My elderly mother-in-law is slowly going blind. She relies on Meta glasses to read print on everything — from the back of a can to the mail. She also uses them to help locate items around the house, whether it’s something on the counter or in the living room.
I’ve tried the glasses myself, and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone. With ongoing advances in miniaturization, it’s only a matter of time before AR and AV are fully integrated into everyday wearables.
Janicc
I believe it's going to replace smartphones like smartphones replaced computers or more specifically laptops.
const_cast
I doubt it, these devices have a serious user input problem. The cornerstone of computers is human-computer interaction. That's what makes these pieces of silicon useful. They're tools for humans - meaning, it doesn't matter if the tool is better if it can't be used easier.
Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways. Typing is slower. No mouse. Fingers are fat and imprecise. The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone.
The trade-off was portability. Everyone can carry a smartphone, so it's okay that the human-interaction is worse in a lot of ways. Then, when we need that richer interaction, we can reach for a laptop.
The problem with smart glasses is they go even a step further in how poor the interaction is. Speech as an interface for computers is perhaps the worst interface. Yes, it's neat and shows up in sci-fi all the time. But if you think about it, it's a very bad interface. It's slow, it's imprecise, it's wishy-washy, it context dependent. Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster.
Smart glasses, however, are not more portable than phones. Not by much. Everyone already has a phone. So what do we gain from smart glasses? IMO, not very much. Smart glasses may become popular, but will they replace the smartphone? In my opinion, fat chance.
What I think is more likely, actually, is smartphones replacing smart glasses. They already have cameras. So the capabilities are about the same, except smart phones can do WAY more. For most people, I imagine, the occasional "look at this thing and tell me about it" usecase can be satisfied by a smartphone.
MailleQuiMaille
> The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone.
Good point, and it could be argued the user soon followed that dumbification, with youngest generations not even understanding the file/folder analogy.
I think we can go dumber ! Why need an analogy at all ? It will all be there, up in your face and you can just talk to it !
goda90
Voice is slow, but it can be sped up with vocal macros. One syllable/non-word noise commands.
There's also touch pads on the side of the smart glasses as another input option. And I could imagine some people liking little trackball-esque handheld controllers(like from the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You").
And there's also air gestures using cameras on the smart glasses to watch what your hands are doing.
I don't think any of these has the raw data input bandwidth that a keyboard has, and for a lot of use cases even a touchscreen could be better. But maybe that can be made up by the hands-free, augmented reality features of smart glasses.
itsdrewmiller
Eye tracking is a UI in its infancy but should be as fast as manual manipulation. Either form factor could use it but glasses are more motivated to figure it out. Headwear is also well situated for neural interfaces.
imiric
> Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways.
I was among the nerds who swore I'd never use a touch keyboard, and I refused to buy a smartphone without a physical keyboard until 2011. Yes, typing on a screen was awful at first. But then text prediction and haptics got better, and we invented swipe keyboards. Today I'm nearly as fast and comfortable on a touch keyboard as I am on a physical one on a "real" computer.
My point is that input devices get better. We know when something can be improved, and we invent better ways of interacting with a computer.
If you think that we can't improve voice input to the point where it feels quicker, more natural and comfortable to use than a keyboard, you'd be mistaken. We're still in very early stages of this wave of XR devices.
In the past couple of years alone, text-to-speech and speech recognition systems have improved drastically. Today it's possible to hold a nearly natural sounding conversation with AI. Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now?
> Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster.
That's because you're imagining navigating a list on a traditional 2D display with voice input. Why wouldn't we adapt our GUIs to work better with voice, or other types of input?
Many XR devices support eye tracking. This works well for navigation _today_ (see some visionOS demos). Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now?
So I think you're, understandably, holding traditional devices in high regard, and underestimating the possibilities of a new paradigm of computing. It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future, even if it seems unlikely today.
tyg13
For me, voice input is an immediate no-go because I don't want to have to talk to myself while I'm in line at the grocery store, or waiting for my oil change, or in the dozens of other situations where I typically use my smartphone to do things.
bandoti
Curious to see how this goes. It seems to me it’s hard to match reality—for example, books, book shelves, pencils, drafting tables, gizmos, keyboards, mouse, etc. Things with tactile feedback. Leafing through a book typeset on nice paper will always be a better experience than the best of digital representations.
AR will always be somewhat awkward until you can physically touch and interact with the material things. It’s useful, sure, but not a replacement.
Haptic feedback is probably my favorite iPhone user experience improvement on both the hardware and software side.
However, I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords.
All options are going to be valid and useful for a very long time.
imiric
> It seems to me it’s hard to match reality—for example, books, book shelves, pencils, drafting tables, gizmos, keyboards, mouse, etc. Things with tactile feedback. Leafing through a book typeset on nice paper will always be a better experience than the best of digital representations.
There's nothing tactile about a glass pane. It's simply a medium through which we access digital objects, and a very clunky one at that. Yet we got used to it in a very short amount of time.
If anything, XR devices have the possibility to offer a much more natural tactile experience. visionOS is already touch-driven, and there are glove-like devices today that provide more immersive haptics. Being able to feel the roughness or elasticity of a material, that kind of thing. It's obviously ridiculous to think that everyone will enjoy wearing a glove all day, but this technology can only improve.
This won't be a replacement for physical objects, of course. It will always be a simulation. But the one we can get via spatial computing will be much more engaging and intuitive than anything we've used so far.
> I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords.
Sure, me neither—_today_. But this argument ignores the improvements we can make to XR interfaces.
It won't just be about voice input. It will also involve touch input, eye tracking, maybe even motion tracking.
A physical board with keys you press to produce single characters at a time is a very primitive way of inputting data into a machine.
Today we have virtual keyboards in environments like visionOS, which I'm sure are clunky and slow to use. But what if we invent an accurate way of translating the motion of each finger into a press of a virtual key? That seems like an obvious first step. Suddenly you're no longer constrained by a physical board, and can "type" with your hands in any position. What if we take this further and can translate patterns of finger positions into key chords, in a kind of virtual stenotype? What if we also involve eye, motion and voice inputs into this?
These are solvable problems we will address over time. Thinking that just because they're not solved today they never will be is very shortsighted.
Being able to track physical input from several sources in 3D space provides a far richer environment to invent friendly and intuitive interfaces than a 2D glass pane ever could. In that sense, our computing is severely constrained by the current generation of devices.
const_cast
I'm not saying I don't believe you. But I am saying that, as a programmer, if you told me I had to only use an iPhone at work I'd probably set myself on fire.
> It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future
Yeah I mean I just really doubt it. I'm not seeing a whole lot of benefit over smartphones, which are already ubiquitous. At best, I'm hearing that it won't suck that much. Which... okay not really high praise.
I'm sure, like the smartphone, it will replace SOME usecases. The difference is that the usecases the smartphone replaced were really important ones that cover 80% of common stuff people do. So now everyone has a smartphone.
Will that be the case with XR? I doubt it. The usecases it will cover will be, at absolute best, incremental as compared to the smartphone. And, I presume, the smartphone will cover those usecases too. Which is why I think it's more likely smartphones swallow these glasses thingy than the other way around.
imiric
> I'm not saying I don't believe you.
I'm not trying to convince anyone. Believe what you want to believe :)
> But I am saying that, as a programmer, if you told me I had to only use an iPhone at work I'd probably set myself on fire.
Sure, me too. But that's a software and ergonomics problem. There's no way you will ever be as productive on a 6" display, tapping on a glass pane, as you would on a much larger display(s), with a more comfortable physical keyboard with far richer haptics. Not to mention the crippled software environment of iOS.
But like I mentioned in other threads, it would be shortsighted to think that interfaces of XR devices will not be drastically better in the future. Everyone keeps focusing on how voice input is bad, ignoring that touch, eye and motion tracking in a 3D environment can deliver far richer interfaces than 2D displays ever did. Plus voice input will only get better, as it has greatly improved over the last 2 years alone.
> I'm not seeing a whole lot of benefit over smartphones, which are already ubiquitous. At best, I'm hearing that it won't suck that much. Which... okay not really high praise.
Have you seen the user avatars in visionOS 26? Go watch some demos if you haven't.
Being able to have a conversation with someone that feels like they're physically next to you is _revolutionary_. Just that use case alone will drive adoption of XR devices more than anything else. Video conferences on 2D displays from crappy webcams feels primitive in comparison. And that is _today_. What will that experience be like in 10 years?
I'm frankly surprised that a community of tech nerds can be so dismissive of a technology that offers more immersive digital experiences. I'm pretty sure that most people here own "battlestations" with 2+ screens. Yet they can't imagine what the experience of an infinite amount of screens in a 3D environment could be like? Forget the fact that today's generation of XR displays are blurry, have limited FoV, or anything else. Those are minor limitations of today's tech that will improve over time. I'm 100% sure that once all of those issues are ironed out, this community will be the first to adopt XR for "increased productivity". Hell, current gen devices are almost there, and some are already adopting them for productivity work.
So those are just two examples. Once the tech is fully mature, and someone creates a device that brings all these experiences together in a comfortable and accessible package, it will be an iPhone-like event where the market will explode. I suspect we're less than a decade away from that event.
int_19h
What is your wpm with a touch keyboard (however fancy) vs an actual physical one?
i'll never wear them but i'm sure they'll have wireless conn for a keyboard, mouse, and other sane inputs, just like phones. for me the worst part of touchscreen is having to hold the device like a fancy glass egg (on a sane device i'd look up how to spell the word for that) no matter what i'm doing out of fear the wrong thing will happen if i don't. at least a plain monitor strapped to my face doesn't have that concern.
naveen99
To play devils advocate, Speech is how humans delegate to other humans. Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person or over the phone than on email.
Eddy_Viscosity2
> Usually faster and clearer to communicate with an employee via voice in person
That's because the communication is going from a person to a person and both are very highly tuned to not only hear the words, but the tone, context, subtext, and undertones. There can be all kinds of information packed in a few words that have nothing to do with the words.
Machines, even LLMs, can't do this. I don't think they every will. So typing and shortcut commands and the like are far more efficient interacting with a computer.
naveen99
That’s my point. It’s not the interface that’s the bottleneck. Ai needs to get a lot better and faster …
exac
A lot of people spend hours consuming auto-playing short-form video content. I would guess the majority of young people, in the West.
bee_rider
Smartphones are not even that similar to laptops. Smartphones wiped out beepers, old cellphone, PDAs, and decimated MP3 players and cameras.
Laptops, of course, have the much bigger screen and keyboard, not really replicated by smartphones. They have use-cases that smartphone can’t cover well for hardware reasons. So they’ve stuck around (in a notably diminished form).
