Based on my brief exposure, Spectacles is a very polished product. Everything about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from tech: the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine that displays a rendering of the glasses on your face; the yellow carrying case that doubles as extra battery for the glasses; the effortless installation experience; even the round video that invites peeking to discover hidden content at the edges.
I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.
They're doomed by the slow UX for uploading: 1) record w/o really knowing how the content is coming out (it's like stepping back into the Kodak age after using an iPhone for 10 years), 2) open Snap app, 3) reconnect the Bluetooth for 1-2 min because the connection is crap from the glasses to my phone, 4) upload all the videos from my glasses which takes another 1-2 min, 5) select specific video snips to share, 6) select people to share / upload to story, etc.
Seemed to take 5 min when I did it. Enough to kill the moment. Sharp contrast to how fast Snap is on iOS.
Plus the glasses are uncomfortable and have large blind spots, so I can't wear them all the time (i.e. not good for driving)
And yet there's really no replacement. I mean if MS uses Bluetooth for their surface pens, when they completely control the hardware at both ends, then there's really no hope for getting rid of it.
I agree that it's a software problem, but most vendors aren't in apple's position of controlling every single link of the chain.
I do think it'll get better over time. NFC/tap pairing will eventually replace Menu + Manual Madness, show-stopping bugs will get fixed, capability sets will stabilize, conventions will develop to smooth over variation in UI choices, "worse is better" decisions will be unwound, and eventually it'll be a smooth experience and people will wonder how they ever lived with wires. If my own experiences are typical of even a tiny minority of users, however, that day is still disappointingly far off.
Apple will probably do the Bluetooth equivalent to what they did with earphones: they switched the mic and ground wire, forcing earphone manufacturers to either support iOS or TRRS on the built-in remotes. I love my Macbook Pro and iPhone, but Apple can be a truly infuriating company.
You must definitely add investor pressure in all of this, and if history is of any indication, that pressure can and will kill any creative efforts. It's all about being first to market, making a big buck and having a lucrative exit nowadays.
Nobody is interested in the tech becoming more comfortable.
I think the problem is that in this case Bluetooth is just not fast enough to transfer large amounts of video data. What they should do is use BT to negotiate details of an ad-hoc Wi-Fi network and use that larger pipe to send the actual data.
You basically just described Bluetooth 3.0 + HS[1]. The Bluetooth connection is used to establish an 802.11 link, over which data is transferred. It's only (up to) 24 Mbit/s, so it's still slower than some (direct) Wi-Fi alternatives, but it's much faster than normal Bluetooth connections.
I just bought $40 bluetooth earbuds that required RTFMing to pair, don't hold the pair between workouts, take a minute to perform the ritual, and use friction to anchor themselves to my ear so thy fall off the moment I start sweating. Oh, and they need to be recharged.
I have similar stories for every single bluetooth device that I have ever tried, which amounts to probably a dozen peripherals and half that many hosts. I've had fleeting moments of "it's magic" to punctuate the sea of crap so I'm fully on board with the potential of the technology, but it has continued to mature at an obnoxiously slow rate.
Your bluetooth speaker setup works great for precisely your scenario - the speaker is paired with one only device.
It gets wonky if that single speaker has paired with multiple devices before. For example in a home, where you've paired it with your laptop, phone, iPad, etc. Try it out. Audio will cut off sometimes suddenly when it decides to switch pairing partners as another paired device appears in range.
I have a Sony bluetooth headset and it's amazing. It was around €65, lasts 40 hours of use (so charge once a week- every 2-3 weeks depending on usage), pairs with 3 devices and does it very well. I often move to another floor while having them on (construction work) or go out to the shed while the iPhone is in the bedroom on a charger, and it still works 10 meters in the yard. Best thing I've ever purchased, so there are good Bluetooth solutions.
Yes. My Garmin Fenix 3 HR isn't perfect but it consistently connects via Bluetooth faster than any other device I own. It has an "indistinguishable from magic" feel to it.
