What it’s like picking up Google Glass?

My experience picking-up glass at Google HQ in Mountain View.


For the 8,000 lucky winners of #ifihadglass, Google has been rolling out invitations to purchase Glass over the last several weeks. This is the first time the general public, although limited to the United States, had the opportunity to have their hands on Google Glass (2,000 developers were able to pre-order and now have them from Google IO 2012). For those interested, Google launched #ifihadglass where anyone in the US could tweet or submit over G+ what they would do if they had the opportunity to have glass. (Full list of all those accepted and their submissions can be found here: link).

After several months of waiting, the day had finally come to pick them up. Here’s what the pick-up process is like:

After receiving your invitation, glass explorers are prompted to a special link to select the color, book an appointment and purchase glass.
#ifIhadglass Explorers had to choose to either go to Mountain View, Los Angeles or New York to pick-up their glass. (Shipping options were not available). I decided to head to Google’s HQ in Mountain View.
Once you arrive, you’re prompted to re-select your color as well as try all of the five color’s.
Here’s Tangerine.
I ended up going with Sky.
The experience of picking up your glass is “high-touch” with a personal guide to answer all your questions, fit the glass perfectly to your face and treat you to wonderful stories about Google (with complimentary drinks).
The set-up for glass is done on Google’s Chrome Pixel, where you can select the applications you want and add contacts.
After set-up, we were treated to a tour of the Google campus where we took photos through glass and got to know the team.
Overall, It was an incredible experience to be at the forefront of Google latest. Google has been rolling out monthly updates to its product, and third-party applications like the New York Times to Facebook are already up.

I’ve been blown away by the initial experience, but will wait a few weeks before I can say how “ disruptive” glass can be. (Although, I recommend checking out fellow Medium writer Sam Smith’s post on her thoughts with Glass.)

To me, one of the coolest pieces of tech within Glass is the bone conduction, which allows glass to transmit sound to the inner ear through the bones of the skull.(As opposed to a traditional in-ear headphone.) Our glass guide told us an awesome story of a lady that came into Google to pick-up her glass, but she was deaf in her right ear. (She was hoping they would have glass that would fit for her left ear instead). They only have versions for the right side. But after putting it on, she was able to hear for the first time in a while because the sound entered through her inner ear instead of the ear canal!

This is just the beginning of wearable tech, with Microsoft and Apple expected to release products in the near future. Google’s done a great job in being the first mover, and having 10,000 people test and play with Glass could be a huge advantage over their competitors as the race for wearable tech heats up.

Patrick Ip

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