If good AR glasses become a thing… I dunno, they could easily replace monitors generally, right? Then a laptop just becomes a keyboard. That’s a hardware function that seems necessary.
What niche is left for the smartphone?
Talanes
>Smartphones are not even that similar to laptops.
I believe that was the entire point of the comparison. Smartphones replaces SOME use cases of laptops in the same way ubiquitous smart glasses could replaces SOME use cases of smartphones.
jazzyjackson
A large plurality of young people rarely use a laptop if they’re not so called knowledge workers, most everything can be done by phone. Maybe clubhouse style group audio chats will make a comeback and people will jump on the ambient computing trend as clearly better than interacting with screens all day
A lot of lower income people might only have a cheap android phone.
It's more than enough to handle paying bills, applying for jobs, etc. Hell, a Bluetooth keyboard and a bit of grit + GitHub CodeSpaces and you can write develop applications.
You can also cast your screen to a TV or on a handful of phones use USB c to HDMI.
bee_rider
I’m not sure how to respond to your post, because it seems to ignore the vast majority of mine, including the parts that look at pretty similar ideas to what you’ve brought up.
Smartphones are mobile. Glasses with a keyboard would require either being fixed to a keyboard location or a keyboard with the form factor of a smartphone, and if that’s the case why do you need the glasses?
int_19h
The idea is that you'd use smart glasses without keyboard most of the time, mostly in the same scenarios you'd use a smartphone today. But unlike a smartphone, smart glasses can also replace a laptop if and when needed by pairing with a keyboard.
shortrounddev2
Smartphones replaced laptops. A huge amount of people don't own a laptop or desktop PC - they do all computing via smartphone or maybe tablet. My wife almost never opens her laptop, nor does my mom
layer8
Global PC shipments haven’t decreased over the last 20 years. It’s more like smartphones have expanded the number of people who do computing.
bigfatkitten
Millions of smartphone users never owned a laptop (or even a desktop computer) to start with. Smartphones are their only real exposure to computing.
bee_rider
But people still do buy some laptops.
It is hard to say when the peak of laptops in circulation was, right? Because simultaneously the tech has been maturing (longer product lifetimes) and smartphones have taken some laptop niches.
I’m not even clear on what we’re measuring when we say “replace.” Every non-technical person I know has a laptop, but uses it on maybe a weekly basis (instead of daily, for smartphones).
You have missed the point utterly. “AR glasses will replace smartphones the same way smartphones replaced laptops” — they didn’t replace laptops. Therefore AR glasses won’t replace smartphones in the same way smartphones didn’t replace laptops.
bee_rider
I’ve already responded to this sentiment in another thread. I do kind of find it puzzling that folks are reading my post and coming to the conclusion that I missed the point, but hey, if I confused enough people then I guess I’ll take the blame. I’ve tried to address in the follow up.
FWIW when I first skimmed your comment I came to the same conclusion as everyone else. I don’t think people are reading closely.
wslh
I don't think "replaced" is the right word, just like with smart glasses. The form factor and user experience are key attributes when choosing a device, independent of raw hardware power. It's likely we'll continue to live with multiple device types coexisting.
BTW, I have to consciously turn off my cybersecurity mindset when thinking about smart glasses. It's hard not to see all the new attack vectors they introduce.
paul7986
It won't replace you can't take selfies with smart glasses!
I wear my Ray Ban Metas a lot (bought in 2023) and love them but i can't take selfies with them. I have to pull out my phone. They are complimentary to phone tho i do enjoy not having my phone on me to take pics, vids and ask it for the time now (add 5G to it and it will do more like stream music).
Whatever Open AI is working on to replace the iPhone it will need to be able take selfies! I'm betting it's just an AI Phone with the experience of the movie H.E.R. where almost everything is done from the lock screen and it takes the best selfies of you (gets you to the best lighting) and everything under the sun.
nsxwolf
Just stand in front of a mirror.
paul7986
huh so all selfies will no longer then show peoples' complete face (eyes) and taking outdoor selfies you need to carry a mirror?
nsxwolf
Not all solutions are perfect.
1659447091
> you can't take selfies with smart glasses!
Sounds like a value proposition for society, to me!
derwiki
Why are selfies so important?
paul7986
60% of all Americans take selfies. Im way out of the "selfie," demographic yet take a good amount of selfies especially when traveling.
Selfies are apart of culture now.. that won't change!
kepano
In what way did smartphones replace laptops?
acuozzo
OP is trying to say it'll only be a partial replacement.
TiredOfLife
Ordinary people do everything on smartphones nowadays.
racl101
Yeah I can see that. Teenagers are in specially adroit at doing most computer related work from their phone. My niece owns a new Macbook and barely cracks it open. Prefers to do most things on the iPhone and actually manages it.
Me, (old millennial) can not even conceive getting any real work done just on the smartphone. But I'm a power user. I need to log onto linux servers and administer them. Or I need to crack open Excel files and use spreadsheets. Not an ordinary user.
andoando
For most people, whats the use case of a laptop?
You only really need one for doing some type of work
fnord77
it's gotten to the point where genz doesn't know how to use laptops/desktops
kube-system
Outside of this tech bubble that we are all in, many use them as their primary (or only) computer. More than 60% of internet traffic is from mobile phones.
epgui
That's exactly the point.
shortrounddev2
Lots of people don't own laptops or desktops. They do all computing through a smartphone.
iancmceachern
Smartphones didn't replace laptops.
Laptops and tablets replaced desktops. Nobody sits down in an office and does work on a smartphone.
Smartphones replaced phones, pagers, music players and cameras.
mulmen
The smartphone completely replaced the personal computer for most people.
10 years ago all my non-tech friends and family had laptops. Now they all use their smartphones as primary computing devices. My nephew who just graduated from high school and works in IT doesn’t even own a personal laptop.
bobthepanda
This makes sense; a personal computer at this point is either a phone or a desktop for high performance niches, and laptops are in the unsatisfying middle. Particularly anything in the netbook or ultrabook segment.
My dad worked from the 90’s until recently. He never owned a laptop. Until he retired, he went out and bought one almost immediately upon retirement, hah.
BurningFrog
Smartphones replaced laptops, but not for everything.
Smart glasses will probably do the same to smartphones.
Things are rarely completely replaced, at least not quickly.
gopher2000
Smart glasses will have the potential to cover more use cases than a smart phone ever did due to the potential of AR-enabled viewing display.
dehrmann
> Nobody sits down in an office and does work on a smartphone
Now that we have USB-C monitors, phones have USB-C, and high-end phones have CPU performance similar to low-end desktop CPUs (A18 vs Intel 14100), we could actually start replacing laptops with phones for some use cases.
freehorse
The biggest hindrance to this is apple itself with ios.
I would be glad to only have to take an external monitor to use with my phone while traveling, but there is little I can do and iphones is not very user friendly in such a way.
absurdo(dead)
[dead]
gwbas1c
> and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone
Once there is an actual usable in-glasses screen, I will agree.
A few years ago I tried someone's smartglasses with a screen. It basically had similar functionality to my first Fitbit: it would show texts, notifications, caller ID.
I really want one of those and went looking, but couldn't find it.
themanmaran
You might be interested in the EvenRealities G1 [1]. It's the absolute best form factor I've seen for just the text HUD
Looks amazing. Unfortunately from a Chinese company, and given how deeply integrated with my email, calendar, etc it would be... no interest.
alex1115alex
I have a pair - they're not as integrated as you'd think. It's essentially a BLE device that projects text/data sent from your phone, so any data transmission depends on the companion app you use.
Shameless plug: We build an open source OS for glasses that works with them. AugmentOS.org
Do you have any experience with their progressives? The ones I'm trying are so lousy that I'm going to try multifocal contacts next week. According to the order form, their progressive lenses seem somewhat decent.
sroussey
I want that with a camera so it can do facial recognition from my LinkedIn when I’m at a networking event.
mdhb
Just walk up and ask them their name like a normal person rather than doing some creepy fucking surveillance on them from across the room.
ge96
What style was it, nreal (bulky) or something like Frame (though lower end in quality)
hn_throwaway_99
> I’ve tried the glasses myself, and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone.
I sure as f* hope not. I already struggle with my cellphone addiction and all of its constant distractions and assaults on my attention span, the last thing I want is something from one of the largest advertising companies on the planet glued to my face.
erikig
I'm optimistic and I can only hope that the limits of what one can wear on the face for longer time periods will create a consequent limit to the distracting features that can be packed into a daily-use device.
redeeman
you are very largely able to control what you do on your phone yourself
hn_throwaway_99
Sure, I'm not blaming anyone else. But some of the smartest, most highly paid people in the world have as their sole job looking at data and feedback loops to build more successful ways to highjack your attention.
It's sort of like blaming the obesity epidemic on lack of willpower. Yes, any individual is responsible for himself. At the same time, companies have found better and more ingenious ways to addict lots of us using food. When I look back at pictures from the 1950s and see that nearly everyone is skinny/normal weight, am I just supposed to think that they had so much more willpower than today's people?
SoftTalker
I don't think so. You still would have to wear glasses, which is annoying.
cshimmin
some of us have to wear glasses anyway :/
SoftTalker
Yes, and I am one of "us" but I still think they are annoying. I wear contacts most of the time. Glasses are just awkward in many situations. In the heat when you get sweaty they slide down your nose or completely fall off, in the cold when you walk in to a warm house they fog over, in the rain they get water spots, the frames are always visible and interfere with peripheral vision. I just don't care much for them.
eloisant
Then they'll have to find a way to separate the "smart" frame from the prescription lenses, so you can change the glasses when your sight changes without having to buy smart frame each time - or the other way around, upgrade your frames without having to buy prescriptions lenses again.
xnorswap
Maybe we'll work out how to stimulate the optic nerve directly and skip to bionic eyes for both corrective vision and AR.
We'll need to overhaul the concept of limited liability before we do that though, the thought of someone being left without their eyes because a company goes bankrupt and no-one is at fault is pretty horrifying.
terribleperson
Unfortunately the unmaintained bionic problem is already real.
sleepyguy
Lensology, you tell them the frames, and upload your prescription, and they send you the lenses to pop in. It's called reglazing, and millions of people do it all the time.
Ray Ban does it for their Meta glasses, but Lensology can handle stronger prescription lenses.
lokar
I often get updated lenses for my frames. Is that not what you mean?
Izikiel43
> Then they'll have to find a way to separate the "smart" frame from the prescription lenses, so you can change the glasses when your sight changes without having to buy smart frame each time - or the other way around, upgrade your frames without having to buy prescriptions lenses again.
