It seems like there are a lot of negative comments about Meta's glasses which is surprising to me as a regular user. I bought these both in clear and sunglasses and I love them. I've recorded some of the most amazing videos of my baby with them. Listening to music is fantastic as it's different from regular headphones since you can still hear the world around you — I've even done a few longer bike rides with them and it's been great. I haven't enabled any of the AI or smart features on the glasses, although I've been meaning to give it a try. Some things I don't love about them is the proprietary charging cases, the battery life seems to degrade over time (not totally certain though), and they're sensitive to sweat. Overall I think they show a ton of promise.
JKCalhoun · 21m ago
They have a brand problem. Absolutely no way I buy anything from Meta.
mgh2 · 1m ago
Why do you think they rebranded? They are chasing after Gen Z, brainwashing that clean slate.
lurking_swe · 19m ago
> Listening to music is fantastic as it's different from regular headphones since you can still hear the world around you
Many earbuds, like Airpods, have transparency mode. The end result is the same…music while hearing background noise. In fact airpods are better because of the ANC mode that tunes out noise except conversation and other “important” sounds. I can also wear airpods indoors without looking like a dork, so that’s also plus. I’m not seeing why this is novel or interesting?
> I've recorded some of the most amazing videos of my baby with them.
This seems like a compelling use case. How is the video quality?
garbawarb · 4m ago
I wouldn't want to wear earbuds while doing anything active, the chance of them falling out is too high.
SketchySeaBeast · 1m ago
I use shockz for running - stable and your ears are totally unobstructed.
alex1138 · 22m ago
One thing with technology is "iron sharpens iron" - I'm sure as advances in batteries (although I imagine there comes a point where that stops) occur it will have downstream effects of making all these things better
...unless part of the package for the improvements are things like "more likely to catch fire"
AvAn12 · 30s ago
Use cases: 1: FPV "how-to" videos are marginally easier to make, though GoPro remains a thing...
2: Users get to look like
3: The rest seems like creepy-spying-on-friends-or-strangers kinds of things. Any constructive suggestions? I'm willing to be enlightened...
If you watch it carefully, he preempts the AI with "What do I do first" before it even answered the first time. This strongly suggests it did this in rehearsal to me and hence was far more than just "bad luck" or bad connectivity. Perhaps the bad connectivity stopped the override from working and it just kept repeating the previous response. Either way it suggests some troubling early implications about how well Meta's AI work is going to me, that they got this stuck on the main live demo for their flagship product on such a simple thing.
llmthrow0827 · 22m ago
All the VR/AR/XR demos are so insanely trivial and yet still manage to be much more difficult than current methods of doing things. Like, really, cooking?
Normal method:
* Search for a recipe
* Leave my phone on a stand and glance at it if I forget a step
Meta glasses:
* Put glasses on (there's a reason I got lasek, it's because wearing glasses sucks)
* Talk into the void, trying to figure out how to describe my problem as well as the format that I want the LLM to structure the response
* Correct it when it misreads one of my ingredients
* Hope that the rng gods give me a decent recipe
Or basically any of the things shown off for Apple's headset. Strap on a giant headset just so I can... browse photos? or take a video call where the other person can't even see my face?
SchemaLoad · 18m ago
These companies are reaching really hard for use cases while ignoring the only ones VR actually works well for. If they just went all in on gaming it would be a much better product than trying to push AI slop cooking help.
TIPSIO · 52m ago
If you’ve ever used the current Meta Ray Ban and AI, this almost exactly happens when the connection is bad. Pure confusion but the AI still tries to give you an answer.
I bet the device hardware is small/cheap and susceptible to interference
stavros · 17m ago
I have the Meta glasses and I've never noticed this, and don't even understand why it could be the connection's fault. The AI gets your audio and your image, if it gives the wrong answer, it's because the AI went wrong. How would the bad connection ever affect it?
krustyburger · 36m ago
Even if it’s small/cheap, if the item is scanned multiple times this will prevent any electrical infetterence.
m3kw9 · 28m ago
next time they need 1 public and 1 private router and shut the public off right before the demo.
explorigin · 28m ago
I've done live demos of AI. Even with the same queries, I got a different answers than my 4 previous practice attempts. My demos keep me on my toes and I try to limit the scope much more now.
