extended warranty bullshit runaround that consumer brands employ.<p>For an industrial customer, your thing either needs to be repairable <i>right NOW</i> or it needs to be cheap enough that you can have disposable stock on hand. If your delicate widget can only be repaired by hand-delivering it to nude virgins on a mountaintop, you are not getting that 500k unit contract, you're getting shown to the door.<p>That is unless you're literally IBM and/or have monopolized your class of utterly indespensible widget. Only <i>then</i> do you have the power to tell Amazon to fuck off and send a warranty claim.
Are you sure?<p>Wasn’t HoloLens (from Microsoft) squarely aimed at this use case? What went wrong there?
In the long run it could spread from commercial to consumer scenarios; perhaps extra fast if there was adoption in the services sector.
I disagree. The idea humans will be in the loop and the best way to accelerate things is to teach them slightly faster is fundamentally flawed. Future industrial will be automated, the only humans who will need comprehension will be the maintenance staff or management, and they will have familiarity and/or alternate tooling rendering glasses a noncritical value add at best.<p>By the time that rolls around, this stuff will be available for cents on the dollar, just as Shenzhen showrooms were full of AR/VR hardware in 2015 and the industry has gone nowhere for 30+ years.
It would be amazing to be able to look at an equipment nameplate and pull up a cutsheet, installation and operations manual, etc.
<i>Industrial use cases will be huge once software+AI are firing on all cylinders.</i><p>Industry has had entire VR rooms since at least the 1990's, when I saw one in use.<p>AR glasses are toys compared to what the big oil companies have been using to visualize underground strata since before Facebook et.al. even existed.<p>Pretending that they're going to revolutionize the industrial space is just grasping at straws to justify a gadget that nobody other than tech bros and perverts want.
The accessibility features for blind and low-sight individuals is life-changing. These are available already for Meta glasses, and I am very hopeful that the Google Audio glasses will be as good.<p>The problem is not the glasses.
I keep getting this ad for... Meta? glasses that shows a guy at a concert I guess filming it with his glasses. It zooms out and everyone around him has their phone in the air but not him because he's super cool.<p>It's like one of those puzzle images where you're supposed to find 20 things wrong with this picture.
Why did this site prompt me for permission to send notifications? Did my browser just do something weird? Seems strange
Tons of sites do that, because everyone who designs websites is a moron.
He doesn't like Zuckerberg's glasses, but he likes using his same dirty tactics!
same question
These people have no taste.<p>But I must admit, similar things regarding style were said about the AirPods and here we are.
Since when was looking ridiculous a hindrance to being fashionable?
links to pages which ask if they can send you notifications should be insta-flagged + banned on hn
> Sorry for exposing you to this image<p>The photo captions are hilarious: "Style icons"; "Ahead of his time"
I would encourage anyone who has a chance to book a Vision Pro demo at an Apple Store. It changed my mind in the following way:<p>Previously, I thought AVPs were expensive, ridiculous and useless. Now I think they are expensive and still mostly ridiculous and useless.<p>I saw the immersive movies and the immersive sports experiences. If they had AVP support for MLB/NBA games in my market I would absolutely buy a subscription. I think they have Lakers now but I don’t care about that.<p>From what I understand, there’s still a chicken and egg problem for Meta and Apple with regards to content and devices. It sucks because both companies are flush and could fix it if they wanted to.<p>The device itself still costs too much though.
The new Google ones don't look too bad.
Yesterday's story about airpods causing wearers to isolate themselves and become unhappier comes to mind. Headphones in your ears, display in your glasses... about the only way to connect with anyone will be to smell really bad I guess.
I can just imagine people walking around in a daze while instagram reels play endlessly in their meta spy glasses.
The "smell" will be a pepper sprey! Why people can not just leave strangers alone? Always soliciting attention and "look at me" attitude!<p>Most people are not "isolating themselves", they have stuff to do and places to be. They do not want to talk about some animal, or current issue of today!
Somebody saying hello to you has you reaching for pepper spray?
That doesn't sound distinct from "isolating themselves". Some people actually enjoy connecting with people.
My brother in christ, what are you even talking about
[dead]
Zuckerberg looks like Woody Allen in that photo. :)
I'm rooting for this general class of technology as a platform for sensory augmentation for the blind. I don't know exactly what sonic encoding of spatial information is exactly ideal — I suspect it's something echo-like, only slowed-down — but it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to develop it and support it on commodity hardware. Please no Meta login, though.
As someone who wears glasses, I hate glasses. Yet these wears are never designed for those with glasses so you have to buy add ons to ensure you can see out these glasses.<p>To have eyesight without glasses would be bliss, minus laser surgery.
