> It can't do GPS without using your phone's cellular data or a mobile hotspot.
This isn't just a GG problem. This is general Google problem, and something that seems to be growing. Until a year ago I had an old Nokia E5 that could tell you where you were and give you directions to anywhere without being "online". Now I have an Android which refuses to let me use the GPS in anyway unless I am connected to be big G and have given them permission to track me.
Aren't there any offline GPS apps for Android? I use one on iOS. It was 25€ and works without WiFi or Data enabled. Without the AGPS it takes a while to see satellites but it works.
4 isn't particularly surprising. People rightly believe that they have the right to decide who records them. A stranger walking in with a camera when they're in an intimate/family/business situation feels incredibly intrusive. If you walked in with your phone held out in front of you as if you were recording you'd get the same reaction.
What's interesting is that some recording is acceptable to people. A friend researches lifelogging (methods to record your life experience). He has worn a Sensecam (a device that takes still pictures every 30 seconds all day long, with a button for 'I am using the restroom now') with no complaints from anyone. He explains what he's doing and they are fine (it's very visible hanging around his neck). He asked a student to wear a Sensecam with a sound recorder and noone wanted to be anywhere near that guy, because sound was a record they could be held to. I see the potential in such devices, but there is a balance that has to be respected, between the public and the private.
Sounds like a fun way to remember the details of each day. Could also be a way to get decent snapshots without fumbling for your phone, since the frequency is so high.
I think the Narrative camera looks nicer and is smaller than Sensecam. http://getnarrative.com
It's got a couple of 'outside research' uses, the one I think is least trivial is as a tool for Alzheimer's suffers to review their short-term memory. It makes a real difference to their quality of life, improves their recall and gives them more confidence around their memory.
This reaction seems very luddite to me. I'm not saying I don't understand it. Rather I'm saying it's a product of now and will have to change over time.
If some blind guy walked in with his Google Glass connected to his brain so he could see and was ask to remove them do you think the "please remove your glasses" would be acceptable? "But sir, I can't see without these as I'm blind. Are you really going to discriminate against blind people?".
Cameras embedded in eyes are coming. First they'll be for the blind. Then they'll be better than real eyes and probably be used for soldiers. Then they'll become fashion/must have along the same lines as a smartphone is today for most people. When friends can all see in infrared in the dark and you can't or can zoom in and read something small thing 600 meters away, or can drive through fog with their augmented reality eyes or recall whatever they need on demand few people will stay un-augmented.
I get that people don't want to be recorded. I just see it as they have no right not to be recorded because they have no right to choose how I remember things. If we invented a tech that could read my memory and produce a video then what? They've already invented digital memory that can be connect to brains. So if my brain was digital would that make a difference? If you don't want me to see you don't go out in public. Past that you have no right to decide how I remember you. Whether it's with my memory of you, a sketch I made, a picture I took or, a video I recorded. Those are all just augmented versions of me.
>> If you don't want me to see you don't go out in public.
Going out in public should not mean that my activities are automatically recorded and published by anyone that wants them. It's not like I have an expectation of privacy, but I do have an expectation that in general it's none of your business and I really don't want to be recorded, tagged and uploaded.
There's a huge conversation to be had about anonymity in society and freedom from pervasive surveillance, and it's nothing to do with being a luddite.
I think you totally sidestepped his argument though.
If everything everywhere is being recorded by someone, such as memory recording or a blind persons implants, who are you to say you can't be included?
They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world, which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have the right to say he cannot remember it?
Sure, it's slightly different than these days of a person with a camera, but it's an extended concept. One that is important to think about, imo.
Days will change in the near future, being recorded won't feel special. With so many devices, so many recordings.. it just won't matter. You'll have to invent some type of scrambler if you still care, when that day hits.
>. They're not invading your privacy, your home.. they're in a shared world, which is just as much theirs as it is yours. You two share it. So do you have the right to say he cannot remember it?
It's not about memory, it's about pervasive uploading, tagging and tracking. It's about amalgamation of masses of data on a worldwide scale, such that every detail of everyone's life is collected and aggregated by massive companies, fuelled by well-meaning idiots handing them video feeds with associated timestamps, GPS locations etc etc.
That's not a world I want to live in, where people record everything, feed it via google and facebook, and suddenly a third party company in another country knows everything you do, without your ever needing to interact with them.
Please get it through your head IT'S NOT JUST THE RECORDING
(though that is offensive enough)
I think calling it a 'shared world' is making implications about the use of the recordings. If everyone is recording everything do I have access to all of that? If they catch me looking stupid as I run do I have the right to find/share/look at footage of them picking their nose?