Ehh, there is nothing special about the lens, all the magic is in the frame, and the rayban and oakley frames look very similar to their standard versions. Getting new lenses for sunglasses is very common.
Have you never had prescription sunglasses?
barbazoo
Anecdotally, I haven't found it possible to buy lenses for a particular frame other than when you buy both new at the same time. Good luck getting the same lenses next time the prescription changes.
The frame will probably change slightly over time to make them incompatible.
And contact lenses and lasik are popular because many don’t want to wear glasses. I see head mounted displays useful in constrained scenarios (e.g construction site and tasks where you already wear safety glasses and need free hands). I have a harder time seeing a world where people ditch phones and start voluntarily wearing glasses which is often uncomfortable and inconvenient. Just finished 5 miles run on treadmill, went to sauna and did bouldering. There’s no room for glasses but can occasionally check my phone.
someuser2345
> I have a harder time seeing a world where people ditch phones and start voluntarily wearing glasses which is often uncomfortable and inconvenient
I see this world all the time at the beach; lots of people wear sunglasses there.
dmarcos
To be able to see and remove them as soon as they can. And even in those scenarios not everybody wear them. Run my own little study at beaches, concerts and other outdoor activities and noticed less people wear glasses than I was expecting in ideal conditions to do so (<50%)
mollerhoj
i dont think youre very representative of the general population
dmarcos
Contacts and especially lasik are growing in popularity. Strong signal people don’t enjoy wearing glasses if they can avoid it
SirMaster
Right, I have no interest wearing glasses.
vinoveritas(dead)
[dead]
tw04
And what is the non-verbal input method for these glasses that isn’t painful to use?
Because it’s not going to ever be socially acceptable to just start talking to your glasses vs silently typing on a phone in most public places/situations.
terminatornet
Gonna assume you're not in the US. Here it seems to be encouraged to watch TikToks at full volume on the bus at 6 in the morning.
cortesoft
Brain interface
Lorin
At that point we might as well skip the glasses entirely and have it output directly to the visual/audio cortex (with shut offs, of course)
patapong
I's possible that communicating brain > computer is much simpler than the other direction. I would expect that to be the case.
paulcole
1. Ever is a long time.
2. How confident would you have been about predicting the smartphone’s effects on society today back in say 1995?
mrweasel
Even if AR glasses can replace smartphones, I think there will be a bigger push back than on smartphones. A lot of us have seen what smartphones have done to society, and will be reluctant to adopt any new form of technology that could have the same level of disruption. It's the same as with e.g. Facebook or Twitter/X. I've seen what these social media companies have inflicted on humanity and I will never signup for another one.
mdhb
I’m glad your mother found some use case for them but honestly day to day interactions on the street… if you think you can just walk around filming people 24/7 with no sense of consent while beaming all that shit back into metas digital surveillance machine… I don’t know what to tell you other than to expect violence.
ian-g
I’m very glad your mother in law has use for them.
With that said, I don’t think these can replace phones until they’re quite a lot smaller and lighter. And to make it worse, you’d need at least two pairs - regular and sun. Possibly three if you’re someone who regularly uses safety glasses.
criddell
I don't think I would be super comfortable walking around with Meta cameras seeing everything I see in my home. I'm not sure I'd trust any of the companies likely to build the product with that kind of access to my personal life.
PaulHoule
MQ3 is crawling with cameras for ‘inside out’ tracking which hypothetically could be used in privacy violating ways. Currently these are locked down so that you can’t build interesting AR apps —- you should be able to look at a QR code and access a ‘location based’ XR app but they don’t allow it, gotta scan with a phone and transfer it to your headset with Meta’s janky app which shows all the “carelessness” of someone who doesn’t care to make money.
Meta says they will open it up though.
criddell
I might trust individual developers. I don't trust Meta though so as long as the XR app is running on Meta hardware, I'm not interested.
PaulHoule
I’m more worried that shoddy development practices will cause the video to freeze up, cause me to fall or crash into something and experience “VR to ER” myself.
nhecker
Photochromatic coatings -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photochromic_lens -- have existed for a while and are sold on safety glasses, at least according to a cursory look at a large online retailer's site.
That said, I'm not sure I'd want smart glasses. Being stuck on a computer for work, I try to take some time every day to be completely free of digital things. It's hard enough to do that with a smart phone in my pocket vying for my attention. I imagine it would be only harder with smart glasses over my eyeballs.
foobarian
They may not replace the current gamut of phone features. However; I question how much of current phone functionality is actually something users strongly need/want, vs. how much is pushed by big tech. It would be pretty great if a small core feature set done well in-glass turned out to be enough to kick off large scale adoption. Ultimately I think the input is probably going to be the hardest issue
Loughla
Read and send messages. Make phone calls. Navigation and maps. Set reminders. Navigate a basic Google search, even if it's just a top level summary.
Those things on glasses and I ditch my phone immediately.
ge96
What would be the interface, talking? I know they have pinching and hand tracking, guess it's no different than people talking "to themselves" while wearing earbuds.
amazingamazing
I don't understand how she's using Meta glasses to read print. You mean it's dictating it, or are they prescription? If the former, do you need meta glasses for that? If it's the latter, wouldn't it work with any glasses?
I also don't understand how they're used to locate items around the house. Is there some sort of GPS? Or do you mean it helps by virtue of seeing (e.g. prescription)?
AR glasses will be a hit, no doubt, but I don't see what's so special about glasses with a mic, camera and speaker on them. Seems especially for an older person that it would be more useful getting a phone with a screen and pointing at things and seeing it on a display.
Dfiesl
Yeah the glasses will be dictating the text.
For identifying objects the cameras in the glasses will be substitutes for her failing eyesight, no GPS or prescription needed.
A phone you have to hold in your hand whereas glasses you don't. Therefore glasses are superior for these use cases.
amazingamazing
Seems scary. If you’re using it to read some prescription and it says the wrong thing then game over I guess - or if internet goes out.
I’m very curious what this person did before these glasses were released.
rocketpastsix
they probably used a magnifying glass to help read.
ackfoobar
Yeah same thought here. When I got the glasses and was ready to be disappointed by the AI feature, I ask it to tell me the sweetener from the ingredient list on a can of coke zero. It hallucinated a whole bunch, so I took a photo to see for myself what the LLM saw. The resolution was very low.
sampo
> I don't understand how she's using Meta glasses to read print.
The glasses have a camera, and small speakers near your ears. They also have a microphone, so you can give them voice commands. Like Amazon Alexa, but in the glasses.
sleepyguy
The glasses need to be connected to your smartphone, and then you ask.
Hey Meta, read the text on this label and tell me what it says.
Hey Meta, do you see the keys on the counter?
Hey Meta, can you tell me what is in front of me?
It projects the sound into your ear.
deadbabe
I have perfect vision I have no interest in wearing fake glasses all day.
And mobile phones aren’t going anywhere because mobile computing has peaked: there are no use cases that require a device with a different form factor, it’s just a matter of lifestyle preference.
If we’re abandoning screen based devices, I’d rather have a small 2000s style flip phone with all the latest tech and LLM features built in, than something like glasses, which clash too much with fashion choices. Bonus if the battery life is insane.
TheGRS
I haven't seen a lot of progress on it, but I would definitely jump on whatever device lets me not have this chunky block in my pocket all the time. The concept I saw years ago was like a slap bracelet that you could remove from your wrist and unwrap into a tablet form-factor.
andoando
Just get rid of screens entirely and focus on software for the blind :]
deadbabe
A device slightly bigger than a car key would be perfectly fine.
leptons
If you don't currently wear glasses all day every day because you need them to see, I can assure you that wearing glasses all day every day is not the luxury you might think it is.
It tends to wear on the bridge of the nose after a while. And I'm sure these e-glasses are going to be heavier than normal glasses with a battery and electronics in addition to the normal things glasses have.
racl101
That's pretty cool. My mom is experiencing a lot of eye issues lately. So this is encouraging to hear.
I couldn't fathom if I would use these things for myself (at least not now, cause I'm ok with my Smartphone and don't really want to get a Meta account), but this, definitely changes my perspective a little.
layer8
I think this underestimates how many people dislike wearing glasses, and how much people don’t like interacting with people wearing non-transparent/colored glasses. You can flip a smartphone in and out of your pocket very quickly. The same is less practical (where do you put it?) and takes longer with glasses.
jazzyjackson
They come with a charger case that’s pretty pocketable. I had some with transition lenses so they weren’t full time sunglasses
I returned them cause I didn’t like forcing a camera into everyone’s face unannounced and the photos it took weren’t very good (vertical pics cutoff most stuff in my field of view, weird choice of focal length. Maybe with two cameras they could have a wide angle and a telephoto but the ray bans at least just had the one.
pizzathyme
I agree. Some threshold in the past few years has been passed. I wear mine every day (and I don't wear glasses normally). Music, photos, videos all super useful. AI is lacking but will get better. Feels cool and not-embarassing in public
I think that they've done it, this is Meta's iPod
ghostpepper
> I think that they've done it, this is Meta's iPod
I would love to try these types of devices but there is no way I'd ever give money to Meta or put my personal information into their systems or encourage my friends and family to do so either.
Hopefully Meta puts in a bunch of R&D to see what works in this space and then someone else (Apple?) just copies it.
bredren
Me too, I’d never trust that company with anything personal. It is bad enough that they can track health meta via in quest.
Meta running the show is a non-starter.
1shooner
Do you encounter people that would rather you not point a Meta camera at them as a condition of interacting with you? Or is it more task-specific?
dustbunny
I'm interested in hearing more use cases! Anyone else got one?
xylo
Make sense why Meta invested in Scale AI.
wiether
So how do you prevent Meta from gathering secrets displayed for even a tenth of a second on an employee' screen?
You'll have to ask security to check everyone's glasses now?
wwweston
Meta isn’t the last company I’d trust with a wearable always on video input (among other data no doubt), but they’re in the bracket.
smilespray
Who's worse? Palantir?
testfrequency
Yeah no kidding. Curious how someone could not rank Meta in dead last. Is the FBI last on your list or above Meta?
At least in regard to Palantir you understand their business. Meta masquerades, hides, and cowers their shady practices behind consumer friendly products.
Toxic lollipops labeled properly as toxic vs toxic lollipops labeled with a tiny * that requires consumer research. Which one do you think most people will reach for first?
TheGRS
The worst offender of giving my secrets away is still myself sadly.
fnordpiglet
Google is the absolutely bottom of the pile. They’re literally nothing but a mass surveillance for money company.
madog
Not to mention Meta is ad tech so these will be full to the brim of tracking and adverts to recoup R+D costs.
