Tim Cook says he always knew Google Glass would fail

Apple CEO Tim Cook says he always knew Google Glass would be a failure. Glassalmanac.com spotted the comment in a New Yorker profile on design vice president Jony Ive this week. In it, Cook mentions Google's troubled venture and says he "always thought it would flop."

It's one of many remarkable snippets in the Ive piece.

Glassalmanac points out that most of the reporting for the New Yorker article was done last year, before the official death of Google Glass. Google stopped selling the product last month.

Here's the New Yorker excerpt in which Cook comments on Google Glass:

To Ive, then unaware of Google's plans, "the obvious and right place" for such a thing was the wrist. When he later saw Google Glass, Ive said, it was evident to him that the face "was the wrong place." Cook said, "We always thought that glasses were not a smart move, from a point of view that people would not really want to wear them. They were intrusive, instead of pushing technology to the background, as we've always believed." He went on, "We always thought it would flop, and, you know, so far it has." He looked at the Apple Watch on his wrist. "This isn't obnoxious. This isn't building a barrier between you and me."

It's not the first Tim Cook has criticised Google Glass. In 2013, according to 9to5Mac, Cook said its appeal was "hard to see" at a conference on wearable tech. The new revelations come just as Apple prepares to unleash its own wearable tech project: The Apple Watch.

Still, it's not all bad for Google. Yesterday, Business Insider noted that not all of its "moonshot" development projects are suffering, as the company aims to reassure investors who are worried that Google has been too distracted by its offbeat, out-there research projects.