It's not that it feels 'special', it's that there are implications to asymmetric information gathering that are uncomfortable and difficult. Saying 'society will just change so the technology doesn't feel weird anymore' is maybe not the best way to tackle those issues.
But they are already. If I'm out I public and see someone do something I'm free to report that . "Hey, I just saw some guy totally embarrass himself doing XYZ". What's the difference between me writing it or sketching it vs recording it except one of degree?
The augmented me in the future will have digital memory and digital eyes and I'll be able to make and share perfect copies of those memories but they're my memories to share just like the are today and have been since forever
Actually--I think costumes will be socially acceptable in the future. I know some of you are laughing, but in great
Britain a lot of people are tired of being photographed wherever they go. I personally don't like to be photographed. I guess I getting older, but I liked it when
cams were too expensive to put up Everywhere. I've thought
about putting up a website devoted to selling costumes and anonymity, but don't want to cater to just smart sociopaths.
Society disagrees with you. Current societies have a rule that I have in most cases a right to be not recorded by you, even in public spaces. This is not always made a law, but is a general norm of society.
Your hypotheticals about digital memories: we will cross that bridge when we get there.
My impression is these days society doesn't care about recording in public spaces unless you're actually following someone around with a camera without their consent. There were similar objections when camera phones first came out, but people eventually realised that just having the camera doesn't mean you're recording everything around you. I suspect there will be a similar realisation with glass.
Sometimes it's not about what you're doing, but what you can be seen to be doing.
Objections about camera phones have subsided because people understand them better. Unless someone is pointing the phone at you, which is usually an obvious action and not something that is widely done covertly, you aren't being photographed. But there are still concerns: I'm about to go vote in an election where there will almost certainly be "no camera" signs up at the polling station and specific advice against taking selfies that might inadvertently contravene laws about disclosing who voted for whom.
You have no such guarantees with a camera that by design is always looking out with the wearer and doesn't advertise whether it's recording or not.
Yes. I agree. Our need/want for privacy is generally being eroded as we interact with new technology. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing. We get to judge continuously each available technology - old and new . Current consensus is that Google glass is creepy. Future consensus might be different.
Society doesn't disagree with me. People report with their memory what they see other people do all the time without permission of the person their reporting about. They've been doing that since communication started, long before cameras, long before even pens and paper.
The only difference is in the future I'll have augmented eyes and an augmented brain and be able to share perfect digital copies of my memories. Society will realize it's the same as it's always been. Those people trying to be thought police and telling me what I can and can't remember and how I can and can't remember and who I can share my memories with will be seen just as silly as they are today for non-augmented memories.
If some blind guy walked in with his Google Glass connected to his brain so he could see and was ask to remove them do you think the "please remove your glasses" would be acceptable? "But sir, I can't see without these as I'm blind. Are you really going to discriminate against blind people?".
Now that's a whopper of a strawman argument. I'm impressed.
The 'seeing' argument isn't important. It's the 'recording' bit that people disagree with. If a blind man went around recording everything his device 'saw' and uploaded it somewhere, sure, people would quite reasonably complain. This is (presumably) why the equivalent aural device, a cochlear implant, doesn't come with Dragon Naturally Speaking 10.
I record things with my memory all day long. Today I saw a girl who looked about 23 with pony tails in a blue sweater ride the 10:47am J train from station X downtown. She bordered the 3rd car, sat next to a guy with red pants on and started playing Candy Crush Saga". She got off at the same top as me and I saw her walk into the Museum of Sex on 5th Ave".
In the future I'll have augmented my brain and my eyes and instead of having to write what I wrote above I'll just post some video. Same memories. You don't have a right to tell me how I remember them nor how I share them nor who I share them with.
Everyone would be ok with blind people keeping their augmented reality glasses on, the same way guide dogs get special treatment today. Why does it have to be an all or nothing thing?
It's not luddite to not want to be recorded. On the contrary, it is rude to assume that everyone consents to your recording in casual public settings. Perhaps regulations could be introduced that devices must display a red light when recording, which would at least give notice that recording is taking place. Maybe there could even be a wireless protocol where you can set a "do not record" flag for yourself, analogous to the "do not track" flag for web browsers.
It's luddite not to realize you're already recorded in the memories of everyone who saw you today and that in the future when their eyes and brain are digitally augmented nothing will have changed except the fidelity of their memories. They'll still see you. If they feel like it they'll still tell others what they saw you do or how you looked or where you were. That they happen to be digitally augmented will be irrelevant.