I have a Forerunner 235. I didn't buy the watch for notifications or anything like that, but it's really cool to get a Slack notification when you are halfway across the house.
The GPS also connects to satellites in a fraction of the time my Suunto watch did. It sucks when you're standing in the parking lot waiting to establish signal before your run.
Edge 820 here. The Bluetooth connection to my iPhone just works every time. I'd basically given up on BT as a useful thing years ago, but now I never have to think about it, and only have to plug the device in to charge after a few rides.
Mini review: the GPS is also super quick to acquire compared to my (now bricked) 800 - but the touchscreen is awful.
I'd echo that experience - my time with a Fitbit lead me to assume it was normal for notifications to show up long after they arrived on the phone. It's clearly just something that only some manufacturers can get right.
I think your issue 1 is actually this way by design. Spectacles are meant for recording without worrying too much about how the content is coming out. The idea is to let you concentrate on living the moment rather than how to frame it. That's how I interpreted it, anyway.
The upload takes place in the background, so usually it would be completed by the time you're done with whatever activity and go into the app.
I disagree - there is no "target audience" for shit UX. Their "target audience" uses Snap despite its awful UX, not because of it. Those users wouldn't suddenly run away if the UX did actually improve.
Perhaps I'm just used to it, but I find SC's UI/UX to be quite nice to use. I would be disappointed if Snapchat's UI changed to be more like Instagram's; IG's UI may be more discoverable, but it just doesn't feel as smooth.
I liked the UI of early Snapchat (2013) when there was only a recent Snaps list and a camera view and you could swipe between them. It all went downhill from there, but the biggest blow for me was the stupid thing that you have to pull down when in the camera view to get access to your contacts. I wish the "designer" that had this stupid idea would be sentenced to several years of reading all text in nothing but Comic Sans.
The UX might be good but I've heard nothing but complaints about the app quality from teenagers and that's on iOS. They are starting to straddle snap and Instagram.
Teenager here chiming in, Snapchat is great but kind of slow on my (Android) phone -- It takes like 5 seconds for it to even load who has new stories, and I used to be able to swipe up to show my stats and snap code but now it's a bunch of related/nearby content ("top stories") I don't care about. Ads between stories are kind of annoying but I understand they need to monetize somehow.
It's great for sharing photos and quick texts but no one uses snap maps, the sponsored content is cringe, and I have yet to see spectacles in real life because unsurprisingly, we don't have the money to buy $100+ camera glasses.
I should also add that a lot of my friends do use Instagram stories, but a lot of the time it's just a picture with the text "AMOS: {sc_username}" (AMOS means "add me on Snapchat") so take from that what you will.
Same thing I've noticed, and even beyond that people still seem to feel the need to put a final layer of effort into their insta stories relative to Snap stories, I'd say Snap still has a definite role
What I mostly notice about Snapchat is the ads on the right side are obnoxiously sexual or celebrity driven. Not so amazing experience there, it's like the checkout aisle at Safeway.
(ever noticed that magazine where the cover is always "how to lose 30 pounds in a day" and then a chocolate cake?)
I meant the upload time for Spectacles, not sure if we're talking about the same thing? The UX for the Snap app is great. I was the most active Snap user I knew up until recently (hence why I have Spectacles)
I think the aesthetic of the glasses is flawed, not the technology. They look really goofy. They should have gone with a standard design like Wayfarers, and not something few people could realistically look good in. If they're aiming for mass appeal anyway.
> They look really goofy. They should have gone with a standard design like Wayfarers
I'm not sure about that... if you have a technology that won't quite fit in a 'standard' design, but you try and force it anyway, it'll look bad regardless. Better to embrace the goofiness and make something a little fun instead.
The intent I think was to make it really obvious that the wearer has camera glasses on. They were marketed as a toy, not as spy glasses.
