What's new? Console manufacturers have been doing this forever. As an example, when working on an [intended] Kinect launch game, my studio routinely liaised with other studios to discuss how best to implement X feature and Y feature because Microsoft simply refused to release any details. We strongly suspected it was because they themselves weren't even sure!
Anyway, is this even a bad thing? Presumably - hopefully - Google will take the natural groove that developers have found themselves in and use that to design the APIs that are missing/coming. It's not like the product is even close to being on the shelves.
That's what happens when you're working on a product that is, for all intents and purposes, still in alpha status nevermind beta. Google can't offer guidance because the API and best practices haven't been nailed down yet.
You can't even argue that Google perhaps debuted Glass too early, because it's still an invite-only device. It's the chicken-egg problem with bootstrapping a new device ecosystem. Google needs testers and developers to finish the product, but testers and developers need a finished product to work with.
From the article, a quote trying to justify facial recognition apps:
"What I'm most fundamentally interested in is this idea of maximizing human potential," she said. "We could do expression recognition, and use it to teach autistic children how to recognize expressions." Another helpful scenario she described for facial recognition would be to help Alzheimer's patients remember people that they know they ought to recognize, but have forgotten."
Yeah, sure, I'm all for helping autistic children, but it's pretty damned obvious that non-invasive non-troubling uses of facial recognition on Glass are going to be the edge case rather than the rule.
I feel like Google is missing its window of opportunity here, about one year ago there was a massive hype surrounding the Google Glass (from my perspective at least). And then nothing, a bunch of people got their hands on them and after the initial feedback, nothing.
The last time I heard about Glass was because someone got fined for driving while wearing them in California sometime last month.
That's partly how they bungled Wave, IMO. Too much hype too early.
But in this case, all they need to do is announce a price, release date, and all the improvements that the consumer version will have, and people will be interested. As long as there's no direct competition, the opportunity remains.
I do have access to glass, but I'm not going to hack on it at the office and the price tag is just too steep for me to justify taking a pair home to hack on in my free time (especially with their lack of prescription support). That seems to be where they're falling flat, it's too early to base a business or startup after and it's too expensive to get the enthusiast/hacker support they seem to be expecting.
Also, I really wish they weren't so strict with their facial recognition ban. I'm useless in social situations because I'm terrible with faces (if I see someone out of the context I met them I will not recognize them). For someone like me, even if it was restricted to my own personal database and required approval of the person I was interacting with (NFC or BLE touch for instance), it would heavily level the social playing field.
The face recognition thing actually makes sense since the camera quality isn't that great and it's fixed focus. You'd have to get unreasonably close to someone to actually get it to work. I've tried, it just needs time for the privacy/UX issues to be resolved.
Anyway, is this even a bad thing? Presumably - hopefully - Google will take the natural groove that developers have found themselves in and use that to design the APIs that are missing/coming. It's not like the product is even close to being on the shelves.