(I didn't have control over temperature settings.)
joshdavham · 33m ago
For those who didn't pick up on it, they were being sarcastic about the issue being wifi related haha
bigtones · 17m ago
That was not sarcasm. They were being serious.
stavros · 22m ago
It didn't sound like sarcasm at all to me?
303uru · 50m ago
It’s the WiFi, ya sure.
klik99 · 1h ago
This is why Jobs spent months prepping for each presentation.
But hey, at least it's not all faked
gretch · 46m ago
When I was at Meta (then facebook), people lived and died by the live demo creedo.
Pitches can be spun, data is cherry picked. But the proof is always in the pudding.
This is embarrassing for sure, but from the ashes of this failure we find the resolve to make the next version better.
Anon1096 · 20m ago
Yep I hope that mindset never dies. Meta is one of the last engineering-first companies in big tech and willing to live demo something so obviously prone to mishaps is a great sign of it. It's not unlike SpaceX and being willing to iterate by crashing Starships for the world to see. You make mistakes and fix them, no big deal.
gcr · 39m ago
why did they choose to air this live?
For an internal team sure absolutely, but for public-facing work, prerecorded is the way to go
com2kid · 25m ago
One of my internships was preparing Bill Gate's demo machines for CES. I setup custom machine images and ran through scripts to make sure everything went off w/o a hitch (I was doing just the demos for Tablet PC, each org presumably had their own team preparing the demos!)
Not doing it live would've been an embarrassment. I don't think the thought ever crossed anyone's mind, of course we'd do it live. Sure the machines were super customized, bare bones Windows installs stripped back to the minimum amount of software needed for just one demo, but at the end of the day it sure as hell was real software running up there on stage.
stonogo · 32m ago
The same unwarranted sense of confidence that tells them this product is worth making tells them that they can easily pull off a live demo. This is called "culture fit"
SoftTalker · 15m ago
I saw Jobs give a demo of some NeXT technology and the system crashed and rebooted right in the middle of it. He just said “oops” and talked around it until the system came back up.
neilv · 26m ago
"At least it's not faked" was my main reaction, too. Some other big-tech AI-related demos the last couple years have been caught being faked.
Zuckerberg handling it reasonably well was nice.
(Though the tone at the end of "we'll go check out what he made later" sounded dismissive. The blame-free post-mortem will include each of the personnel involved in the failure, in a series of one-on-one MMA sparring rounds. "I'm up there, launching a milestone in a trillion-dollar strategic push, and you left me @#$*&^ my @#*$&^@#( like a #@&#^@! I'll show you post-mortem!")
postalcoder · 46m ago
i love jobs but i do remember the “everybody please turn off your laptops” presentation.
live demonstrations are tough - i wish apple would go back to them.
paxys · 38m ago
Totally agree. Up until a few years ago failures during live demos on stage used to be a mark of authenticity, and companies playing recordings was always written off as exaggerated or fake. Now all of Apple's keynotes are prerecorded overproduced garbage.
postalcoder · 3m ago
in addition to being a mark of authenticity, it also served as an expression of eagerness and confidence. bad companies treated presentations as a perfunctory duty while good companies delivered them with eagerness. Apple’s pre-recorded presentations read as anxious, and that anxiety seems tied to its stock price.
garbawarb · 20m ago
I appreciate the live demo but I'm suprised they didn't at least have a prerecorded backup. I wanted to see how video calls work!
paxys · 34s ago
Considering there's no camera pointing to your face they can't be all that interesting.
m3kw9 · 29m ago
so when I talk but not to it, it may response like i accidentally say siri? Except is every time?
herval · 45m ago
Typical Meta product. I used to believe and wasted money on multiple generations of Quest & Ray-bans. I expect this device to be unsupported at launch, just like Quest Pro was
sho_hn · 1m ago
I'm not sure I'll ever get over my concerns about making people around me uncomfortable to ever don one myself, but I hear the non-display ones are breakthrough assistive devices for impaired folks and this one might be too with the captioning.