I'm yet to be convinced these are useful and not just another way to inject ads directly into eyeballs.
fnordpiglet
I suspect the incentive is less here as headway plays have margins of their own and planned obsolesce cycles to ensure continued revenue streams. Don’t forget Facebook resisted advertising for a long time and Zuck was ideologically opposed to it until they needed it to survive at all because they found no other monetization. I have a theory meta is enthralled with the idea of hardwareand its ecosystem precisely because it gives them an out from being dependent on ad tech. Even the oculus line is more about App Store, subscription revenue, and hardware margin and afaik has no ad surfaces.
noisy_boy
Imagine you are driving or using a power tool or cooking with these on and an ad starts playing.
KennyBlanken
Or keep it from violating recording and privacy laws?
How are these "smart glasses" legal in places like Germany where you (supposedly) can't even have a dashcam?
itsdrewmiller
Don’t press the button or use the voice command to take a picture - pretty simple. It’s not much easier to accidentally violate security with these than it is with a smart phone.
its actually quite good. but it took them twoish years to get it into production.
but only for research, not on these glasses.
jpk2f2
The same way you prevent employees snapping photos of secrets on their screen. By making and enforcing rules on their usage.
OkGoDoIt
Still no SDK though, what’s the point of smart glasses that only do what Meta lets them?
I’m personally more excited about the Mentra Live glasses, which are fully programmable with AugmentOS.
dkobia
This. The meta glasses have so much potential and it is absolutely frustrating as a developer to have no way to make use of it.
femiagbabiaka
In other hopefully unrelated news, the CTO of Meta just got sworn in as a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
Resist and bite
divan
Weird take: my biggest annoyance with Meta glasses after 1+ year of almost daily usage is that there is no way to switch from Meta AI to any other voice AI.
lostmsu
They are connected to smartphone, aren't they? Pretty much any AI can work with any headset.
You can use them as generic mic/headphones but you can also say “hey meta what does this statue say in English” and it will do a comically bad translation for you. It would be really nice if that workflow could use a better model.
msgodel
Hah so they're actually worse than my $16 bluetooth headphones unless you actually need the camera.
nickthegreek
they can be used to talk to any other ai. but you can’t easily activate it via voice/touch on the device. i’m unaware of any bt device that allows you to activate AI of choice.
msgodel
The bluetooth headphones I have on now have an assistant button. Supposedly it sends something like an HSP/AVRCP event to activate it although I haven't set any of that up since I'm on Linux.
itsdrewmiller
…or the sunglasses.
bravesoul2
Not a weird take. Just a shit product in that regard then.
divan
Bad explanation from my side. As generic headphones/mic they are perfect for chatting with ChatGPT in voice mode (that's how I use it most of the time, in fact). As comment above explained, they have their own "Hey Meta," listening feature and I would love to switch it to ChatGPT (or other voice AI).
In a way, that's similar how you can't change iPhone/AirPods to stop responding to "Hey Siri" and trigger ChatGPT instead. So I still label my take as weird )
kaycebasques
So there's no AR aspect to the lens on any of these Meta-partnered smart sunglasses, right? I assumed that was standard on all of them. Naive, I know, because that would require some amazing hardware. But it does go to show that we're still far from the Star Trek future that other simpleton consumers like myself might be hoping for / expecting.
itsdrewmiller
There is no screen at all on these - there are some other glasses in the market that have some visual aspect (not environment-aware but spatially aware enough to keep a virtual monitor in place). This one is the current market leader I believe: https://us.shop.xreal.com/products/xreal-one-pro?srsltid=Afm...
woodrowbarlow
if by "AR" you mean 3d spatial environment mapping; correct, meta glasses don't have that.
i would argue, though, that having integrated access to AI that can react to what the user is seeing is a form of digitally augmented reality.
Does it even matter if they have Oakley or any other logo on them? Aren't they all luxotica anyway?
jekwoooooe
Yes! Your 10$ and 600$ are made in the same place by the same company with largely the same materials.
I discovered goodr recently and they are great. 25$ high quality sunglasses that I can actually trust have real UV ratings. Seeing people wear ray bans or oakleys is really funny
tsurba
Thankfully in the EU you are not even allowed to sell sunglasses without proper UV protection, and can just pick up sunglasses from any market and trust they are fine, if a little flimsy.
EDIT: ok apparently anywhere else than the poorest of countries, too, really.
kylehotchkiss
and when you inevitably lose your goodrs, nbd, just get another set for $25
KaiserPro
you're correct it is luxotica all the way down.
The difference is that oakley are sports glasses, which means that meta can now start sponsoring sports events, which they couldnt do with rayban.
whats interesting, is that these glasses look normal, and not like the standard disphit magnets that oakley normally cater for
RandallBrown
Sorta. Oakley makes a lot more than just sunglasses and as far as I know does plenty of R&D in house.
noisy_boy
That's why they were spamming me several times in the last few weeks to buy the ray ban ones - trying to clear inventory.
geor9e
I knew they were about to launch a new model, by how aggressively they were advertising the old stock at sale prices the last few weeks.
I won't be buying it though - I tried talking to Meta AI in voice mode from my phone, and it's response to anything STEM related is basically "tee hee I'm just an AI I cant do that". My current assignee to my phone's AI hardware button is microsoft's. I assume it's an OpenAI model, but it lets you speed their voice up, which I value greatly.
fnordpiglet
I have a rayban meta and ask it various questions on STEM (ex: what is entropic gravity). Its responses are brief but accurate. YMMV but it seems fine. However for detailed discussion I use the ChatGPT voice mode. The glasses are a pretty capable Bluetooth headset end to end. I often use it for this - a good head phone that doesn’t stuff up my ears. The built in AI I’ll use for things like “remember what level of the parking garage I am on” where it snaps a photo of the level number and I can ask later.
post_break
Until they make it so you can replace the battery I'm not going to buy.
toephu2
Notice how the weight isn't advertised anywhere on the product page.
oflannabhra
I would love some sunglasses for running that show some basic metrics (similar to my Apple Watch) for my workout, equivalent to the FORM Smart Swim 1 [0]. However, I would mostly prefer this to be a dumb screen, with all the smarts off loaded to a watch or phone. I'm not sure why companies keep insisting on building such smart glasses as independent products.
“Unable to play videos without cookies”. OK, Meta, I can see your game.
bravesoul2
But what do they do?
A:
With Oakley Meta's glasses, you can:
Capture high-quality video and photos hands-free with a built-in ultra-wide 12 MP camera.
Listen to music, podcasts and more through Bluetooth speakers seamlessly integrated into the frames
Make and take phone calls hands-free
Live-stream your adventures, travels or daily life
Use Meta AI for instant information and assistance – just say "Hey Meta".
----
If you don't need the camera then just use a smartwatch that does much more. Maybe get a camera wrapped to your forehead instead.
ryandrake
I would almost buy one of these, but only if it could be used entirely offline, without a Meta account. We have enough things tethered to their manufacturer 24/7. This really shouldn't need to be one of them.
sandy_coyote
You can always put your phone away in situations where it's not socially or administratively acceptable. But if you have prescription lenses or sun sensitivity, you need to leave these on. I can imagine there's gonna be some friction with adoption there.
luxuryballs
I was looking at the Ray-Ban version of these for a few minutes before I realized there’s no HUD… I wouldn’t even consider a dev kit for one of these unless I had some kind of ability to add a dragon ball scouter widget to show the power level on the lens…
excalibur
If that's what you want, you can find some pretty good deals on Google Glass on ebay.
dustbunny
I was stoked when I saw these headlines cause I generally prefer Oakley to Ray Ban in terms of style, but these look nothing like Oakley's! Personally I don't like round glasses, I like more square glasses. Dang!
busymom0
These glasses don't look "Oakley" to me. Usually oakleys have a sporty look. These look like Ray Ban or childish. Also that pic of Zuck wearing them looks pretty ridiculous imo.
mfkp
I'd like to thank Meta for permanently banning all of my accounts with no warning and no ability to appeal a few months ago. Now no need to waste money on these overpriced spy goggles.
v5v3
>The Meta Ray-Bans have sold over two million pairs to date
Didnt realise there were that many social media pickup artists :-)
garbawarb
Looks cool but I just hate the heaviness and feel of wearing acetate. If they ever make titanium smartglasses I'll be all over them.
kube-system
Titanium is about 3-4x the density, they're normally light only because less material can be used... which is probably problematic when used as an enclosure for electronics.
syntaxing
Titanium for electronics isn’t much of a problem (look at Apple Watch and a bunch of Apple product). The issue is that it’s a considerably more expensive material (every cents count when you scale to consumer electronics) and a bit harder to work with.
kube-system
We were talking about weight -- you don't hang those devices on your face.
Titanium glasses are lightweight because a very minimal amount of material is used. This is possible for regular glasses because you can make them with a ~1mm cross-section. When you want to put electronics inside of them, you need much more material.
diggan
Although parent asking for titanium for the feeling, so maybe something in-between would be fine? Lightweight material inside and structurally, but titanium or something else as the "skin".
Why? If 1mm cross section titanium is just as or stronger why does it need to be thicker? For anchors?
kube-system
Because the electronics used in smart glasses go inside of the frames. It's not a structural problem, it's a packaging problem.
LtdJorge
Even if it’s an order of magnitude more expensive, they would make money on the glasses. Oakley (and every brand controlled by the Luxotica monopoly) glasses have extreme margins. On the order of, could be sold for under $20 making a profit but are sold for $300+. I don’t think the titanium work and the electronics can offset that.
woleium
The material is not the majority of the expense. The cost comes from the difficulty encountered when working the metal using standard tooling. It is difficult to work, low tolerance and high failure rates made it impractical prior to modern (very expensive) machines.
akomtu
Next: Meta announces a smart wristwatch that you would put on your right hand.
toephu2
No mention of weight in the article or on the official product page?
kgilpin
I will miss being able to see people’s eyes.
ipsum2
You can get them non-tinted, probably many people do.
LorenDB
Come on, why would you make smart glasses with a clear shell and then hide the electronics behind an inner shielding layer? I want all the circuits on display.
Believe if you worked at Meta when the glasses just came out there was also a limited fully transparent frame as well.
nickthegreek
i have the ‘stone’ colorway which is semi transparent brown.
duped
Light can affect the operation of many electronics, it's just easier to not worry about it and enclose the entire thing. Some models of RPI had this problem.
sodokuwizard
ah yes to satisfy that world famous market of giga electronics nerds in oakleys
longtimelistnr
Well i know this is sarcastic but have you seen the preferred design language of the Oakley founder? Exposed circuitry is righttt up his alley.
luxuryballs
it sounds like he got in trouble for exposing his circuitry in public
aanet
I'm old enough to remember that the very first adopters of Google Glass were called glassh*les, and other terms of varying degrees of endearment, no thanks to the techbros who used them in showers / restrooms and such.