It doesn't help that Google Glass is synonymous with an entire ecosystem of related technology. An assistance device for a disabled person is completely different to a translation device or a POV camera for a cyclist. Yet we tie them together into a single monolithic product that is both extremely bland and slightly creepy. I would much rather have an ecosystem of cheap low power devices that do one thing well. It is far to early to bundle everything into a single device.
Recording and remembering are not the same thing. You cannot publish, replay, run algorithms on, .. a memory, this should be pretty obvious? Invading peoples privacy by recording them is not part of your rights. It has been possible for quite a while now to record people -- it has never been okey without their consent -- just because "new" technologies allow sneakier ways todo so doesn't magically make it okey.
What do you call non-fiction books and newspaper? They're people's memories transcribed. Some reporter watches the president do X and then wrote that down. That's recording.
Here's an example of a recording I made today in my head. I was on the way to work. I saw a blue chevy license #E17HV2 cut me off and then proceed to go down the freeway at around 80mph. A police officer was near by and sped after him. A few minutes later I saw he'd been pulled over by the cop."
That recording was in my brain. I just shared with with you. The guy speeding has no right to tell me I can't remember it. He has no right to tell me I can't share it (which I just did).
Video is the same thing just higher fidelity. Augmented me with digital eyes and digital memory is still me, same memories, same rights.
I am surprised by all the down votes you got. To add to what you wrote, if someone is really hell-bent on recording surreptitiously in public, they have long had (cheaper) options such as these: http://www.spybase.com/Body-Worn-Spy-Cameras-s/101.htm
I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
To me, one of Glass's biggest problem has always been its looks. But this isn't an iPhone on your head. We can't compare this to any polished products anywhere. It's a cellphone in a briefcase.
'Would you want a wearable computer on your head' ?
- Answer will be no, generally.
'Would you like sunglasses that can do a little bit more than just being sunglasses?'
- Answer is now not as obvious.
I've used Glass for a few months now and I don't think it's a consumer product as it stands.
It WILL be, but it's not a consumer product now. Think certain sectors and use them 'for a purpose'.
I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
On the contrary, the argument has never been more relevant than in an era when increasingly pervasive surveillance would otherwise be taken for granted.
Once Pandora's box is open, it will be almost impossible to close it. Pandora's box isn't really full of cameras, though, it's full of all the recording and image processing and data mining that goes with them. You can't do those things without the ubiquitous cameras, but the cameras are usually the only part of the system you can see and do something about, so once the cameras are in you'll never be quite sure who is doing what on the other side of them.
> I'm not saying you're wrong.. but I feel this argument is getting a little bit old in an era where we're being filmed everywhere by everything from subway cameras to iPhones.
That's a fair point but personally I still feel there are some important differences. CCTV footage is usually used (ostensibly) for security or logistical purposes (e.g. traffic management) and comparatively rarely ends up on YouTube or Facebook. Glass footage on the other hand is acquired by a private individual with less visible motives and no oversight. That's not to say that CCTV footage is never abused or personal footage usually is, but on balance I would expect more people to be concerned about being recorded by a random stranger than by a random shop.
Secondly, the 'almost covert' nature of Glass makes it feel to me inherently creepier - you can see if someone is pointing a phone or standalone video camera at you, but if someone looks your way wearing Glass, are they recording you? I expect many people (particularly women, given some of the websites out there) would feel nervous about that. It's easier to consent to being recorded when you know its happening, and therefore also easier to prevent it if you don't consent.
I expect that a person holding a phone in front of them everywhere they went as if filming would experience a similar level of hostility to that reported by some Glass users.
I had it explained to me like this by someone who I previously assumed was backwards when it comes to technology:
Do you remember junior high or high school, and how desperate you were to avoid doing a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g. that could potentially embarrass you? Products like google glass, and smartphones for that matter, bring those feelings back for a lot of people; they know that all it takes is just one quick screw-up, and they're getting picked on, but on a scale that is mind blowing. Essentially, it's not that we're embarrassed by our actions, or that our actions are illegal, it's that we just don't want to be laughed at.
That's an example of strange unsolicited attention from a stranger is perceived as hostile. He could have been pointing a picture of the Virgin Mary at them and gotten a similar reaction.