The problem was that nobody knew what to do with them, and Snap being setup the way it is, it's too hard to take cues from what other people might be doing with them because it's hard to find their videos.
The only thing I bring them out for now is to make little cooking videos for my friends, the hands free POV camera is really good for that, and uploading a little narrative is pretty effortless.
I agree. I'm not a Snapchat user and generally dislike the app. But I have the Spectacles and recently took them to a trip to Six Flags to record point of view videos on a bunch of the rides. It was really fun, and I even installed the app so I could transfer the videos to my phone.
I also agree that the product design is excellent. There is absolutely a polish to the Spectacles that makes them enjoyable to use.
The whole Spectacles concept is gimmicky, including the vending machine aspect, so it doesn't really matter how well executed the 'experience' was. They need to allocate their capital to people who have better ideas.
Giving away hardware that hackers would love to play with is very different from giving away CD's that can only be alternatively used as drink coasters and for art projects.
I still think there's a lot of potential to Spectacles. It seems like they fell to the wayside with all the distraction from the IPO, but I hope it's something they focus in on going forward. I think making it socially acceptable to wear a camera on your face is a problem that very few companies can pull off. I hope their tumbling share price lights a fire under their ass and forces them to take the risk necessary to pull this ace out of their hat.
In my experience, the lack of friction has not been a positive... meaningful experiences and events are reduced to social media spam. Quantity over quality.
As a producer and consumer, I prefer the pre-FB days because the bar was high.
The moments are extremely meaningful when I use my spectacles, because I experienced the moment too the fullest while I took the snap. It's so effortless that it never feels like spam when I upload the clips.
I think anyone who's not growing up in the world of frictionless sharing is gonna have a problem with that.
Spectacle and Google Glass's issue of having a camera on your face won't weird in another decade. When this generation's teenagers are living out their 20s.
Older people will find hyper-reality frightening though we'll get use to it, just never participate to the degree younger generations will.
I think this is a narrative created by old people who have no idea how "young people" think.
Nobody likes invasion of privacy, period. Especially young people. An old married couple in their 60 has not much to hide (also nothing much interesting to share), whereas a teenager does a lot of things they don't want to be made public.
If you don't believe me, go ask any teenager if they're cool with some random person "frictionlessly sharing" someone else's footage without consent. Google glass didn't fail because it was weird, it failed because people passionately hated when someone else was wearing a google glass.
Well they completely failed at that, then. They are anything but frictionless as described elsewhere in the comments. Bad user experiences abound after purchase.
Not that I'm a fan of Google Glass, but how do the Spectacles qualify as "something different" when Glass came out like 5 years ago? You can say that Spectacles are well-executed, but claiming that they're somehow "trying something different" makes no sense to me.
The only quality they share with Glass is that they have a camera, you wear them on your face and they tether to your phone. All of which had been done before Glass.
They may need to have better marketing, like have an ad that mentions it in the app. I didn't know that Spectacles are selling on Amazon now and I don't believe many people know either. I think most assume that they're still being sold at those exclusive kiosks.
I also went to the website https://www.spectacles.com and I had no idea what they were until I googled other news articles about it.
- Extremely vague besides "push a button to record video".
- No mention of battery power, length of charge, app integration, quality of video, etc, etc.
- It seems to be only targeted at women? There's no pictures of men wearing them.
- What do the sides of the glasses look like? All pictures are the front angle. Does it look bulkier because it has a camera?
- I see a prominent "Find a Snapbot" button, I had no idea "Snapbot" meant pop-up store until I read about it in a news article.
I could go on...
The pictures are visually appealing but having zero sales copy was a terrible idea. How can you sell something without explaining it?
I too would have liked to see an Amazon link, I prefer using that over a custom online shop every time. And Amazon forces them to write an actual description about what the product does.
That's part of snapchat's brand, they make all their shit unintuitive, obscure, hard to discover and use. It's supposed to make it so that you feel hip and in the know when you finally discover how to make that mustache appear on your face or make text float in the background of your video.