What makes these FB glasses any different / special? Do they automagically obscure the views when in compromising positions?
/sarc
sejje
Society accepting a total lack of privacy is what's changed
Bender
This is just my opinion but these look even worse that the 1940's+ military issued BC glasses. BC as in birth control. [1] At least it will be easy to spot the glassholes [2] for now at least.
I think those glasses would be considered quite stylish today.
ccppurcell
In the 60s and 70s the NHS glasses (free or mostly free) were hated and a target for bullying etc. my mum had a couple of pairs, I wish she'd kept them because they were really cool by today's standards.
hyperadvanced
These little freaks want us to surveil each other so bad. Anyone wearing these things instantly becomes a pariah outside of SV fantasy land
onemoresoop
Cool, now you'll have to charge your glasses every day? I really hope this won't become the norm where all people will literally be strapped to their devices 24/7 minus sleep time. Oh well, we sortof live in this world, everybody's scrolling through their feeds already on their smart phones already. The technology is cool though, too bad it's used to extract all our attention.
RandallBrown
> everybody's scrolling through their feeds already on their smart phones already
It's kinda weird to me that this feels so dystopian.
Before smartphones it's not like I was sitting there appreciating the world around me. I was just bored and unhappy. Now I'm paying my bills, watching funny videos, looking up interesting things about something I heard about earlier in the day, etc.
But still, there's something off-putting about a group of strangers doing something mundane like waiting for a bus and staring at their phones the whole time.
ccppurcell
If you were unhappy before, I doubt smartphones have made you happier. They relieve boredom for sure but here's the kicker: boredom is good for you.
RandallBrown
I'm not sure boredom is good for you. I think boredom will often lead your brain into doing things that are good for you, but just being bored doesn't seem like something beneficial to me.
I'm not sure what I would gain by sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my appointment and being bored vs. sitting there with my phone reading/watching something.
The problem (in my opinion) comes when you start replacing everything you do with just scrolling on your phone. Like if I'm bored at home I just scroll TikTok instead of playing a sport or learning a new skill.
nsxwolf
We have other devices we are strapped to at sleep time to monitor our sleep data.
divan
You just put them into the case, similar how it is with Airpods.
testfrequency
Cute spyware.
This is exactly why regardless of how breakthrough Meta makes their wearables, it will never reach full market potential as their brand will always be known as a privacy nightmare. Apple is going to win here if they can get the price right.
VR I think most people can rationalize it as these headsets are used in very controlled states, like at home on the couch or living room - but for Meta to convince people to use this in their every day life..hard sell.
next_xibalba
This is a very “inside baseball” take. The average person just does not care at all about privacy from large corporations. It’s not even on their radar as a topic about which to have an opinion.
I think the biggest hurdles to widespread adoption are ease of connectivity (getting pics and videos “out” of glasses and onto phone/laptop/cloud), ultra high def images, size of on device storage, and battery life. Those are tough, given the form factor. But, if cracked, these will be huge.
tiahura
The main concern of the average person is to not look like a dork. Second, is interoperability with the services upon which they rely. So, privacy concerns won't matter to most, but being trapped in a Meta garden will.
sekai
> This is a very “inside baseball” take. The average person just does not care at all about privacy from large corporations
Google Glass remembers…
next_xibalba
You’re claiming google glass failed bc of privacy concerns?
GeekyBear
Privacy was certainly one of the widely stated objections to Google Glass, especially after an app that allowed you to snap a photo by double blinking appeared.
jajko
Apple goggles which only work in apple ecosystem, on purpose degrade themselves if anything else is used, and privacy... well thats a lengthy topic with apple. No, thank you.
In Switzerland we have a nice law that forbids people filming others without their consent. And law is actually enforceable here, fines are juicy and repeatable offenses punished harshly. I personally wouldn't outright punch in the face a person wearing such glasses but asked them to stop wearing them around me and my kids, and where it goes further depends on them.
Also, why is the design in those so weird? They look like kids glasses for 2 bucks, all photos seem like they are not sitting on the face well, zuck including.
SV_BubbleTime
>I personally wouldn't outright punch in the face a person wearing such glasses but asked them to stop wearing them around me and my kids, and where it goes further depends on them.
Quick to justify violence for someone that opened with "the government will protect me with fines after the fact". Just noticing.
freehorse
> law that forbids people [...] fines are juicy [...] punch in the face
This escalated fast.
kunzhi
I’m a 90s kid so there’s something poetic about Zuck choosing Oakley for this, feels on-brand for him.
In my mind it was inevitable that we would reach this point. The novel Snow Crash predicted this exact phenomenon (along with the Metaverse, of course, which is where they are trying to drive this). It’s the same with companies issuing cryptocurrencies and the like.
We aren’t totally locked in to the techno-feudal state just yet, but we’re getting there. Pretty fascinating how foreseeable these last many years and decades have been.
username223
> Pretty fascinating how foreseeable these last many years and decades have been.
It's a twisted kind of foresight, a lot like prophesies in ancient stories, that both predict the future and steer their subjects toward it. Neal Stephenson wrote books that appealed to (many, but not only) nerdy boys during their formative years. Lo and behold, 30 years later some of those boys have achieved wealth and power, and are trying to make random aspects of those books real.
Keep that in mind if you ever write a YA novel...
kunzhi
Yeah it's odd. Was it a warning or a prophecy? Was it both? Hard to say I suppose.
skhameneh
> choosing Oakley for this, feels on-brand
I get the sentiment, but I really enjoyed the Oakley Flak series, the fit was superb. BUT, I hated the feeling that it was perceived as a statement rather than utility. I bought them originally for high field of vision and blocking glare when riding bikes.
I lost a couple pairs and one got scratched really bad - and I don’t have a nice alternative in mind that fits a reasonable budget. *Am open to suggestions, I need ONE nice pair of polarized sunglasses that’l last.
kunzhi
> I really enjoyed the Oakley Flak series, the fit was superb.
Oh for sure, they were quite good, there was a real reason they became popular. But like you said, it got to be annoying that wearing Oakleys was a statement. (Plus, at least where I lived, they were part of the "douche uniform.")
In terms of recommendations, I'm still getting lots of mileage out of my Ray-Ban Wayfarers, and they're polarized.
nickthegreek
when you setup a pair of meta glasses, you can give them a name and i promptly named mine ‘gargoyle’.
kunzhi
Nice - maybe mine will be called YT.
notatoad
he didn't really choose oakley for this though, this is just the oakley-branded version of the ray-ban product that is already out.
make3
I don't think we should normalize pointing cameras at people's faces all the time. I hate these things.
neuralkoi
I agree completely with this comment, but I just want to point out that this cat's been out of the bag for at least the past 10 years.
There's camera's everywhere at this point: every doorbell/garage, every store, every light on the street, even my friend's pet/baby monitors when I visit. I hate it.
make3
it's not because everything sucks that we need to normalize making it worse
robhlt
I agree. The white light these turn on when recording is not enough for the average person to realize recording is happening.
I was visiting a museum yesterday and someone was using these to livestream/record their own (bad) tour. Security stopped someone doing this with their phone earlier, but had no idea what this guy was doing.
dynm
Maybe they have some light to show if they're on. But is everyone supposed to just know that? Pointing a video camera at everyone you talk to is an... interesting social choice. Glasses like these should be designed with a physical mechanisms to cover the cameras.
paul7986
Based on the comments above this sentiment is going away vs. in Oct 2023 when i start evangelizing them I heard and saw a lot more of I hate these privacy nightmare stuff.
make3
the OG of this were the google glasses, that got banned in restaurants etc. no such backlash this time around
edwardbernays
I think wearing smart glasses from any ad-tech surveillance company ought to be considered anti-social, and we should normalize ostracizing people who wear these in public. Want to wear them in your own home? Fine. Don't record me. This is now not just surveillance but sousveillance.
loughnane
I had an interaction like this at Labcentral near MIT a few weeks ago. I was talking to this young kid for a minute before I realized he had those glasses on.
I asked if those are cameras, he said yes. I asked if he’s recording he said now. I told him in any case I find it very off-putting to have cameras in my face and that I’m going to go. Shook his hand and that was it.
I feel like that’s the right way to handle it. I’m sure I’ll need to keep doing it.
penguin_booze
Came here to say exactly this. Someone wearing this in public should be considered as a brazen attempt to record others en masse without consent. In fact, it's worse because it's data being harvested for and siphoned to a third party, in real time, entirely for their enrichment.
We already have enough mass surveillance devices. But I suppose two arguments could be made (1) we don't need more of these, or (2) peak surveillance has already been achieved, and adding one more doesn't make any difference.
edwardbernays
I think this is a reasonable place to draw a bright, red line. It'll make us look unreasonable if we act unreasonably. What's really harming us is that we don't have a formalized value system from which to engage in rhetoric, nor do we have a standard rhetoric which people can easily engage from and against.
Workaccount2
A side note, but it is very unfortunate luck that the pendulum of fashionable eye-wear has swung back towards 80's/90's style thin frame/no frame glasses.
You really need young people to carry tech like this, and needing them to wear millennial fashion from 10 years ago so camera and compute fit will just make it that much harder.
sandspar
Good point! These would have been a much easier sell when Warby Parker was for cool young people instead of for aging dads.
amazingamazing
won't buy these, or any others smart glasses until there's a way to replace the battery. I'm annoy'd enough that it's difficult to do with bluetooth headphones... with my quest 3 at least there's an option to plug it into an external battery, given the traditional use cases.
tomhow
[Stub for offtopic-ness]
DHPersonal
The difference between the stylish product shot and the goofy candid is stunning. The glasses look ridiculous on Zuckerberg.
badlucklottery
I think part of the issue is that Zuckerberg is a smaller dude and they're pretty big sunglasses so he has a bit of that "Look! I'm wearing dad's glasses!" thing going on.
gardenhedge
So that's half of men and most women ruled out?
ChrisMarshallNY
Big glasses are actually quite popular with women.
Heavy frames and large lenses tend to compensate for larger noses, and other facial issues (although they won't come out and say that). Clear glasses can really focus on the eyes.