While I think these artists have some problems, this second panel so completely captures why I think google glass gets such a negative reaction from people around it at times
>4) Surprisingly hostile reactions in some places (restaurants etc)
How is it 'the next iPhone' when the novelty wears off fast and then there's not much use, when there is no killer app, when people react hostile towards it and it gives you headaches? I mean seriously.
An unnecessarily pedantic review of Glass. Some valid points related to its beta status (voice recognition not yet up to scratch), and some moderate warnings for potential Explorers (the earbud is proprietary and doesn't stay in the ear), some are just chances to whinge: "Glass can provide turn-by-turn driving directions, but it uses your phone's data service" (obviously), and amazingly "Google Glass Explorers climb mountains ... You don't do those things."
I guess the take away is, buy gadgets to achieve things, don't buy gadgets to buy gadgets.
My takeaway is the opposite—you buy Glass to buy Glass. A wearable computer with 1 hour battery life isn't practical, any your expectations won't be met, but you can be closer to the future so that you invent appropriately.
Think problem-oriented vs. idea/tool-oriented mindset, illustrated by Alan Kay in his talk The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o#t=1096. As you surround yourself with tools of the future, you can think of problems and solutions no one else sees (problem-finding as opposed to -solving).
Also, the eye contact thing: you're not supposed to use Glass while you're having a conversation with someone any more than you would pull out your phone and look at it in the middle of a conversation. The fact that it's there and convenient isn't an excuse for being rude.
I think his point was don't turn it on and look at it? Notifications don't turn the screen on, only an active application would have the screen on. Most of the time it's off, such as when you're talking to someone
One thing I can't understand is:
If most people use wired headsets, with their phones, iPods, MP3 Players.... why can't Google Glass use a wire, so you can have a much bigger battery in your pocket, and a much thinner frame in you head?
I think that's their biggest error with their current design. If you can only use this device for a very short time, it's going to be a failure.
I'd not buy one with a wire. If the current Glass is conspicuous without one, imagine how much more it will be when there's a wire running awkwardly down from your glasses.
Plus, I can't count how many times I'm out in the world with an earbud in and the cable gets snagged on something. The first time that happened with the Glass and the quick-release didn't let go, there goes my glasses and Glass, leaving me blind and out hundreds/thousands of dollars.
Like many, I imagine if I were to buy one it would be with corrective lenses, which means then I would have to carry a second pair of normal glasses with me so I can put the Glass away when I'm indoors -- while it may be alright to put your headphones in when you're outside on the street, I'm not 16 anymore and can't get away with looking like I've got my earbud in sitting at my desk or having lunch with a colleague.
A cord would solve a problem with old technology. The point of this is to do things a new way.
Aren't many of Glass's most interesting functions dependent on a camera?
I don't really think Glass makes people more recordable, it just makes that recordability more obvious, and therefore makes people less comfortable. Maybe it'd be a good thing to cope with the reality that we're always under watch these days.
Normalising having cameras pointed at you certainly makes people more recordable.
Of course, you could point to ubiquitous CCTV and other public place cameras, and you would be right - and I have a problem with that development as well. But those are (at least where I live) required to be clearly marked so I can avoid going to those places if I so choose.
After reading the pros and cons, I am tempted to buy one when it comes out as a consumer product with a sane price tag. It might be interesting to combine gglass with learning and exploration activities, museum tours, or just to make videos form first person POV.
I'm wondering if GG might be in the same league as the Segway: not a complete failure or a big hit, but a niche product for very specific things (like the city sightseeing tours done on Segways).
Is GG the eyewear equivalent of an Apple Newton? If so, will Google learn enough from it to make the next go at it successful? More important, will Google's management team tolerate a second attempt if this one fails?
I think Glass will be a success eventually - just not how most of us intended it to be. I used Glass for a month before returning it, but am regretting it slightly. As it stands right now, it's still a beta device with tons of software and hardware issues which somewhat limit its usefulness even for the most basic things like making a phone call. Though this article is true for the most part, I think it's missing the major downside of Glass.
Glass is only useful for certain tasks mainly where our hands are not free and we're away from our computers. For most of us, Glass is pretty much useless throughout the day. As a developer, there is nothing Glass can do while coding that a second monitor couldn't do better. When I joined the explorer program, I thought I would constantly be using Glass. I found Glass most useful while driving (responding to texts and hangout messages but NOT for directions* ) and I intended to use it while cooking.
But since driving with Glass is a grey area and I didn't want a hassle with the police, that pretty much limited my use of glass to cooking or occasionally hiking as long as you don't mind getting the unit all sweaty.