But of course that doesn't seem to transfer that well to selling hardware.
There is a clear reasoning for this strategy. People and especially press talk more about the product.
Btw, I think Snapchat is quite intuitive. Some features might not be easy to find or to know about. But once you know it is very intuitive and fast to use them. I think it is similar to Vim, if you don't know anything about Vim you cannot even quit Vim but once you know all the stuff Vim is one of the most intuitive editors because UI and most commands are well designed.
You are clearly using a different definition of intuitive from anyone else.
VIM is the least intuitive editor that I know.
Even you are saying that people don't even know how to quit it, how in the world is that intuitive???
If you need to know all the stuff to use it that is by definition not intuitive.
"adjective: intuitive
using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive.
(chiefly of computer software) easy to use and understand."
I think you are referring to stickiness - which doesn't infer that the product is intuitive.
If you can't use a product right away without help then it is not intuitive by definition. However it doesn't mean you won't like it if taught how to extract value.
For instance it's not intuitive to deep fry a banana and then put salt on it before eating it, but I'm quite certain you will finish the plate once you try it.
Which makes you wonder what they know about marketing in general... especially since they are a camera company where the primary source of revenue is from advertising.
They literally go around Cannes and Madison Ave telling everyone they understand the future of marketing... but can't market their own product.
Funny that you mention "an ad in the app," They're running a Spectacles story right now in the app.
Also, sometimes when watching other people's stories, I see Spectacles ads. Though, the Spectacles story might be tucked away by like, the Daily Mail and the other sponsored stories.
That's actually pretty funny. I didn't even know that was there until you mentioned it and I went looking. Like you said, the story is pretty "tucked away" :D
I wonder if one of the problems is that the Spectacles by nature are never in the images they capture. Thus missing out on some powerful organic marketing.
I'm very surprised how feminine this design is. It has strong overtures towards 50's cat-eye frames and looks exclusively marketed to women. I just ran through all the media/PR stuff I could find for this and can't find any official photos of a man wearing them. I wonder if they would have better luck also selling a male-fashion oriented model. This isn't a hypothetical as I would probably pick these up for ease of vacation photos/videos, especially for those of us with active children who are difficult to photograph well. I'd much rather wear these on a boat than try to take a video or photo with my $700 smartphone begging to end up on the bottom of the Atlantic.
Most of the reviews on amazon are from men and most of those complain about the style or being too small, so clearly men were very motivated to buy this product.
I think there's a fundamental marketing mistake here with wearable cameras. Its not really going to appeal to sexy instagram addicts who can't selfie with them, but to busy parents and older people, especially those with limited mobility or inability to quickly pull out a smartphone. I think its obvious that those kinds of markets don't bring in SV money, so here we are pretending women actually want to buy and wear these ridiculous looking things all day. Sorry, but the huge graphics around the lens mar an otherwise tasteful design. Clearly the market chose against this concept.
I'm also skeptical an always facing camera, be it on glasses, wearable watch/pedant, etc will ever be socially acceptable. Apparently, the Google Glasses problem hasn't been solved yet and may not ever be solved in the consumer space.
>Snaps from Spectacles do not directly go to your phone. You can save Snaps taken with Spectacles to your phone by exporting them from Snapchat Memories to your Camera roll
Also the implementation sounds wonky. I'm guessing this is a iOS limitation? On Android you should be able to write directly to the camera folder.
You seem to be getting down-voted, maybe by the feminine comment, but you're right; it's clear that their marketing is towards women (https://www.spectacles.com/), and they're missing a huge market. (Why not two styles?)
Edit: Imagine if they would've had a male styled version, and tried to get Kanye West, or some other pop/style star wearing them.
Imagine it they would've done a female styled version, and got Kim Kardashian wearing them? Why is that less legitimate? The parent is being downvoted because of the implicit criticism is that a female-first targeted rollout is a mistake.
