Apple's Smart Glasses With In-Lens Display May Feature Two Modes

[Dfor83]

Its not about forcing. I am aware and don’t buy everything these companies release. Its about telling people the real reason all these gadgets exist. Marketing is a powerful tool to manipulate people into buying expensive smart devices they don’t need and if you are in the ecosystem they make they product worse e.g. Samsung telling the Verge they won’t put ads on their household appliances a few months ago and now the 1000+ dollar fridge will display ads. I bet Meta and Google will do the same with smart glasses. Making the glasses cheap so people buy them, collecting as much data as possible, and then putting ads in your face. Also I don’t want to hear the affordability argument. People buy expensive phones every year and big tech wants that for wearables too.

That’s different and fine print might help with that on what they can or might display. In general companies aren’t responsible for educating consumers, but yes that makes more sense when you state that and if the company doesn’t state the obvious then it’s likely they would get sued by one person eventually.

In regards to the glades it’s possible at least when thinking of Meta and their past. With Apple it’s iffy but I’d be more receptive to using their glasses and not find ads or lack of privacy when they are pretty vocal about the topic. That’s not to say it can happen like any electronic and it’s up to the consumer to be well resounded on those topics and use logic in regards to it. You seem already be one step ahead of the average person based on previous posts

 

[Varmann]

My thoughts exactly - the privacy implications of this are huge. I have a visual aid called MyEye that will speak aloud text it 'sees' with a camera when one pushes a button. It works fairly well, but the idea is to attach this thing to one of the arms of a pair of glasses. Aside from not wanting to look like a Borg, it just takes too much energy to explain to concerned strangers that the camera is for text recognition and some very primitive object recognition (like approaching doors). Imagine trying to explain with Apple glasses 'oh yes, and it can take and store pictures'. Paranoid types (like me) would be concerned about control of the device when it is just sitting on a table (phones are usually pocketed when not in use). At a minimum there should be a hard-wired LED that flashes a warning if the cameras on the device are taking pictures (I actually think this should be true of all digital cameras by law). I understand that there is no expectation of privacy in public, but cameras keep getting smaller and so the activity of taking pictures has changed. It used to be if you did street photography it was obvious by the camera, camera bag, and possibly tripod. People could gracefully exit the picture if they saw you setting up. Now you just never know when somebody is taking your photo and frankly it is getting a little creepy, not to mention annoying as tourons in my town stop abruptly on the pavement/side-walks and take photographs of the buildings and monuments, obstructing everybody else's path.

Yes, I think the camera/video will cause a lot of bad reputation. Just like it did for google glasses. Most people do not like being recorded all time, especially if not being able tell when people do it. With AR glasses the hidden camera will easily move into more private spaces, few people will like that. Blinking red light is easy to manipulate, so that is not a good solution.

 

[VulchR]

Yes, I think the camera/video will cause a lot of bad reputation. Just like it did for google glasses. Most people do not like being recorded all time, especially if not being able tell when people do it. With AR glasses the hidden camera will easily move into more private spaces, few people will like that. Blinking red light is easy to manipulate, so that is not a good solution.

Not sure what a better solution would be, but at least recording LED's would be a start. Most people would not try disable or cover them, but I suppose some people might.