My first day as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau of the Financial Times was memorable. It was June 2012 and Google opened its annual developer event with an incredible stunt.
A skydiver leapt out of a blimp, above the conference centre, wearing Google Glass – live-streaming from the futuristic eyewear’s tiny camera as he then abseiled and rode a BMX right on to the stage.
Here I was, I thought, already living in the future on day one in Silicon Valley.
Google Glass’s future turned out to be shorter than expected.
Despite its miniaturised innovations and fashion shoots in Vogue, the $1,500 headset never shed the "Glasshole" label.
It became so closely associated with privacy-insensitive Silicon Valley nerds that Google axed the product before it went on sale to the public.
This week, I had another of those “only in San Francisco” moments where the future seemed to be hurtling towards me. Cycling through its Soma district, I came up alongside a prototype self-driving car, loaded with cameras and spinning sensors.
Instead of pulling out my phone to take a picture, I simply reached up, tapped a button on the side of my sunglasses and started recording video.
I was not wearing Google Glass but Snapchat’s Spectacles, the camera-toting sunglasses that are one of my favourite products of the year.
Hype machine
While driverless cars may still be years away, Spectacles are here today – as long as you can get your hands on a pair.
Snap, as the company behind the ephemeral messaging app is known, has released them only through "Snapbots" which appear without warning in unexpected locations – from Los Angeles malls to the bottom of the Grand Canyon – then disappear as quickly as a Snapchat photo.
Spectacles, which cost $130, succeed where Glass failed for several reasons. One is simply expectation management: Spectacles’ launch was unexpected in both timing and execution.
This was not an overambitious augmented-reality headset unveiled months before it went on sale but something simple and easy to understand: a way to always have a camera ready, hands-free.
Instead of seeding Spectacles to tech reviewers (I bought mine on eBay for $260) or launching them at a splashy San Francisco event, Los Angeles-based Snap and its bots have steered clear of Silicon Valley. The combination of scarcity and LA glamour built hype.
Regular users shared their real-life experiences with the product: skateboarding, skiing, playing tennis, floating in a pool, riding rollercoasters, on stage at a rock concert.
It was a lesson in the value of showing, not telling, with the surprise and delight of a classic Apple product launch.
Spectrum of views
Spectacles’ success is in their design rather than technology. The small camera produces shots of only mediocre resolution, compared with the latest smartphones or GoPro action cameras. (Unlike GoPro’s Hero 5, Specs are not waterproof.)
Snap may call itself a “camera company” but the footage is only designed for viewing on a small screen.
That fits the Snapchat fire-and-forget approach but it might be disappointing if you were hoping to capture your child’s first steps.
Video is downloaded from Spectacles using the Snapchat app, over Bluetooth by default, although an optimistically named “HD” version can also be imported over a wifi connection.
You can then choose which clips you want to post publicly to a Snapchat “Story”, adding filters or doodles if you wish, or save them privately to your phone’s photo library.
Importing a lot of video is a chore though: one day, when I took nearly 50 shots, the transfer kept stalling until I switched to wifi.
The fun part is in the capturing not the processing.
The Snapchat app’s greatest asset has always been the speed and simplicity with which you can take a picture and post it, so you spend your time “in the moment” rather than fussing behind a screen.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Ltd 2016)