I wonder how the etiquette will evolve for people with legitimate needs to use them in polite company.
SchemaLoad · 20m ago
>Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses are designed to help you look up and stay present. With a quick glance at the in-lens display, you can accomplish everyday tasks—like checking messages, previewing photos, and collaborating with visual Meta AI prompts
Can you imagine trying to talk to someone face to face, but they are giving you a blank stare as random notifications and tiktok videos are being beamed inbetween their eyeballs and you.
Meta seems like one of the few large tech companies where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place.
drdaeman · 3m ago
> Can you imagine trying to talk to someone face to face, but they are giving you a blank stare as random notifications and tiktok videos are being beamed inbetween their eyeballs and you.
They wouldn't do this if the conversation is important to them. Not as much as one would glance on a smartwatch when they get a chirp, which, I believe is perfectly socially acceptable in most business/casual situations.
And if they do it's nothing new - it's a literal equivalent of talking to a person deep into their phone. Exact same audiovisual media consumption - just a different form factor and display technology. Or, in a pre-phone era, a newspaper.
I don't think this technology introduces anything new to this issue.
SoftTalker · 2m ago
Exactly. It is bad enough trying to talk to someone with earbuds in and this just seems 10x worse. Zero chance I would buy something like this or try to talk to someone wearing them.
paxys · 1h ago
I saw the keynote, and while everything about the glasses was more or less as expected, seeing Zuck easily navigate the interface and type 30 words per minute while barely moving his fingers was a true WTF moment. If they can actually make the neural interface work that well then Meta has won this round.
bemmu · 39m ago
Exactly, felt like the wristband was the big thing. I don't want the glasses, but I'm somewhat curious if it'd be useful as an extra input device when using a computer.
yakz · 1h ago
Doesn’t that make the wrist accessory the important part? The chunky glasses look like they’re still too early, not enough tech.
paxys · 1h ago
That's why they are sold as a pair. The glasses are simply a screen strapped to your face. How to control it was always the real problem to be solved (and no, voice was never the answer).
jayd16 · 28m ago
It's still certainly early adopter tech. We have the technology for stereo vision and augmented reality. It's just a matter of getting the display and battery and compute bill of materials in order now that they have the screen and a feasible input path.
zmmmmm · 30m ago
i was disappointed they didn't say you could connect it to other devices too. I would buy it just as a bluetooth keyboard!
cflewis · 31m ago
How does the finger thing work? What's he doing? I saw him tippy-tappy but it didn't seem like he's moving through some invisible keyboard.
dagmx · 19m ago
It’s tracking the EMG signals that trigger your finger tendons. Doing that it knows how your fingers are moving.
It can therefore translate it to a handwritten stroke and then do classical handwriting to text conversion.
jwrallie · 28m ago
It was hard to see, but it looked like handwriting to me.
I'd be the first one to buy these if they weren't made by Meta. I've wanted a pair of smartglasses for a very long time, and these seem like the first viable pair in terms of capabilities - aside from the thickness, which I can live with.
Unfortunately, Meta, and Zuckerberg, have been involved in far too much malfeasance. I just can't ethically justify buying a product from them again. I'm hoping that viable competitors become available, but it's going to be hard to compete with Meta's investment, especially on the HCI front.
zhyder · 23m ago
Neural band is huge, glad they're shipping it already rather than waiting (years?) for a production version of Orion (the full AR glasses they demo'd a year ago together with this neural band). TheVerge found the controls great, even tried an alpha of handwriting for text input: https://youtu.be/5cVGKvl7Oek
These glasses are just "annotated reality" rather than full AR, with just 1 small display; think Google Glass but 100x more discreet. So discreet input and output on a device with a camera.
Insanely cool, and awesome to see a viable wave guide device.