I think the parent would have drawn the same criticism if the exclusively marketed towards men.
I think his point was simply that their marketing misses 50% of the market. His point is not that it's wrong to only market towards women, his point was that it seems weird from a revenue perspective to only market to to half the population.
A lot of products start with half the population, though, and it's not considered weird. The old euphemism is "shrink it and pink it" - originally design for men, then put out a women's version.
If Spectacles take off, they can always "grow it and bro it" later. Starting off with a focused target market seems like a reasonable approach to me.
The demographics of revenue or ad generating snap users might be more telling, but he/she is suggesting that they should have released a male and female version or a gender neutral version. That way you're not missing a massive part of the market, a.k.a. 82 million daily active users if it's an even 50/50 male/female split.
Influencer demos skew highly female, so I can't say I'm surprised -- Snap isn't selling to the total market so much as trying to get traction through high-influence users. It's a strategy that requires time, patience, and careful execution, but has the potential to normalize something that Google rather famously failed to do so (and potentially poisoned the concept) with Glass.
Ironically, my wife wouldn't be caught dead in these partly because she has her own defined style and partly because she's not into gadgets like I am, but I would buy them like I wrote above for vacation-esque purposes.
Sounds like it was a flop regardless, but I do think the 'techy dad' market is viable at the right pricepoint. Not sure how the social aspect would work out, but if it had a red LED running when it was recording I doubt anyone would mind.
42K is low but the product appeals to a very small segment of consumers: Snapchat users, who don't wear prescription eyeglasses, who happen to have a face shape complimented by the single size/style of Spectacles.
Selling prescription eye wear in the United States seems to come with a lot of red tape. I don't think they want to get in the business of requesting and verifying an eye exam within the last 12 months before selling a one size fits all consumer item.
Do you really have to to just provide frames though? Couldn't they just sell empty frames and have optometrists install and request lenses. I think that's how most frames work now.
I have a friend who wears the glasses to every social/party event in my larger friend circle and to public parties, and is one of the biggest attention whores I know.
Not even he is narcissistic enough to post the video up. I've never seen one video from the glasses.
Best I can tell he wears them as some kind of fashion statement in the weird and quirky SF gay tech scene.
To clarify the headline, TechCrunch is estimating Snap sold less than 105k Spectacles total, 64K in Q1 and 41K in Q2.
> Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. That’s compared to $8.3 million in Other revenue in Q1, or fewer than 64,000 pairs
I wasn't even aware they existed until I saw this thread.
I don't understand why companies feel they need to start selling average household products, but with cameras, microphones, wifi, and bluetooth. Maybe I'm just paranoid but I don't even like my laptop having a camera.
I think this wearable from Snap had multiple objectives.
1. Allow more people to be tied in directly to snapchat and make users more loyal and provide a better experience.
2. Create a new revenue stream based on wearables.
3. A PR vehicle to drive more users into the platform.
I think it accomplished #3. It may be able to accomplish 1-2 but we should wait and see. Also, something like Spectacles probably need a price drop to drive more people to buy it and the fact that this wearable doesn't drive people to upgrade to new spectacles would be an issue also.
Were the Specs ever meant to be more than a hype vehicle though? Obv. if it had blown up into an international phenomenon Spiegel & Co. would have taken it but I feel like it was more just a power strut en route to their IPO to show that people are excited about their platform more so than "Big Brother's"
I don't understand the target audience. The reason smartphones are so popular, is because they do basically EVERYTHING for the common person. They aren't going to carry around another silly device to take pics, that was called a camera, and we see how popular those are now. For anyone that is serious, they are already carrying separates.
But we don’t always have a camera on our heads, particularly not from our POV. Imagine you’re doing something actively - you probably don’t have hands available. It’s a diff product / use case, albeit not as generalizable.
IMO id rather they made a gopro competitor. Maybe ditch the sunglasses part. Not sure.
