Google Glass might be the first thing many of us think of when someone says stupid, pointless, wearable device,
hear that almost every day, but surprisingly enough, it was far from the most ridiculous
thing that corporate America thought we should strap onto our bodies.
For example, take a look at this thing. It's called the Poma, made by a company called Zybernaut.
That, amazingly, was not in the business of making late 90s Saturday morning cartoons.
The Poma came out back in 2002 and was actually a full-fledged computer
that made you look like you just walked off the set of Star Trek.
It ran on Windows CE, you know, that obscure version of Windows for embedded systems,
and rocked a meager 128 megahertz CPU with 32 megs of memory.
That's incredibly underpowered by today's standards, but back then, yeah, it was still pretty bad for 2002.
The one-eyed display had an 800 by 600 resolution
with the idea being to replicate a 13-inch monitor.
But it turns out, completely obscuring one of your eyes
isn't such a good idea. People reportedly kept running into walls
while trying to use it. Your choices of input were either an odd-looking
optical mouse you could use to click individual letters on an on-screen keyboard, or an actual physical keyboard
you could strap to your forearm like the greatest hacker that ever lived.
Needless to say, with a $1,500 price tag and poor battery life, it didn't sell well.
Even with Zybernaut trying to make the Poma seem like the pinnacle of cool, almost got there.
Next up, Beauty and the Geek, not to be confused with the reality show.
This was a concept we saw back in 2012,
and looked like something right out of a really lame version
of Cyberpunk 2077. Instead of taking a keyboard and mouse with you,
why not just put it in your pants? Beauty and the Geek was a pair of black jeans
with orange stitching that could have been reasonably fashionable, but literally had a working keyboard
sewed in right over your junk. Aside from the downside that typing in public
could now be misconstrued as something rather indecent,
the concept tried to take convenience to the max
by also building in speakers and a wireless mouse
that hung from a strap. I also don't really know how you're supposed to
wash these things, so it's not surprising that these high-tech trousers never made it
past the concept stage. The next thing we're going to tell you about
actually did make it to market, and was a heck of a lot more practical
than the wearable PC or the keyboard pants, but unfortunately, it sucked big time.
This thing is called the Ring by Log Bar, and it was supposed to be a hyper-minimalist
and ultra-convenient way to interact with your tech.
You'd slip it on your finger, and then complete tasks like sending texts,
turning on the lights, and changing channels on your TV all by drawing simple gestures in midair.
So many people were captivated by the idea of waving your fingers in the air like a moron,
that it raised over a million bucks on Kickstarter. But the Ring broke the cardinal rule of technology.
It didn't work. When a user got in touch with Ring's support
and told them the gestures only worked around 5% of the time,
he was apparently told that, yeah, that sounded about right.
Yikes! It also didn't help that the Ring was so large
that it looked like you were wearing a piece of metallic calamari on your finger,
and given that it sold for a not nice price of $269,
it was quickly panned as one of the worst wearables in history.
I just hope no poor soul out there got this gifted to them as a wedding band.
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