First off, Snapchat (Snap?) isn't Google - their brands are completely different at least among the target audience. Glasses of some sort are inevitably going to be a fashion accessory with extra functionality, and Google is just too uncool. They are the company that wants to knows everything - every interaction refreshes that impression, from Street View vans to Search.
Second, it's sold as a camera on your face, instead of a computer on your face that can do things like recording a video. Even if it's the same hardware, this does make a difference. Everyone understands pseudo-mechanical functions like "press a button to take a 10 second video". Unless the wearer is mashing a button by their face, you can assume it's off. Computers and phones? One might as well assume it's recording video if the operator has the camera pointed at you. The average HNer has a good mental model of how a computer works, but the average person sees it as a magic-infused black box.
The price point looks reasonable, I assume the goal here is strong sales for the holidays. Would expect some celebrities or whoever to be spotted wearing these in the next few months.
Exactly why comparisons to google glass miss the point. Totally different products and userbases
When you are surrounded by the superficial, building things for the superficial what else can you produce other than the superficial. It is sad as hell to watch. It isn't ironic to me that Trump is going to be leading this bunch of innovators soon.
-CRISPR, gene editing
-iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.
-re-usable space rockets (Spacex and Blue Origin)
-IBM's Watson and Deep Blue, Google's AlphaGo
-LIGO's detection of gravitational waves
-MIT's improvements in lithium ion technology
-NASA's exploratory discoveries on Mars, Mercury, Pluto, Saturn, etc.
-Google
-Wikipedia
-Facebook
-Tesla
-Uber
Hey, immigration is great! Steve Jobs was also the son of an immigrant..
A camera at eye level is extremely useful for many reasons, snapchat is just one, excellent use case. In my own life, I have a use for that specific tool, and am glad it exists - Google Glass was never widely released. And the price is great - at $129 this seems amazingly affordable.
I expect it to be a hit.
It's a nice way of thinking of it and hopefully it's true one day, but unless "our" means the typical HN reader, I don't think we're there yet. Consider that in the US in 2015, 43.1 million people were living in poverty (13.5% poverty rate) [1], and income inequality continues to rise [2].
[1] https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/p60-25...
The actual problems that do exist in the U.S and the rest of the developing world are social problems. No amount of big disruptive thinking (by tech folk) is going to solve them.
If you look at SV's attempt to solve medical problems, you start to see where regulation and oversight are necessary for the difficult problems. Then you see why large governments, large companies, and exceptionally smart people with the backing of those organizations are the ones who need to solve the problem.
On top of all that, there's so often no actual intent to solve those problems. Poverty in the US is a big problem because the people who are capable of solving it just don't care enough to. In the case of government, voters are too self interested in the short term to push for it - how many times do you see complaints about hard earned tax dollars being used for poor people?
Even when the tech people do try to solve a social problem because the public has decided to care about it, attempts are misled and ineffective. If you look at the problem of diversity, companies are tryin to solve their problems at demand side. Big companies compete for female engineers to boost their numbers and smaller companies can't match their offers. This looks good on Apple's diversity report, but the problem is disguised, not fixed. Actual solutions, like encouraging women to become interested in STEM when they're young are few and far between.
So yes, I'd like tech innovators to focus on solving non-problems with life enriching innovations (slack, twitch, twitter, facebook, steam, VR, AR, bluetooth audio, etc) then waste time on misguided attempts that are way out of range for them.
I'm not saying this as a criticism, just explaining the comment thread.
Is this really what this product does?
People aren't going to wear this, because they don't want to creep out people by having a camera pointed at them all the time.
This was the real problem with Google Glass.
Also, everyone already carries around a camera in their smartphone. They aren't going to add another.
So, it's pretty brilliant for Snapchat to be making this sort of thing. Probably the devices to hit the market will be given to a very carefully curated set of people, and ubiquitous surveillance by camera-glasses will become fashionable.
I probably show up in hundreds of videos from bike commuting over the Brooklyn Bridge. It doesn't matter. I'm guessing 99.99% of the videos go unwatched anyway.
That's because they cut the ones who don't want to be filmed out.
> It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter to you. And you know what, that it doesn't matter to you doesn't matter to me, so this gains nothing.
26 is young for me now, even if that 26 yo person has a couple of children that think that their parents are as old as me.
From my perspective, that's a feature not a problem. It's obvious what you're doing, and of you try to photograph something really inappropriate, I can always slap the phone out of your hand. With snapchat (or google glass) style specs, I essentially need to attack your face to stop you filming, a far more aggressive action. I'd love to be able to bank on people knowing when not to film, but theres always one shitbag at every emergancy callout trying to get a really gnarly shot of someone elses broken arm so they can get dank internet points from their friends.
on next years model?
on next years cheap chinese imitation?
Nope.
At least the Japanese were too polite to say anything.
You can bet on this (and most tech products) failing hard.
I obviously don't agree with you based on my previous comment but I could be wrong. I will say this though that we all vastly underestimate what people want to do and share with each other. This is the company that spawned the self deleting video. I thought that was the dumbest idea ever. My point is privacy is something they thought of and this isn't as dumb as it looks.
This product could evolve to become more than meets the eye. No pun intended.
People who are 30 are going to be weirded out by this. People who are 18 are not. They already have the assumption that anything they do in public might be filmed and shared on social media. And they want to be able to quickly film anything they're doing in public and put it on social media.
Then again, even if I know someone is pointing an empty gun at me, I'm still of the mindset "don't point that at me!"
Normal people would hate this.
This only appeals to a certain tiny nerd demographic, the kind that thought Google Glass was originally a good idea.
Using your own example:
Before the iPhone, you had seperate: GPS Camera Flashlight MP3 Player and many other things
With the iPhone, you got all of these and a nice compact package that you could carry with you at all times. Thats not to say feature creep can't be a problem, but more that sticking to hard and fast rules like 'do one thing but do that well' is largely an oversimplification of the world to make the world more comprehendible to those that don't want to look at the real nuance of products/markets etc.
As a productivity device it's weak, but as a toy it looks pretty fun and I'm amazed at the sea of people screaming about what a stupid idea it is and how it'll never catch on. If I had disposable income I could certainly see myself buying one and playing with it.
I wonder if it has any privacy safeguards, like a red led indicating recording in progress?
Glass's problem was that it was a device that you were supposed to wear all the time, and a camera.
Glass as a AR demonstrator is doing quite well as a beta product for enterprise. Augmedix comes to mind.
It's better because it focuses on the one thing that is really easy to do well. It does not try to do everything at once. It doesn't try to give you apps in your glasses and everything under the sun. This is the right approach to products. Do one thing but do that well.
Before you criticize me think back to the original iPhone, it didn't start with an App Store and everything under the sun like the iwatch did. And yet the iPhone is an icon and the watch is no big deal.