I know a couple of women that have made large, heavy-rimmed glasses into a real fashion statement.
jebarker
Ridiculous seems strong. They’re not my style but I see people making far more surprising fashion choices everyday
Usually I prefer second-hand sources over press-releases, as press-releses tend to be a bit too much navel-gazing and pats on the back.
demosthanos
In general I agree, but The Verge in particular tends to just say exactly what the press release says with less detail. If we're going to do a non-press-release source it should be because they're offering context and information that the company would not willingly choose to provide themselves.
diggan
Yeah, also agree with you in general, if it's the same, doesn't really matter :)
But at least the last paragraph seems to be adding something, although the rest of the article is indeed just a re-hash of the press-release.
> Meta recently signed a multi-year deal with EssilorLuxottica, the parent company behind Ray-Ban, Oakley, and other eyewear brands. The Meta Ray-Bans have sold over two million pairs to date, and EssilorLuxottica recently disclosed that it plans to sell 10 million smart glasses with Meta annually by 2026. “This is our first step into the performance category,” Alex Himel, Meta’s head of wearables, tells me. “There’s more to come.”
add-sub-mul-div
Right, journalism adds commentary and context. People may often think it's bad, or not like or agree with what they read, and conflate that with thinking journalism is bad or forgetting what it fundamentally is and why it's important that it exists. A straight up ad from Facebook would not be better than this.
deafpolygon
Whaaaat the heck is going on in the reflections on Mark Z’s glasses?
foxygen
His wife holding a phone?
newsclues
Oakley quality tanked since luxottica bought them.
Unfortunate.
demosthanos
Somehow we've actually managed to regress from 2013's Google Glass.
Always-on microphone and camera sold by one of the world's sketchiest privacy invaders? Check.
Display that actually takes advantage of the glasses form factor? Nope. Sounds like this could just as easily be the Humane pin.
awongh
Crazy how much more acceptable this is only 12 years later.
People were so angry in 2013.
toast0
Google glass was a display that was up and to the right of where you want to be looking.
I don't know about everyone, but I found it pretty hard to use. Caveat, I didn't get them fit to me, I was supervising an intern working on a speculative Glass project, and they were fit to him.
AR would be neat, but voice interfaces are acheivable at an approachable cost. I'm not one to talk to a computer, and I wear prescription lenses, so these glasses don't appeal to me, but I can see there's a market there, not sure how big or if Meta can capture it.
demosthanos
Right, I'm not claiming Glass was good, but it at least attempted to use the glasses form factor for something.
toast0
The camera to capture 'what you see' seems like using the form factor pretty well.
Mic and speakers, too.
Glass attempted a display, but IMHO, it was unusable, so I understand why you would try the same thing with no display. Or the same thing, but mounted on your wrist (Google Wear).
georgeecollins
Well it shows you what was the real problem with glass, it looked dorky. I wish people cared about privacy but in general they don't.
kotaKat
It's one of those times you just want to "OK Glass" the person around you that says "Hey, Meta" with their privacy-invading cameras.
Handy-Man
It's not always on. How do you skeptics always manage to get things wrong to get your point across?
demosthanos
If you can ask "Hey Meta, ..." while holding a golf club and unable to touch a button (which the promo video [0] shows you can) then the mic is always on. It may not always be beaming data to Meta, but that's a matter of trust, which I don't have much of for Meta given their history.
The camera may or may not be always on, but it can be turned on by software activated by the always-on mic (again, demonstrated by the promo video), so it would be best to treat it as though it is.
The “Hey *” (Meta, Siri, Alexa) is typically handled by a simpler mechanism on a short buffer that triggers the proper recording and speech recognition workflow in order to save battery. But if you’re not going to trust the company, then the fact that it responds to Hey Meta shouldn’t make any difference because it could still be quietly recording. The fact that it responds to a wakeup prompt changes nothing.
demosthanos
I'm aware of the mechanism, but that mechanism relies on a mic that is always on.
I agree that the primary issue is that it's a software-controlled microphone with no off switch controlled by software written by Meta. I only emphasized the wake word listening in response to OP's claim that it's not always on when it must be.
meepmorp
how can it respond to voice prompts if it's not listening?
echoangle
The claim was always-on mic and camera. The mic might be always on, the camera doesn’t have to.
I think AR would be a great addition but this is categorically wrong. Look at the top post in this thread. Plus, in the wild I have encountered people wearing these things taking calls, taking pictures, asking questions.
There have been at least five AR glasses that I can think of and this is only one that anyone really uses. So, no.
greesil
How does AR help anything? What problems does AR solve? At least with face camera + Clearview I could become the world's greatest politician / bounty hunter.
Actually nevermind I saw this sick demo on Reddit of an AR putting assistant but I think they had to strap a depth camera on the device. So AR means mini golf pro?
ajmurmann
A phenomenal use case that would be enabled by simple AR is overlays for signs in foreign language and "subtitles" for foreign languages. This would be incredible during travel. Much better than pulling your phone out to look at signs, menus etc.
kevinventullo
The “subtitles” could also serve as IRL Closed Captioning for folks who are deaf or hard of hearing.
greesil
Okay, so a nice hearing aid / babel fish. My mom might like these.
luxuryballs
it helps keep want to develop for them or wear them at all
woleium
They have audio AR, which is sufficient for many use cases.
dmonitor
Is audio AR just headphones?
woleium
Yes, on the hardware side. You need some TTS and notification stuff on the software side. (like airpods, which will read you text messages and allow you to respond using siri)
ivape
Yeah. Glasses with speakers are okay, but they need to stop trying to push it as a new product line. It'll take a phone call and a promise of payment to China and we'll easily have glasses duck taped to a small in-ear headphone/with mic.
micromacrofoot(dead)
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wmeredith
I like that they included a candid photo. The clothes I buy don't look the same on me as they do on a model, and I'm OK with that.
micromacrofoot
sure but there's a reason this kind of product is usually modeled, because candidly having cameras mounted on your head is a terribly awkward thing
neepi(dead)
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lostmsu(dead)
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nusl(dead)
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msgodel
Even if they did it's not much of an improvement over normal bluetooth headphones, most of which have hardware assistant buttons now.
It's ridiculous and disappointing. I think Facebook is used to not providing real value add to their users and thinking just exposure to cybernetics is enough of a sell. That's completely saturated now though.
black_13(dead)
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jxjnskkzxxhx(dead)
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sejje
Saw the picture with him wearing them, definitely checks out.
redczar(dead)
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paxys
Why did Zuck think it was okay to post a photo of himself wearing them? Does he think his cool looks will drive sales? The little interest I had immediately disappeared after seeing it.
some_random
Do you typically make your tech choices based on who they have modeling them in ads?
542354234235
The entire history of advertising would indicate that a lot of people do make choices, especially fashion related, based on being modeled by beautiful famous people with established parasocial relationships with their audience.
spiderice
Whether or not we want to admit it, people definitely make tech choices based off how cool the people in the ads look. To deny that would be to deny the effectiveness of marketing.
Apocryphon
Well, when they’re wearables…
freehorse
Well there is some reason that some people play in ads, and I don't.
JKCalhoun
That they're from Meta was the deal-killer for me. (Zuck's mug simply reminded me of that fact.)
const_cast
> Does he think his cool looks will drive sales?
Yes. Haven't you seen his new Gen-Z midlife crisis haircut? Clearly he is a very cool and relatable guy.
I’ve tried the glasses myself, and I’m convinced that wearable eyewear like this will eventually replace the mobile phone. With ongoing advances in miniaturization, it’s only a matter of time before AR and AV are fully integrated into everyday wearables.
Smartphones were a step back in a lot of ways. Typing is slower. No mouse. Fingers are fat and imprecise. The result is most applications were severely dumbed down to work on a smartphone.
The trade-off was portability. Everyone can carry a smartphone, so it's okay that the human-interaction is worse in a lot of ways. Then, when we need that richer interaction, we can reach for a laptop.
The problem with smart glasses is they go even a step further in how poor the interaction is. Speech as an interface for computers is perhaps the worst interface. Yes, it's neat and shows up in sci-fi all the time. But if you think about it, it's a very bad interface. It's slow, it's imprecise, it's wishy-washy, it context dependent. Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster.
Smart glasses, however, are not more portable than phones. Not by much. Everyone already has a phone. So what do we gain from smart glasses? IMO, not very much. Smart glasses may become popular, but will they replace the smartphone? In my opinion, fat chance.
What I think is more likely, actually, is smartphones replacing smart glasses. They already have cameras. So the capabilities are about the same, except smart phones can do WAY more. For most people, I imagine, the occasional "look at this thing and tell me about it" usecase can be satisfied by a smartphone.
Good point, and it could be argued the user soon followed that dumbification, with youngest generations not even understanding the file/folder analogy.
I think we can go dumber ! Why need an analogy at all ? It will all be there, up in your face and you can just talk to it !
There's also touch pads on the side of the smart glasses as another input option. And I could imagine some people liking little trackball-esque handheld controllers(like from the Black Mirror episode "The Entire History of You").
And there's also air gestures using cameras on the smart glasses to watch what your hands are doing.
I don't think any of these has the raw data input bandwidth that a keyboard has, and for a lot of use cases even a touchscreen could be better. But maybe that can be made up by the hands-free, augmented reality features of smart glasses.
I was among the nerds who swore I'd never use a touch keyboard, and I refused to buy a smartphone without a physical keyboard until 2011. Yes, typing on a screen was awful at first. But then text prediction and haptics got better, and we invented swipe keyboards. Today I'm nearly as fast and comfortable on a touch keyboard as I am on a physical one on a "real" computer.
My point is that input devices get better. We know when something can be improved, and we invent better ways of interacting with a computer.
If you think that we can't improve voice input to the point where it feels quicker, more natural and comfortable to use than a keyboard, you'd be mistaken. We're still in very early stages of this wave of XR devices.
In the past couple of years alone, text-to-speech and speech recognition systems have improved drastically. Today it's possible to hold a nearly natural sounding conversation with AI. Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now?
> Imagine, for example, trying to navigate your emails by speech only. Disaster.
That's because you're imagining navigating a list on a traditional 2D display with voice input. Why wouldn't we adapt our GUIs to work better with voice, or other types of input?
Many XR devices support eye tracking. This works well for navigation _today_ (see some visionOS demos). Where do you think we'll be 10 years from now?
So I think you're, understandably, holding traditional devices in high regard, and underestimating the possibilities of a new paradigm of computing. It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future, even if it seems unlikely today.
AR will always be somewhat awkward until you can physically touch and interact with the material things. It’s useful, sure, but not a replacement.
Haptic feedback is probably my favorite iPhone user experience improvement on both the hardware and software side.
However, I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords.
All options are going to be valid and useful for a very long time.