It's so cool that it might outweigh my reluctance to strap facebook to my face.
jayrhynas · 41m ago
CTRL-Labs themselves acquired the wristband tech from North/Thalmic, who pivoted into smart glasses for a few years before being acquired by Google.
> In an interesting twist, CTRL-Labs purchased a series of patents earlier this year around the Myo armband, a gesture and motion control device developed by North, formerly known as Thalmic Labs. The Myo armband measured electromyography, or EEG, to translate muscle activity into gesture-related software inputs, but North moved on from the product and now makes a stylish pair of AR glasses known as Focals. It now appears the technology North developed may in some way make its way into a Focals competitor by way of CTRL-Labs.
teleforce · 31m ago
> measured electromyography, or EEG
Should be EMG, but is it normal EMG or sEMG?
spot · 4m ago
surface!
spot · 31m ago
nope. the technology was invented by CTRL-labs, and at Meta after the acquisition.
yes the Myo was a similar, earlier, and less capable technology also based on EMG sensing.
jorvi · 25m ago
Disney is about to have a serious talk with Facebook. Disney Research has had a prototype on gesture detection via wristband electric sensing tech since 2012: https://youtu.be/E4tYpXVTjxA?t=2m8s
spot · 10m ago
not the same tech at all.
jnaina · 1m ago
This is beginning to mirror the evolution of the Smart Phone.
The Apple Vision Pro is AR glasses at the Apple Newton evolutionary stage, an early smart PDA (Yes I'm the sucker that bought both at their respective launch, 3 decades apart).
The Meta Ray-Ban Display is AR glasses at the Windows Mobile/Blackberry stage.
Apple will likely swoop in and launch the final refined version of the AR glasses (thin, 8 hour battery, eye gaze control, retina based authentication, tethered to the iPhone, Apple AI, etc), when the tech is available at a decent price point for mainstream launch.
And yes, being the unrepentant Apple FanBoi, will be buying the Apple iGlass at the launch.
bix6 · 1h ago
> you can accomplish everyday tasks—like checking messages, previewing photos, and collaborating with visual Meta AI prompts — all without needing to pull out your phone.
Why do I need to pay $800 for this? I already paid a grand to have a phone disrupt my every waking moment!
gumby271 · 59m ago
Sorry, is "collaborating with visual Meta AI prompts" just a casual everyday task we're all doing? I must be missing out!
ww520 · 1h ago
A Ray Ban sunglasses can run up to $500 already.
bix6 · 1h ago
Love me some luxottica monopoly pricing!
paxys · 54m ago
There's no monopoly. You can buy identical glasses on the side of the street for $10. Except you aren't going to get the RayBan logo, and that's what people are paying for.
gretch · 35m ago
> You can buy identical glasses on the side of the street for $10. Except you aren't going to get the RayBan logo
That's funny because the ones sold on my street are $10 and they definitely have the rayban logo
bix6 · 46m ago
Technically not a monopoly but colloquially I disagree.
They account for 30% of the global market. They own key brands, license key premium names, and control key distributors like sunglass hut and LensCrafters.
Their cost to manufacture vs sale price shows a clear ability to price like a monopoly. As does their ability to box out competitors.
The $10 look alikes are not identical. They generally are cheaper materials, not polarized or coated, etc.
What do people think about the (almost hidden) cameras in glasses?
With traditional cameras, feature phones, and smartphones, if someone wanted to be creepy with the camera, they'd have to point the device at someone, which tended to look exactly like they are using the camera.
(IIUC, some countries even required a shutter sound, for anti-creepy reasons, when the pointing of the phone wasn't enough warning.)
Now, the wearer of the glasses spy camera just has to look in the general direction that creepiness should be sprayed.
The creepiness isn't even that of the wearer; it could also be that of the tech company.
Is this going to end up another Google "Glassholes" situation, with the wearers shunned?
paxys · 8m ago
There's a pretty bright light that turns on when the camera is recording, and if you try and cover the light the camera won't work. Their existing glasses are pretty popular and there haven't been big compaints about it. If you really wanted to do secret recordings there are plenty of better and cheaper glasses in the market for it.
jayd16 · 10m ago
They've had the camera glasses part for a few years now.
neilv · 8m ago
But currently not very popular.
kstrauser · 57m ago
Very interesting.