I don't think Glass belongs in public at all (restaurants, bars, etc). It serves no function besides being creepy, though it does occasionally help nerdy people meet woman as it's a great ice breaker (seriously).
* None of these reviews ever mention that the Glass display is only active for a second or two when directions is activated. This is surely to save on batteries. But it's simply no where near as useful as a normal GPS which is always on.
"They do nothing to hide the fact you're wearing Google Glass"
So... does that mean the man would like to have a "spy" camera that also probably happens to send who knows what to a company with less than good privacy behaviour history? (no, I'm not saying that Google is harvesting all data so they can one day set up the New World Order).
It's a picky review for a beta. He complains about the angle of the photos in one sentence, then tells you his ears are un-level. It's hard to please the Glassicapped.
I can see Android Wear taking off and Google Glass quickly being forgotten about. The Moto 360 watch looks great, and the Android Wear software is pretty nice. I can get my notifications without taking out my phone and I don't have to wear something that looks ridiculous. It doesn't provide the 'hands free' experience of Glass but I've yet to see any software really take advantage of that other than in niche areas.
low tech alternative: Glass appeals to me because it takes up less room. e.g. in a tent, you don't always have room to hold a device out far enough for your eyes to focus on it. Eventually I realized that reading glasses ($5, available everywhere) also change your focal distance - and as a bonus, increases your display size, without increasing device size, nor battery usage (which larger displays do).
But I think google's strategy is right: get a foothold before the technology is ready. Then, when devices are smaller, it will all be there. Their big deficiency is that they haven't found any real users yet...
My advice is simple, and something that engineers find impossible to do: remove the cool feature of a camera. Bang, privacy concerns gone, but still a revolutionarily useful product in other ways. And before long, people will accept they never really had privacy, so you can put it back.
I suspect that Glass and other 'wearable comupters' might be a case where it needs 'more power.'
10-100X improvements in battery, data, latency, storage, etc. If it gets to the point that it just records everything. You can go back and rematch your conversation with Aron or read a transcript of your meeting with the design team.
Well, with all the griping about the Glass from this guy, he should have known that this is purely a prototype. The goal was not to be perfect but put the Glass in the wild.
Yes it will run hot, or take tilted pictures, etc. But that's the point. And really, this rant actually helps Google more than it hurts them.
How it is possible to send something back to store if you have already used the device? It seems strange. You were wearing it, it possibly have scratches, bacteria from your skin, etc.
At least in Germany (possibly also EU) when ordering something (excluding software, movies, food) online or via mail (i.e. not buying in a store) you have the right to send it back within two weeks without having to give a reason. This is to counteract the problem that you can try out a device in the store where you might buy it, but you cannot when ordering online. In any case, usage marks, like scratches, etc. just mean that you may not get a full refund.
Some retailers allow for longer periods; e.g. Amazon allows for a month instead of just two weeks.
This is off-topic, but the sensibility of EU provisions always amazes me. In other countries, it is pretty much up to the companies to offer such relief to the consumer as a response to competition, but there really is no such requirement, which makes monopolistic industries much worse.
I also don't think this review is giving GG a chance to survive, despite listing up and down in each point.
This device was not invented to keep in your pocket. When mobile phone first came out, it was giant and you had to carry it by hand. No one expect it to be small.
> Point 1 (eye contacts)
God. I am not sure how you would do that unless you (1) shoot some light beam into your eyes, or (2) have glass cover up your eyes like in Star Wars.
That's not a valid point to ask for refund.
> Point 2 (not a good listener)
Fair point but speech recognition's problems are known and are hard to fix. Not good enough reason to return - no AI with speech recognition today is capable of fixing all those problems in an open environment.
> Point 3 (batter)
That's a good point. But it should be expected, somewhat, given its tiny size and the amount of computation it has to do plus wifi and bluetooth connection.
> Point 4 (Bulk, not pocket friendly)
As I've said above, god, this is the one of the least valid reasons to ask for refund.
> Point 5 (frame doesn't hide Glass!)
This is also a ridiculous reason to ask for refund.
The point of clip-on shade isn't to hide Glass. It's so that you can use glass even when it's sunny outside. Or because people want to look cool.
> Point 6 (Tilted photos)
Okay fair point. Technical stuff to be addressed.
> Point 7 (Directions drawbacks)
Fair point. Technical stuff to be addressed. Driving while using Glass is really dangerous. but hiking with Glass without touching your phone (but enable your phone use data) is kinda cool.
