Remember Google Glass? You know, those weird head-mounted computers Google was selling for $1,500 a pop a few years ago? The ones only snobby techies bought and that were pissing off paranoid barflies who thought said snobby techies were surreptitiously filming everyone? The ones Google stopped selling in 2015 because the experiment never really caught on with the public as anything other than a futuristic novelty and/or privacy-invading mistake? Well, guess what! All five of you that still have a pair sitting around better go dig ’em out, because Google just released a very important new software update for the gadget, the first in almost three years.
According to the release notes, the new XE23 firmware provides Google Glass with support for Bluetooth devices, like keyboards and mice, in addition to the usual “bug fixes and performance improvements.” There’s also a new update for MyGlass, the Android app that lets you connect with and modify the settings on your headset. It gives Glass users some new battery management and ease-of-use options. These seem like pretty useful updates that should have been released, say, before Google shunted Glass out of the public eye and all but shut it down. Still, the company has never officially killed the project. Maybe this is an omen of things to come.