> Specifically, the ones from [Captify][1].

Looks and seems great, always felt like a no-brainer use case for the smart glasses. But considering the kind of hardware they most likely are using, how is the captioning actually happening? I'm really scared of getting hardware that is 100% cloud dependent, as eventually the company gets bought or shut down, and then you end up having to repeat the process of figuring out what to buy next, and sometimes that just one or two years in the future.

They are not making it clear how the captioning is happening, but since they don't claim it'll continue working even if the company disappears/shuts down, one can be safe to assume it's a cloud product, meaning it won't actually be a good fit for most people out there with a limited amount of money to spend on things like these.

Edit: I realize now this product is not at all for people like me, "Boost caption accuracy up to 98%" and "More accurate translations" are locked behind a $15/month subscription, kind of disgusting how they hide making the product work as it should behind a subscription.

I just want some simple glasses that can caption what people are saying without ripping me off, I guess we're too late into capitalism for that to actually be made for consumer.

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afavour an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> "Boost caption accuracy up to 98%" and "More accurate translations" are locked behind a $15/month subscription, kind of disgusting how they hide making the product work as it should behind a subscription.

I'm rarely an apologist for subscription services vs outright purchase but those features sound like ones that are going to use cloud services instead of working on-device only. If it's associated with an ongoing cost it's perfectly justifiable to charge an ongoing fee, IMO. That said I’d much prefer an option tied to how much you actually use it.

	▲	embedding-shape 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, it's the same story as always; "We need to charge a monthly fee since it requires ongoing maintenance and you paying ensures we stick around", then fast forward 2-3 years and the company gets bought and shut down. We've been through this so many times that I'm just averse to any sort of product that won't work after the company shuts down. It's so horrible to find a product, it works and functions great, almost a life-saver even, and then Google buys the startup, the founders get a pay day, and they shut down whatever servers the product used and you sit there with some useless plastic that used to be great, but now isn't even a good paperweight.

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tqwhite 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The iPhone live translation is on-device.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/123720

	▲	embedding-shape 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		But iPhones don't sit in front of my eyes and does it automatically, which is why this whole "screens inside of glasses" thing seems so useful, if they could just figure out a way to make it work for longer than the duration of a startup.

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tlar 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They can do local transcription without internet but you do need their app, so the glasses would be useless if the company died, yes.

That said, the paid subscription has some useful features, but I personally don't care about multi-languages translation. The rest of the conversational improvements seem to help but I don't think they're necessary... although I don't know what they mean with "Boost caption accuracy". Maybe using more expensive models?