Agreed, I can't even remember to wear my prescription eyeglasses that help me see and not get a headache. No chance I'm going to wear worse, heavier, more expensive glasses so I can take pictures and have AI talk to me 24/7.<p>I guess I'll move to a cabin in the woods.
I agree that VR goggles hit a ceiling due to simple inconvenience. Whether smart glasses will suffer the same fate is a very interesting question.
But the article would be much more effective without the cheap “tech bro” ridicule. Ultimately, after calling every product ugly, the analysis put forward by this author comes down to “short battery life and privacy concerns”.
My wife wore Meta glasses (we borrowed a pair from a friend) on a visit to the Vancouver aquarium and they were frankly amazing. You could just hit a button and say something like “what’s that orange fish in the back?” and it just tells you and then you can read stuff off the plate or get more information if you need.<p>I get that this kind of dunk polemic is popular among a certain crowd but it’s more incantatory than persuasive. For the rest of us who don’t particularly dress stylishly or whatever I guess it’s fine. I can be tacky. Not the greatest sin.
I read in another thread on another site that the Snapchat SPECs were targeted at developers. If not are they going to market with what Evan is attempting to wear at over $2K ?? Insights appreciated, NSC.
> sold a few million camera glasses for pervs<p>I stopped reading.<p>If you want to convince people, try to meet them where they're at.
> sold a few million camera glasses for pervs<p>I think that’s a reasonable characterisation of what people think of these devices.<p>Even if not strictly for perving it’s still seriously uncool to go around pointing a camera at people 100% of the time. So maybe ‘glasses for inconsiderate people who are sometimes also pervs’ is a better description?
> I think that’s a reasonable characterisation of what people think of these devices.<p>It's not a reasonable characterization of the people that <i>wear</i> these devices, and that's what the sentence is implying.<p>> Even if not strictly for perving it’s still seriously uncool to go around pointing a camera at people 100% of the time.<p>Isn't it great, then, that these glasses don't do that?<p>Years ago I lived in a country where your type of comment is precisely what much of society said about smartphones. Taking one out in a social event brought a lot of angry stares.<p>Welcome to that demographic.
> Isn't it great, then, that these glasses don't do that?<p>As long as there’s a lens on them the perception remains. Ala panopticon. Particularly the idea that not knowing when you are being watched means you must assume you are being watched all the time. In the case of your glasses this maps 1 to 1. Your camera is there, it is pointing forwards at all times. We do not know what you are or are not filming.<p>Regarding your smart phone analogy. Which seems to make the point that you shouldn’t argue against the negative aspects of something that may later become popular, I have a story too. Before smart phones were a thing, my school attempted to ban the ‘camera phone’. Which was a pretty reasonable thing to do in that context and at that time. History shows that this was a good idea, even if the levee broke later with the smart phone which has been an absolute negative in school hours.
> Isn't it great, then, that these glasses don't do that?<p>Are the cameras somehow removable? Is there an obvious lens cap? If not, then everyone in your field of view is at the business end of a camera lens all of the time, and might as well be filming.<p>Even if I trust the wearer of these glasses to not be constantly recording, I certainly don't trust the manufacturer of them.
What country is that, sounds amazing?
Ya.. if they can't admit they're fantastic for cycling or other activities where you want hands free access to some of your phones capabilities and don't want your ears obscured, then they aren't being intellectually honest in the argument. I think that's what most people actually get them for.
I think passthrough has no future. VR games are fun, immersive applications are real, AR adds a dimension to that but without the immersive applications tech bros will keep failing at this one.
VR is for games, AR is for businesses.<p>I've seen legit-useful AR apps for doctors/surgeons, dentists, firefighters, law enforcement, warehouse workers, etc. Basically anything where you need to be out in the real world doing something that would benefit from having situational-awareness of other non-visual conditions. This is a pretty wide swath of professions, with a lot of potential to save lives. Just having a patient's vital signs projected while a surgeon operates could prevent many deaths on the operating table, along with lots of fuck-ups like leaving a scalpel behind in the patient.
I did quite a bit of work in VR about a decade ago. The VR vs AR delineation was a constant conversation back then too. In meetings, at the bar, and so on: “This VR sure isn’t great but just you wait, AR will be the good one”…<p>But in reality it’s splitting hairs. Similar to discussing which tone pot values are better for your Stratocaster. Most people just don’t care, nor should they! “Stop trying to make fetch happen” as they say.
I’m inclined to believe in a future a bit less binary and more MR in general. Devices that can handle a variety of experiences from 1% augmented to 100% virtual.
> AR adds<p>what really worries me would be AR ads
[dead]
This is so much like something of the amazing series Silicon Valley. Fucking billionaires.
I hope theft deters people from wearing these perv glasses. They're easier to nick than phones since owner isn't gripping them at all. I'd tolerate a fair amount of crime and public disorder as part of this tradeoff, like how we keep predators around to control pests.