There's nothing tactile about a glass pane. It's simply a medium through which we access digital objects, and a very clunky one at that. Yet we got used to it in a very short amount of time.
If anything, XR devices have the possibility to offer a much more natural tactile experience. visionOS is already touch-driven, and there are glove-like devices today that provide more immersive haptics. Being able to feel the roughness or elasticity of a material, that kind of thing. It's obviously ridiculous to think that everyone will enjoy wearing a glove all day, but this technology can only improve.
This won't be a replacement for physical objects, of course. It will always be a simulation. But the one we can get via spatial computing will be much more engaging and intuitive than anything we've used so far.
> I will never be able to type faster than on my keyboard, and even with the most advanced voice inputs, I will always be able to type longer and with less fatigue than if I were to use my voice—having ten fingers and one set of vocal cords.
Sure, me neither—_today_. But this argument ignores the improvements we can make to XR interfaces.
It won't just be about voice input. It will also involve touch input, eye tracking, maybe even motion tracking.
A physical board with keys you press to produce single characters at a time is a very primitive way of inputting data into a machine.
Today we have virtual keyboards in environments like visionOS, which I'm sure are clunky and slow to use. But what if we invent an accurate way of translating the motion of each finger into a press of a virtual key? That seems like an obvious first step. Suddenly you're no longer constrained by a physical board, and can "type" with your hands in any position. What if we take this further and can translate patterns of finger positions into key chords, in a kind of virtual stenotype? What if we also involve eye, motion and voice inputs into this?
These are solvable problems we will address over time. Thinking that just because they're not solved today they never will be is very shortsighted.
Being able to track physical input from several sources in 3D space provides a far richer environment to invent friendly and intuitive interfaces than a 2D glass pane ever could. In that sense, our computing is severely constrained by the current generation of devices.
> It's practically inevitable that XR devices will become the standard computing platform in the near future
Yeah I mean I just really doubt it. I'm not seeing a whole lot of benefit over smartphones, which are already ubiquitous. At best, I'm hearing that it won't suck that much. Which... okay not really high praise.
I'm sure, like the smartphone, it will replace SOME usecases. The difference is that the usecases the smartphone replaced were really important ones that cover 80% of common stuff people do. So now everyone has a smartphone.
Will that be the case with XR? I doubt it. The usecases it will cover will be, at absolute best, incremental as compared to the smartphone. And, I presume, the smartphone will cover those usecases too. Which is why I think it's more likely smartphones swallow these glasses thingy than the other way around.
I'm not trying to convince anyone. Believe what you want to believe :)
> But I am saying that, as a programmer, if you told me I had to only use an iPhone at work I'd probably set myself on fire.
Sure, me too. But that's a software and ergonomics problem. There's no way you will ever be as productive on a 6" display, tapping on a glass pane, as you would on a much larger display(s), with a more comfortable physical keyboard with far richer haptics. Not to mention the crippled software environment of iOS.
But like I mentioned in other threads, it would be shortsighted to think that interfaces of XR devices will not be drastically better in the future. Everyone keeps focusing on how voice input is bad, ignoring that touch, eye and motion tracking in a 3D environment can deliver far richer interfaces than 2D displays ever did. Plus voice input will only get better, as it has greatly improved over the last 2 years alone.
> I'm not seeing a whole lot of benefit over smartphones, which are already ubiquitous. At best, I'm hearing that it won't suck that much. Which... okay not really high praise.
Have you seen the user avatars in visionOS 26? Go watch some demos if you haven't.
Being able to have a conversation with someone that feels like they're physically next to you is _revolutionary_. Just that use case alone will drive adoption of XR devices more than anything else. Video conferences on 2D displays from crappy webcams feels primitive in comparison. And that is _today_. What will that experience be like in 10 years?
I'm frankly surprised that a community of tech nerds can be so dismissive of a technology that offers more immersive digital experiences. I'm pretty sure that most people here own "battlestations" with 2+ screens. Yet they can't imagine what the experience of an infinite amount of screens in a 3D environment could be like? Forget the fact that today's generation of XR displays are blurry, have limited FoV, or anything else. Those are minor limitations of today's tech that will improve over time. I'm 100% sure that once all of those issues are ironed out, this community will be the first to adopt XR for "increased productivity". Hell, current gen devices are almost there, and some are already adopting them for productivity work.
So those are just two examples. Once the tech is fully mature, and someone creates a device that brings all these experiences together in a comfortable and accessible package, it will be an iPhone-like event where the market will explode. I suspect we're less than a decade away from that event.
That's because the communication is going from a person to a person and both are very highly tuned to not only hear the words, but the tone, context, subtext, and undertones. There can be all kinds of information packed in a few words that have nothing to do with the words.
Machines, even LLMs, can't do this. I don't think they every will. So typing and shortcut commands and the like are far more efficient interacting with a computer.
Laptops, of course, have the much bigger screen and keyboard, not really replicated by smartphones. They have use-cases that smartphone can’t cover well for hardware reasons. So they’ve stuck around (in a notably diminished form).
If good AR glasses become a thing… I dunno, they could easily replace monitors generally, right? Then a laptop just becomes a keyboard. That’s a hardware function that seems necessary.
What niche is left for the smartphone?
I believe that was the entire point of the comparison. Smartphones replaces SOME use cases of laptops in the same way ubiquitous smart glasses could replaces SOME use cases of smartphones.
It's more than enough to handle paying bills, applying for jobs, etc. Hell, a Bluetooth keyboard and a bit of grit + GitHub CodeSpaces and you can write develop applications.
You can also cast your screen to a TV or on a handful of phones use USB c to HDMI.
It is hard to say when the peak of laptops in circulation was, right? Because simultaneously the tech has been maturing (longer product lifetimes) and smartphones have taken some laptop niches.
I’m not even clear on what we’re measuring when we say “replace.” Every non-technical person I know has a laptop, but uses it on maybe a weekly basis (instead of daily, for smartphones).
https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=44330537
BTW, I have to consciously turn off my cybersecurity mindset when thinking about smart glasses. It's hard not to see all the new attack vectors they introduce.
I wear my Ray Ban Metas a lot (bought in 2023) and love them but i can't take selfies with them. I have to pull out my phone. They are complimentary to phone tho i do enjoy not having my phone on me to take pics, vids and ask it for the time now (add 5G to it and it will do more like stream music).
Whatever Open AI is working on to replace the iPhone it will need to be able take selfies! I'm betting it's just an AI Phone with the experience of the movie H.E.R. where almost everything is done from the lock screen and it takes the best selfies of you (gets you to the best lighting) and everything under the sun.
Sounds like a value proposition for society, to me!
Selfies are apart of culture now.. that won't change!
Me, (old millennial) can not even conceive getting any real work done just on the smartphone. But I'm a power user. I need to log onto linux servers and administer them. Or I need to crack open Excel files and use spreadsheets. Not an ordinary user.
You only really need one for doing some type of work
Laptops and tablets replaced desktops. Nobody sits down in an office and does work on a smartphone.
Smartphones replaced phones, pagers, music players and cameras.
10 years ago all my non-tech friends and family had laptops. Now they all use their smartphones as primary computing devices. My nephew who just graduated from high school and works in IT doesn’t even own a personal laptop.
Smart glasses will probably do the same to smartphones.
Things are rarely completely replaced, at least not quickly.
Now that we have USB-C monitors, phones have USB-C, and high-end phones have CPU performance similar to low-end desktop CPUs (A18 vs Intel 14100), we could actually start replacing laptops with phones for some use cases.
I would be glad to only have to take an external monitor to use with my phone while traveling, but there is little I can do and iphones is not very user friendly in such a way.
Once there is an actual usable in-glasses screen, I will agree.
A few years ago I tried someone's smartglasses with a screen. It basically had similar functionality to my first Fitbit: it would show texts, notifications, caller ID.
I really want one of those and went looking, but couldn't find it.
https://www.evenrealities.com/
Shameless plug: We build an open source OS for glasses that works with them. AugmentOS.org
Meta, Microsoft, Apple, etc. are far more likely to snitch on you to the government you actually live under.
Do you have any experience with their progressives? The ones I'm trying are so lousy that I'm going to try multifocal contacts next week. According to the order form, their progressive lenses seem somewhat decent.
I sure as f* hope not. I already struggle with my cellphone addiction and all of its constant distractions and assaults on my attention span, the last thing I want is something from one of the largest advertising companies on the planet glued to my face.
It's sort of like blaming the obesity epidemic on lack of willpower. Yes, any individual is responsible for himself. At the same time, companies have found better and more ingenious ways to addict lots of us using food. When I look back at pictures from the 1950s and see that nearly everyone is skinny/normal weight, am I just supposed to think that they had so much more willpower than today's people?
We'll need to overhaul the concept of limited liability before we do that though, the thought of someone being left without their eyes because a company goes bankrupt and no-one is at fault is pretty horrifying.
Ray Ban does it for their Meta glasses, but Lensology can handle stronger prescription lenses.
Ehh, there is nothing special about the lens, all the magic is in the frame, and the rayban and oakley frames look very similar to their standard versions. Getting new lenses for sunglasses is very common.
Have you never had prescription sunglasses?
The frame will probably change slightly over time to make them incompatible.
I see this world all the time at the beach; lots of people wear sunglasses there.
Because it’s not going to ever be socially acceptable to just start talking to your glasses vs silently typing on a phone in most public places/situations.
2. How confident would you have been about predicting the smartphone’s effects on society today back in say 1995?
With that said, I don’t think these can replace phones until they’re quite a lot smaller and lighter. And to make it worse, you’d need at least two pairs - regular and sun. Possibly three if you’re someone who regularly uses safety glasses.
Meta says they will open it up though.
That said, I'm not sure I'd want smart glasses. Being stuck on a computer for work, I try to take some time every day to be completely free of digital things. It's hard enough to do that with a smart phone in my pocket vying for my attention. I imagine it would be only harder with smart glasses over my eyeballs.
Those things on glasses and I ditch my phone immediately.
I also don't understand how they're used to locate items around the house. Is there some sort of GPS? Or do you mean it helps by virtue of seeing (e.g. prescription)?
AR glasses will be a hit, no doubt, but I don't see what's so special about glasses with a mic, camera and speaker on them. Seems especially for an older person that it would be more useful getting a phone with a screen and pointing at things and seeing it on a display.
A phone you have to hold in your hand whereas glasses you don't. Therefore glasses are superior for these use cases.
I’m very curious what this person did before these glasses were released.
The glasses have a camera, and small speakers near your ears. They also have a microphone, so you can give them voice commands. Like Amazon Alexa, but in the glasses.
