Apple working on iPhone-killer: GLASSES!?

[Darren Dirt]

http://business.financialpost.com/2012/12/03/apple-is-quietly-working-to-destroy-the-iphone/

All the way back in February of this year, Apple's iPhone business alone surpassed the size of Microsoft's entire business, reaching nearly $25-billion in annual revenue versus Microsoft's ~$20-billion.

At this very moment, Apple is working on technology that, if successfully developed, will cannibalize and ultimately destroy that iPhone business.

Just like Google and Microsoft, Apple is working on computerized glasses. Computerized glasses, are, at the moment, the technology that is most likely to bring the smartphone era to an end.

They fit into an obvious pattern, where computers have been getting smaller and closer to our faces since their very beginning. First they were in big rooms, then they sat on desktops, then they sat on our laps, and now they're in our palms. Next they'll be on our faces.

In [a] patent filing, Apple calls the gadget  a "head-mounted display" or "HMD."

Some highlights from the description:

An HMD is "a display device that a person wears on the head in order to have video information directly displayed in front of the eyes."
-"The optics are typically embedded in a helmet, glasses, or a visor, which a user can wear."
-"HMDs can be used to view a see-through image imposed upon a real world view, thereby creating what is typically referred to as an augmented reality."

Apple says HMDs can be used...
-To "display relevant tactical information, such as maps or thermal imaging data."
-To "provide stereoscopic views of CAD schematics, simulations or remote sensing applications."
-For "gaming and entertainment applications."

[Lazybones]

Apple has no fear of cannibalizing its own products especially if it believes the new product will open new markets...

ipod->iphone->ipad->ipad mini all took some existing users away from a previous product but added all new users.

[Darren Dirt]

"Google Glass" is a wearable, sellable reality -- and now just "Glass"

Sergey Brin, Google co-founder and head of the company's Glass project ... wore the Glass device as he spoke at a TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., on Wednesday. He made it clear that his vision for the future of search is that people won't have to make queries or disconnect from personal interactions to get the information they need.

...Google called for explorer applications, the company also released a video showing people using the glasses while skydiving, dancing, playing with their children and riding a roller coaster.

The video also shows off the Glass interface, which is a translucent pane on the right eye glass that shows options for taking photos, shooting videos, getting directions, sharing, search and showing maps with graphic overlays.

Brin isn't comfortable with staring down into a smartphone screen.

"Is this the way you're meant to interact with other people?" he asked conference attendees. "Is the future of connection just people walking around hunched up, looking down, rubbing a featureless piece of glass? It's kind of emasculating. Is this what you're meant to do with your body?"

The glasses, which Google noted are now called Glass instead of Google Glass, also are designed to enable users to activate all these options with voice control.

[Lazybones]

As demoed Google glass is so far a camcorder and GPS that makes you look like a total dork.

When the HUD abilities reach something like http://www.wikitude.com/ I will be interested.

[Mr. Analog]

I read this earlier today and arched an eyebrow, I mean when someone looks at their phone it's very clear they aren't listening to you, but with a HUD like Google Glass who knows.

You may be talking face-to-face but you may NOT be talking face-to-face (if you get my meaning).

Personally I think this is DOA technology.

[Darren Dirt]

As demoed Google glass is so far a camcorder and GPS that makes you look like a total dork.

When the HUD abilities reach something like http://www.wikitude.com/ I will be interested.

Google Glass is gonna shake your skull!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9843176/Google-Glass-uses-human-skull-to-transmit-sound.html "bone conduction audio" (rhythm's gonna get ya!)

[Mr. Analog]

CURSE YOU JUICY FRUIT!

Anyway, any time I read stories about this stuff I think of the chairs from Wall-E where everyone is zipping around and completely absorbed in their HUDs and ignoring the world around them... prescient is the word I believe.

[Darren Dirt]

the chairs from Wall-E where everyone is zipping around and completely absorbed in their HUDs and ignoring the world around them... prescient is the word I believe.

on a related note, here's an even darker "Borg Collective" perspective on this tech:

Wear these special glasses and gain new powers. Access the Cloud in a microsecond. Step up your efficiency quotient. Merge with Glass. Experience androidal existence at a new level. Your own mind and imagination are minor qualities. What you really want is a ticket to miles and miles of useful information and you want it now, wherever you are, whatever you're doing.

...

The world will be your stand-alone object of affection, no matter what events are occurring beyond your need to comprehend them. Glass will assess that need-to-know and wall you off from the inessentials, and you will assent and agree and comply. Willingly.

Looking back on today's world, you'll see an attenuated Dickens story line of no importance at all. How could those people have stood for the interruptions, the postponements, the false trails, the dead-ends? How could they have put up with the dreary elongated social interactions? How could they have accepted the tonnage of irrelevant information?

Goodbye, independent thought, goodbye creativity and critical thinking ; hello instant auto-pilot never-ending info-consumerism?

[Darren Dirt]

some basic etiquette/rules video
http://www.reuters.com/video/2013/05/17/the-dos-and-donts-of-google-glass?videoId=242870991&videoChannel=5


But still, the question: cool or creepy?

[Mr. Analog]

Dorky

[Lazybones]

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/5/20/4339446/google-glass-apps-everything-you-can-do-right-now

Basically everything it does right now. 

And I am still not interested.

[Thorin]

Okay, from that article: "a clever troll can still find ways to prompt a disgusting Google Image search if you're not careful ? we only barely dodged a "horse diarrhea" query at the office the other day".  HAHA.

Have you noticed how many white men wear Google Glass?  http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/

[Mr. Analog]

That blog reasserts my earlier statement.

[Darren Dirt]

Have you noticed how many white men wear Google Glass?  http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/

separated at birth?

http://whitemenwearinggoogleglass.tumblr.com/image/50437419272

Spoiler

http://@%&#yeahphilipseymourhoffman.tumblr.com/post/215825817

(or ESPECIALLY http://mockingjay.net/2012/05/17/casting-fire-fan-casting-philip-seymour-hoffman-as-plutarch/ )

[close]

[Darren Dirt]

http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/16/whos-afraid-of-google-glass/

http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/26/comic-xkcd-nails-google-glass-critics-in-congress