Yes, the camera isn't socially acceptable. But glasses are. So they could've had a HUD that only responded to location- and audio-based cues - map with directions, walking tour, alerts that people would otherwise look down at their phone (or smartwatch) for, etc.

They could've made that work and avoided the stigma they ended up facing, until adding a camera was more reasonable.

Would that featureset have been that useful? Maybe not, but then was the Google Glass we got that useful? Didn't seem so.

> Smart glasses with no way to get visual input from the environment would be a much less useful product.

The only real use for Glass was a HUD + low quality camera, considering the positioning of the actual display. You don't need a camera for a HUD. Now if Glass went after augmented reality, then I'd totally agree with you.

Agreed. The camera never had any truly compelling use case - even the most basic one, taking a picture, was not actually a UX improvement over taking out your phone and doing it, especially considering the leaps and bounds by which phone camera (both hardware software) has improved.

There were some cool tech demos that exploited the camera rather impressively - facial recognition for one, but all of these are technological curiosities rather than mass-market useful. There was never a use case that seemed relevant to the everyday user where the camera was really all that useful.

I do think the camera contributed substantially to the failure of the product. More than the existence of the camera was how it was handled - no record/activity light as has been customary on many such devices, and the design of it felt viscerally like a hidden camera.

Which isn't to say Google intended to create a hidden camera, but in trying to make it blend and look like normal glasses it made the camera seem less upfront, more dishonest, and more intrusive than, say, a guy who is literally wearing a camera on his head.

I own a Glass, and I have to disagree, the camera was a very large improvement over using your phone. Hands free use and no lag between wanting to take a picture and taking a picture (winking to take a pic) make a huge difference in utility. I got some great photos that I couldn't have gotten otherwise while traveling with it.

Too bad it didn't have many other uses, and made being out in public kind of awkward.

The press made a big deal of the camera creeping people out, but in practice, the reaction was much more curiosity and interest than fear. I think the press just wanted something to write about, and in the absence of revolutionary abilities and interesting use cases, they wrote about its perceived flaws and did a bit of fear mongering.

Doomed is worse than less useful!