> Point 8 (earbuds)
I agree the earbuds are pretty... hmm, not stylish. I'd like to have cordless earbuds. Like one of those for people with hearing problems.
> Point 9 (advertisement stories vs reality)
This is a marketing trick. I always use Facebook's Home and Paper as example. On the ad side they look amazing but in reality your fb dashboard could just fill with memes and cat pictures. Boring.
> Point 10 (10. Too little, too soon)
Not a valid reason to ask for refund at all. I mean this is explorer edition. Hello???? Hellllllo???? Even if this was version 100000000, you still have rooms for improvement. Future is not here yet, because future is non-stop. Tomorrow is a different future.
Sorry. If I were Google, I won't refund. I don't mind taking back your Glass and give it to yeukhon for free.
First rule of customer service: customer says he's not happy with the product? -> full refund, record as many reasons why as possible, figure out which ones hold water, fix them then re-approach former customer as beta tester.
For now he's done something you apparently did not do, which was to buy the thing and give it a work-out.
Of course, Google and customer service are rarely used in an affirmative sentence of any kind but still, that's how you're supposed to deal with this.
About the point 1, I think that someone(seen here) is working on glasses which will work as a kind of HUD, so it is possible to have 'smart glasses' without having to be cross eyed to look at the display.
Of course, GG doesn't work like this so this isn't a reason for a refund, but it is still a reason NOT to buy them.
And whether it is "state of art" or not, I don't know, we'll have to wait and see, it does seem to solve a lot of issue that GG have, now whether they will manage to 'make it real', that's another issue..
This reviewer wants 'magic', not 'tech'. It's a terrible review. I mean, seriously, "this micro device is too large and must be made smaller, but Beethoven's 9th sounds tinny on it"? Obviously has zero clue about acoustics.
This reviewer is inventing reasons to give the device a failing mark after getting to play with it for a few weeks. Glass has it's problems, a couple of which are mentioned in the article, but overall the article is just terrible.
Likely, he was just trying to fill out 7,8,9, and 10 to make it a top ten list. The first six were at least informative for someone looking for drawbacks or specific questions. Some of those may be more obvious to the tech group but not to non-techies.
Well, the point he opens with is just him being rude, nothing to do with the limitations of the Glass itself. What's he's actually asking for in that very first point is a way to view content on Glass without the other person in the conversation realising that you're tuning them out. As someone else commented, this is the same as pulling out your smartphone and playing with it instead of conversing.
The conspicuousness point is also trueish, but overblown. The sunglass clip-ons do reduce the visibility of the unusual headwear, they just don't eliminate it. From experience with our set at work, people out in public react considerably less when the sunglasses are clipped on. It's not going to fool someone you're in a direct conversation with, but you get fewer odd looks. Obviously this is with one of the subtle charcoal colours, and not the day-glo varieties. I would argue that you shouldn't be fooling someone you're in a direct conversation with anyway. If you want to do that, there are other tools for single-party recordings.
So we're down to 4.5 points out of 10. Not accounting for uneven ears, sure. Battery life, sure. Bulk, maybe. Voice recognition? It's actually pretty good, for voice recognition. It just doesn't have the same capabilities as a human (no tech does, hence my original comment). We got a set straight from the US, it was responding happily to my broad, middle-Australian accent, and it would still recognise a colleague with a very strong French accent who passed by me saying "OK Glass, google porn" ("drive-by" commands are a different problem...), all with no particular calibration done. Voice recognition doesn't work with background noise? Even humans have trouble with that.
So no, it's a bad review all around, for both techies and naifs. It sets expectations for naifs that are impossible to achieve, despite there a few real issues being described. I personally don't think Glass is ready for the public yet, but this article offers a lot of misdirection on why.
Don't know why you got down voted so much for an opinion. I agree with you that the downsides he found were rather petty, and I'm no Google fan. And just the fact that it was a list of negatives made it look like a hatchet job, kinda like those Tesla reviewers who drive the car until it's empty so they have a story. The guy is a tech reviewer, what are the chances he's buying/reviewing a product that he'll use after the article appears? No, he's not going to be excited about the tech and think up new uses for it, he's going to write a click-bait article gleefully attacking an industry darling for the clicks.
This isn't just a GG problem. This is general Google problem, and something that seems to be growing. Until a year ago I had an old Nokia E5 that could tell you where you were and give you directions to anywhere without being "online". Now I have an Android which refuses to let me use the GPS in anyway unless I am connected to be big G and have given them permission to track me.