I bring my gopro on all my trips. Its a great way to record memories without using up your phone storage or battery. It's also easier to hold, has better FoV, and much better video quality. It's a no brainer. I'm surprised action cams have not hit mainstream as far as trip-devices go.
No offense, but I can't believe that an additional action cam brings so much extra value. Bulky and has to be charged as well. My iPhone can record memories too. Battery doesn't drain fast when recording and I have 256GB storage and media is anyway uploaded to a cloud provided shortly after. If you get an Android phone with microSD you can get even more local storage.
And why should the video quality be better? The samples I see on Youtube are ok but better?
Yes, you can fix an action cam to your helmet or surf board but this is the only feature a phone lacks.
Isn't it easier to get a POV shot by using glasses though? It definitely makes easier and quicker to get shots that you wouldn't normally be able to get. E.g. you see someone doing some cool bike trick on the street. If you take out your phone in an attempt to capture the moment, you might miss it, while if you're using the Spectacles, you might not.
I get it, but for what? I mean, it's such a niche thing. I have to wear these ugly glasses that do ONE thing. Or just use my phone. People have their phones out CONSTANTLY. They spend more time in hands than they do pockets.
Yea but we're moving towards a world where our phones will stay in our pockets and we'll interact with it through glasses, watches, wearables, contacts, real world surfaces. If you think we're always connected now, wait for hypereality to start taking hold.
Oh brother, there is always that one person that has to call out someones "generalizations". It's just plain fact, that the current generation is hyper addicted to their smart phones. I walk into the break room, and the shop guys all in their 40-50s, are silently glued to their phones. Texting and driving is a real problem. Fear of missing out is a real problem. People walking down sidewalks oblivious to the rest of the world, is a real problem. Addiction to smartphones is a REAL problem.
Even if Snap closes you in to use the Snapchat app with the glasses, you don't have to upload the snaps anywhere. You can just save it to your phone like an ordinary camera app.
Viewing the videos on Snapchat you rotate your phone depending on whether you want a horizontal or vertical frame, which is actually pretty cool. When saved outside of Snap the videos save to some standard video format as a circle within a rectangular frame, which makes them kinda useless.
I saw your comment and the parent comment and didn't think I would see that video posted. That was the first video I thought of to answer the question. In case the parent poster is wondering, here is what the exported video looks like:
I personally wouldn't wear Spectacles, but I did expect them to do much better than they have. It seems like people don't feel silly wearing GoPros or carrying selfie sticks so they looked like a logical next step to me.
Some anecdata: I have been traveling the U.S. for the last year, stopping in mostly major cities, and lived in Boston prior to that. In all that time I didn't see a single pair of Spectacles until last month... in Houston, TX of all places!
You can make custom filter for a location for a time and the price scales for both. You can only use the filter from that geofence.
Something like $70 for a half square mile for a day on the geofence I drew in Santa Monica. It's $5 for an office building in downtown Austin for a day.
Legit forgot they were still for sale. After all the hype and lack of product availability it simply skipped my mind that they were now readily available to the masses!
You can just order them via Amazon now. I think the initial exclusivity worked ok to build a bit of excitement and hype around what probably would have been a lackluster launch if they'd just dropped them onto Amazon. Though even with that all the people I've seen using them were mocking them half the time for being ridiculous.
All of those spectacles, eventually, will go in the trash and into landfills. Few people think about that. If you buy a spectacle, you are literally buying future pollution. In 300 years, those spectacles and their batteries will still be polluting the ground and the water. Is this how we measure progress?
You mean people don't want to wear douchetacles? Color me surprised!
And before you downvote me, realize that basically, this is a gimmicky product, even if you think it is cool.
While you are allowed to film anyone in public, the act of having an "always pointing highly visible camera", will elicit more negative reactions than positive ones... So unless snap is pretty tone deaf, this was known to be a non long term product, more of a product to appease their top producer base.
I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away because they're so different from everybody else in this space.