Should Apple Take Over Google Glass?

September 15, 2014 Dennis D. McDonald

During a recent edition of This Week in Google, Leo Laporte and Company all but “stuck a fork” in Google Glass by declaring it dead as a product. This is despite its commercial availability.

I haven’t been tracking Glass as closely as I once did. I never thought of it as a mainstream product but I did think it had potential for certain niche markets such as medicine, industrial quality control, and equipment repair.

What fascinated me was the potential for rapidly searching for and displaying graphic and tabular information in response to verbally or automatically generated queries, sort of like the way Arnold checked out bar patrons’ clothing at the beginning of Terminator 2.

But somehow Google blew it. I don’t think they were completely in control of how the product was being developed and introduced. Perhaps crowdsourcing as Google did the early adoption process by introducing a still raw product lacking refinement contributed to Google’s losing control of the product and its marketing early on.

Maybe what we’ve seen with Glass is that Google has still not thought through the differences between how software and hardware products are introduced and supported. In the case of Chromebooks they at least have the support of companies that understand how to market, distribute, and support notebook computers. Such was not the case with Glass. We’re now seeing the results.

Which returns us to the title of this article:

Should Apple Take Over Google Glass?

Think about how Apple would have introduced the product using the recent September 9 Apple product announcements as a model:

Tim Cook has finished whipping the audience into a frenzy over the latest iPhones. He walks off stage, the theater darkens, and there appears on the giant screen a stunning image of the world as seen from space … as seen through Glass.

As our attention shifts from place to place on the globe transparent data cards pop in and out containing selected location and event info. Then the view settles on a single spot on the globe, nightside. We see displayed a city at night as seen from space, its street lights glittering, the head and tail lights of cars blinking through undulating traffic. Then we hear the dulcet tones of someone like George Clooney say, “OK Glass, take a picture and send it to my wife with the message, ‘Thinking of you, I’ll be home for Christmas.’”

Instantly we switch perspectives. We’re on the ground now in a dark back yard, the sky blazing with the Milky Way looking like glittering jewelry. We see a woman holding a baby in her arms. She’s looking up. She’s wearing Glass. We see what she sees: a tiny moving spot of light against the stars. A small bit of text appears next to the spot, “Incoming message,” it says.

Our perspective shifts again and we see the woman smile.

The screen goes dark. The Apple logo appears. The lights in the auditorium go up.

Tim Cook reappears on the stage, this time wearing what is recognizably a stylish and beautiful device .

The crowd goes wild.

Related reading: