With reference to Timbuk3 and, I know, it’s a cheap line but it popped into my head the other day and won’t go away so maybe writing it down will help.
I’ve been wearing glasses for about 35 years, often swapping them for contact lenses but it’s only in recent years when I’ve been watching what’s happening with mobile computing that I’ve come to the full realisation that we’re on a path where perhaps everyone is likely to join me and we’ll all end up wearing glasses somewhere down the line.
We’re headed to a level playing field of “eyewear-for-everyone” (TM) or maybe it’s eyeware-for-everyone.
As an aside, I thought I just made up the term ‘eyeware‘ then Googled it to see and, of course, there’s already a Swiss company there with that name doing some type of 3D eye tracking – it’s hard to come up with anything original these days!
Recent (and long term) rumours and actual products suggest that, one way or another, all the big players are working on some form of ‘glasses’;
and Google has had something out there for a long time and, of course, there are also a tonne of other players (like Magic Leap, North, realwear, etc.) out there too.
Naturally, you might argue that Microsoft has been blazing a trail here in shipping devices and services in this space for some years and far be it from me to stop you making that argument 😉
I saw this YouTube session go by me on a timeline the other day which presents some analysis of the today/tomorrow state of the ‘glasses’ market and talks through some of the motivations of the players involved. It’s not Earth-shattering but I thought it was a good watch;
Naturally, not every rumour will come to fruition and, clearly, not all ‘glasses’ are made equal but, regardless, one version of the future promises to deliver glasses-for-all.
Glasses will become the great leveller as we all have to remember to clean them, not to sit on them and find them when we’ve misplaced them.
The only division is likely to be that some of us will still pay more than others to put prescription lenses into ours or maybe the future will solve that problem too 🙂
Mike Taulty 