Hey Meta, read the text on this label and tell me what it says.
Hey Meta, do you see the keys on the counter?
Hey Meta, can you tell me what is in front of me?
It projects the sound into your ear.
And mobile phones aren’t going anywhere because mobile computing has peaked: there are no use cases that require a device with a different form factor, it’s just a matter of lifestyle preference.
If we’re abandoning screen based devices, I’d rather have a small 2000s style flip phone with all the latest tech and LLM features built in, than something like glasses, which clash too much with fashion choices. Bonus if the battery life is insane.
It tends to wear on the bridge of the nose after a while. And I'm sure these e-glasses are going to be heavier than normal glasses with a battery and electronics in addition to the normal things glasses have.
I couldn't fathom if I would use these things for myself (at least not now, cause I'm ok with my Smartphone and don't really want to get a Meta account), but this, definitely changes my perspective a little.
I returned them cause I didn’t like forcing a camera into everyone’s face unannounced and the photos it took weren’t very good (vertical pics cutoff most stuff in my field of view, weird choice of focal length. Maybe with two cameras they could have a wide angle and a telephoto but the ray bans at least just had the one.
I think that they've done it, this is Meta's iPod
I would love to try these types of devices but there is no way I'd ever give money to Meta or put my personal information into their systems or encourage my friends and family to do so either.
Hopefully Meta puts in a bunch of R&D to see what works in this space and then someone else (Apple?) just copies it.
Meta running the show is a non-starter.
At least in regard to Palantir you understand their business. Meta masquerades, hides, and cowers their shady practices behind consumer friendly products.
Toxic lollipops labeled properly as toxic vs toxic lollipops labeled with a tiny * that requires consumer research. Which one do you think most people will reach for first?
I'm yet to be convinced these are useful and not just another way to inject ads directly into eyeballs.
How are these "smart glasses" legal in places like Germany where you (supposedly) can't even have a dashcam?
its actually quite good. but it took them twoish years to get it into production.
but only for research, not on these glasses.
I’m personally more excited about the Mentra Live glasses, which are fully programmable with AugmentOS.
When I was testing my voice AI app with them there were no major issues: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id6737482921?pt=12710...
In a way, that's similar how you can't change iPhone/AirPods to stop responding to "Hey Siri" and trigger ChatGPT instead. So I still label my take as weird )
i would argue, though, that having integrated access to AI that can react to what the user is seeing is a form of digitally augmented reality.
I discovered goodr recently and they are great. 25$ high quality sunglasses that I can actually trust have real UV ratings. Seeing people wear ray bans or oakleys is really funny
EDIT: ok apparently anywhere else than the poorest of countries, too, really.
The difference is that oakley are sports glasses, which means that meta can now start sponsoring sports events, which they couldnt do with rayban.
whats interesting, is that these glasses look normal, and not like the standard disphit magnets that oakley normally cater for
I won't be buying it though - I tried talking to Meta AI in voice mode from my phone, and it's response to anything STEM related is basically "tee hee I'm just an AI I cant do that". My current assignee to my phone's AI hardware button is microsoft's. I assume it's an OpenAI model, but it lets you speed their voice up, which I value greatly.
[0] - https://www.formswim.com/products/smart-swim-goggles
A:
With Oakley Meta's glasses, you can:
Capture high-quality video and photos hands-free with a built-in ultra-wide 12 MP camera.
Listen to music, podcasts and more through Bluetooth speakers seamlessly integrated into the frames
Make and take phone calls hands-free
Live-stream your adventures, travels or daily life
Use Meta AI for instant information and assistance – just say "Hey Meta".
----
If you don't need the camera then just use a smartwatch that does much more. Maybe get a camera wrapped to your forehead instead.
Didnt realise there were that many social media pickup artists :-)
Titanium glasses are lightweight because a very minimal amount of material is used. This is possible for regular glasses because you can make them with a ~1mm cross-section. When you want to put electronics inside of them, you need much more material.
Edit: Just checked, it does exist.
Believe if you worked at Meta when the glasses just came out there was also a limited fully transparent frame as well.
What makes these FB glasses any different / special? Do they automagically obscure the views when in compromising positions?
/sarc
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_glasses
[2] - https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=glassholes
It's kinda weird to me that this feels so dystopian.
Before smartphones it's not like I was sitting there appreciating the world around me. I was just bored and unhappy. Now I'm paying my bills, watching funny videos, looking up interesting things about something I heard about earlier in the day, etc.
But still, there's something off-putting about a group of strangers doing something mundane like waiting for a bus and staring at their phones the whole time.
I'm not sure what I would gain by sitting in a doctor's office waiting for my appointment and being bored vs. sitting there with my phone reading/watching something.
The problem (in my opinion) comes when you start replacing everything you do with just scrolling on your phone. Like if I'm bored at home I just scroll TikTok instead of playing a sport or learning a new skill.
This is exactly why regardless of how breakthrough Meta makes their wearables, it will never reach full market potential as their brand will always be known as a privacy nightmare. Apple is going to win here if they can get the price right.
VR I think most people can rationalize it as these headsets are used in very controlled states, like at home on the couch or living room - but for Meta to convince people to use this in their every day life..hard sell.
I think the biggest hurdles to widespread adoption are ease of connectivity (getting pics and videos “out” of glasses and onto phone/laptop/cloud), ultra high def images, size of on device storage, and battery life. Those are tough, given the form factor. But, if cracked, these will be huge.
Google Glass remembers…
In Switzerland we have a nice law that forbids people filming others without their consent. And law is actually enforceable here, fines are juicy and repeatable offenses punished harshly. I personally wouldn't outright punch in the face a person wearing such glasses but asked them to stop wearing them around me and my kids, and where it goes further depends on them.
Also, why is the design in those so weird? They look like kids glasses for 2 bucks, all photos seem like they are not sitting on the face well, zuck including.
Quick to justify violence for someone that opened with "the government will protect me with fines after the fact". Just noticing.
This escalated fast.
In my mind it was inevitable that we would reach this point. The novel Snow Crash predicted this exact phenomenon (along with the Metaverse, of course, which is where they are trying to drive this). It’s the same with companies issuing cryptocurrencies and the like.
We aren’t totally locked in to the techno-feudal state just yet, but we’re getting there. Pretty fascinating how foreseeable these last many years and decades have been.
It's a twisted kind of foresight, a lot like prophesies in ancient stories, that both predict the future and steer their subjects toward it. Neal Stephenson wrote books that appealed to (many, but not only) nerdy boys during their formative years. Lo and behold, 30 years later some of those boys have achieved wealth and power, and are trying to make random aspects of those books real.
Keep that in mind if you ever write a YA novel...
I get the sentiment, but I really enjoyed the Oakley Flak series, the fit was superb. BUT, I hated the feeling that it was perceived as a statement rather than utility. I bought them originally for high field of vision and blocking glare when riding bikes.
I lost a couple pairs and one got scratched really bad - and I don’t have a nice alternative in mind that fits a reasonable budget. *Am open to suggestions, I need ONE nice pair of polarized sunglasses that’l last.
Oh for sure, they were quite good, there was a real reason they became popular. But like you said, it got to be annoying that wearing Oakleys was a statement. (Plus, at least where I lived, they were part of the "douche uniform.")
In terms of recommendations, I'm still getting lots of mileage out of my Ray-Ban Wayfarers, and they're polarized.
There's camera's everywhere at this point: every doorbell/garage, every store, every light on the street, even my friend's pet/baby monitors when I visit. I hate it.
I was visiting a museum yesterday and someone was using these to livestream/record their own (bad) tour. Security stopped someone doing this with their phone earlier, but had no idea what this guy was doing.
I asked if those are cameras, he said yes. I asked if he’s recording he said now. I told him in any case I find it very off-putting to have cameras in my face and that I’m going to go. Shook his hand and that was it.
I feel like that’s the right way to handle it. I’m sure I’ll need to keep doing it.
We already have enough mass surveillance devices. But I suppose two arguments could be made (1) we don't need more of these, or (2) peak surveillance has already been achieved, and adding one more doesn't make any difference.
You really need young people to carry tech like this, and needing them to wear millennial fashion from 10 years ago so camera and compute fit will just make it that much harder.
Heavy frames and large lenses tend to compensate for larger noses, and other facial issues (although they won't come out and say that). Clear glasses can really focus on the eyes.
I know a couple of women that have made large, heavy-rimmed glasses into a real fashion statement.
Not sure why theverge gets linked so much here.
But at least the last paragraph seems to be adding something, although the rest of the article is indeed just a re-hash of the press-release.
> Meta recently signed a multi-year deal with EssilorLuxottica, the parent company behind Ray-Ban, Oakley, and other eyewear brands. The Meta Ray-Bans have sold over two million pairs to date, and EssilorLuxottica recently disclosed that it plans to sell 10 million smart glasses with Meta annually by 2026. “This is our first step into the performance category,” Alex Himel, Meta’s head of wearables, tells me. “There’s more to come.”
Unfortunate.
Always-on microphone and camera sold by one of the world's sketchiest privacy invaders? Check.
Display that actually takes advantage of the glasses form factor? Nope. Sounds like this could just as easily be the Humane pin.
People were so angry in 2013.
I don't know about everyone, but I found it pretty hard to use. Caveat, I didn't get them fit to me, I was supervising an intern working on a speculative Glass project, and they were fit to him.
AR would be neat, but voice interfaces are acheivable at an approachable cost. I'm not one to talk to a computer, and I wear prescription lenses, so these glasses don't appeal to me, but I can see there's a market there, not sure how big or if Meta can capture it.
Mic and speakers, too.
Glass attempted a display, but IMHO, it was unusable, so I understand why you would try the same thing with no display. Or the same thing, but mounted on your wrist (Google Wear).
The camera may or may not be always on, but it can be turned on by software activated by the always-on mic (again, demonstrated by the promo video), so it would be best to treat it as though it is.
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/2025/06/introducing-oakley-meta-gl...
I agree that the primary issue is that it's a software-controlled microphone with no off switch controlled by software written by Meta. I only emphasized the wake word listening in response to OP's claim that it's not always on when it must be.
There have been at least five AR glasses that I can think of and this is only one that anyone really uses. So, no.
Actually nevermind I saw this sick demo on Reddit of an AR putting assistant but I think they had to strap a depth camera on the device. So AR means mini golf pro?
It's ridiculous and disappointing. I think Facebook is used to not providing real value add to their users and thinking just exposure to cybernetics is enough of a sell. That's completely saturated now though.
Yes. Haven't you seen his new Gen-Z midlife crisis haircut? Clearly he is a very cool and relatable guy.