Glass is 100% hype. If it were released tomorrow it would flop hard. Any review you read of it is meh, it really does nothing different than your phone and isn't practical to use in social situations or life in general. If you want to see 'real' new technology that people would actually pay money for, check out the Oculus Rift.
I'm not saying the Rift is the same. I'm saying both Glass and the Rift have been hyped a lot. The difference is the Rift really is practical - you see a lot more 'real' people using the Rift and enjoying it vs. Glass.
I remember reading the same comments about the iPhone and iPad. Maybe Glass won't be anywhere near as successful, but I don't think it will be remembered as insignificant.
Those comments about the iPhone were correct: the original iPhone sucked at most of the things it set out to do even in comparison to many of the other devices at the time, and was really only very popular among hardcore fans of Apple. The iPhone 3G and then the iPhone 3GS (and possibly even more importantly, iPhoneOS 2.x and iOS 3.x) were really what started to make the device worthwhile. You can't judge a product based on some concept of the potential the product line might have based on judgements of the team and their plans: the comment you are responding to even says quite specifically "if it were released tomorrow"; if nothing else, we can assume Google also believes this, or they may have already released it ;P.
I think both are early versions of a really cool future. I actually have a rift (but not glass) I definitely can see an amazing future with an advanced version of it.. but if i was to judge its merits based only on this initial version. It has some ways to go yet.
But even rift, the real value comes outside gaming. I'm waiting for some time to clear on my schedule, but I really want to play more with virtual reality field trips for schools.
I agree with you about Oculus Rift having real viability in the proximal future. Glass and "GlassUp" (what a rip of a name) need to be released to developers and the general public to thrive and produce an ecosystem of developer tools as well as new ways to use the hardware. I find Glass and GlassUp to be akin to the iPhone. The first iPhone touched the brim of what a truly responsive and performant touch-device could do, when GPS/Bluetooth/Wifi/Gyroscope/ and other sensors were equipped. Years later, and there's thousands of unique ways the iPhone is being used because of its advanced framework and hardware. I think we all know even the first production versions of these devices are going to be poorly able to be used, perhaps clumsy and too zealot-specific but they are necessary step for the truly visionary platform to evolve from.
Are you kidding me? At the very least, wearable computing as a form factor is going to be huge. And Google has the resources and flagship product to pull a big win. It's a convenient, hands free device with display. I suspect this is one of the main reasons their stock has been doing so well lately.
Wearable computing is absolutely going to be huge.
But there is no way to escape the fact that most people consider glasses and watches to be fashion accessories. And to make the next mass market device you will need to live and breathe fashion. Which effectively means doing what Apple is doing and bringing in experienced people like Paul Deneve from (Yves) Saint Laurent.
If anyone can do it, it might be Google. It's going to take a ton of internal development to further Google Glass from their last prototypes. With smartphones setting the expectation, the general public and even techies are going to want something slim, streamlined, and performant. The TI GPU processor that Google Glass comes with isn't exactly performant enough to do the crazy VR stuff we want.
I'm not saying the Rift is the same. I'm saying both Glass and the Rift have been hyped a lot. The difference is the Rift really is practical - you see a lot more 'real' people using the Rift and enjoying it vs. Glass.