Despite sending out the second round of Google Glass invites yesterday, Google have hit a show stopper. We’re all well aware that Google Glass is really trying to reach into the future and deliver something today, unfortunately that future is now a little further away.
The Google Glass team have just posted the sad news. Due to a combination of manufacturing and software development factors the estimated delivery date has now been postponed. What what expected to ship to the winners of the #IfIHadGlass competition in the coming months and to the general public by the end of 2013, Glass will now be a 2014 product.
It’s one thing to deliver a couple of dozen hand build prototypes to Google employees, but to mass produce products requires more, a lot more. Google’s history with hardware hasn’t received a glowing report card, first there was the disaster of the Cue, then the more recently overpriced Chromebook.
While the futuristic videos of Google glass make all tech fans lust after that technology now, it seems there’s still plenty of bugs to iron out before wearable computing becomes mainstream.
Google founder Sergey Brin says “we had a bold vision for Glass and wanted to put it in the hands of everyday people as soon as possible. There have been some unforseen hardware difficulties that have meant positioning the wireless Bluetooth and WiFi communication in such close proximity to the brain is not yet where we need it to be. In terms of software, we are not hitting the internal targets we had set for ourselves. While we have the smartest engineers on the planet, there are definitely real challenges in achieving acceptable battery life on Glass in such a small device. We are analysing every line of code to find the solution.”
Google now expect Glass to ship April 1, 2014.