And also, I hereby ban them in our office. Thou shalt not wear spyware while looking at the screens that contain our company IP.
paxys · 51m ago
Do you also ban cellphones in your office? And email? Text messaging?
If an employee wants to steal your IP, they will.
kstrauser · 46m ago
I'm not unreasonably worried about my coworkers, compared to a software-controlled camera they'd be wearing on their heads and pointing at our code, internal docs, customer information, etc.
And yes, if someone made a habit of pointing their cellphone camera at the screen all day, I would ask them to please knock it off.
I don't trust Facebook installing cameras in our workspace, or trust that they couldn't be compromised by another party who might want to watch what we're doing.
AceJohnny2 · 26m ago
Indeed. Time and time again Facebook/Meta has secretly or openly breached privacy boundaries for their own gain. They cannot be trusted with user data.
dylan604 · 36m ago
at a company I used to work at, yes, very much so. our personal devices were checked into a locker with security before entering the secured part of the building. you were free to come back out to use it when you needed during the day. the USB ports to our workstations were covered with epoxy. the desktops didn't actually connect to the internet, so email/etc used a remote citrix connection to isolate networks. any network transfer over a set size would send notices. to be honest, it was glorious to be without the device. the shit part was everyday when leaving the office you had to have your bags searched.
moralestapia · 52m ago
So, no smartphones in your office?
iammrpayments · 6m ago
I’m 99% sure that EMG band is collecting several biomarkers and sending them all to facebook headquarters, get ready to get mattress ads when your HRV goes down.
LorenDB · 49m ago
Well, Apple might be Cooked (pun very much intended). Tim is apparently very focused on AI glasses, but here is Meta with display-enabled glasses a year before Apple is planning to release anything.
We all love to say this, but everyone forgets: Apple has never beaten competitors by being the first – they’ve beaten them by being the best.
Personal computers? Apple wasn’t first.
Smartphones with screens? Apple wasn’t first.
Tablets? Not first by a mile.
True Wireless Earbuds? Nope, not at all first.
Smartwatches? Hell no, not first.
And yet, Apple’s a category leader in every single one of these areas.
I don’t think it matters if Meta releases something first; Apple wins by doing it way better. Arguably, Vision Pro was way too early, even though it’s an incredible experience.
cflewis · 27m ago
I think it's a "yes but" here. AI is the first transition point since the smartphone. Apple knows how to make hardware, and knows how to make software. I am extremely unconvinced Apple has a clue about what to do with AI.
You can't just jump in, the lead up to getting this stuff going is a 5 year+ horizon, and Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic are still moving exceptionally fast. Apple has shown they are nowhere near. They missed the boat on buying Anthropic, OpenAI was never going to sell with Musk behind it. There's no path forward for them, let alone catching up.
wklauss · 24m ago
To be fair, Meta is also not the first company to launch smart glasses with a display.
But the reality of it is that it's probably still to early to say if these devices will have mainstream appeal. I see a lot of people saying "well, i no longer need to take the phone out my pocket", but that has been the case for a couple of years with smartwatches, for example, and it has not meaningfully changed our dependency from the smartphone or the smartphone market dynamics that much.
jayd16 · 14m ago
What does wins even mean, then? Apple doesn't dominate a market. They make competitive hardware that integrates well with its ecosystem. If there's a market for smart glasses they'll probably use the same strategy.
t0lo · 35m ago
No- they beat them by squatting on the most generic logical human friendly style so that other companies can't copy the most natural conception. They're copyright colonialists.
paxys · 29m ago
People keep saying this, but it is absolutely not true.
Apple was first to the personal computer. First to the smartphone. First to the tablet. First to wireless earbuds. The vast majority of the company's revenue comes from segments where they had a multi-year head start over their competitors.
In fact products where they play catch up are more prone to failing (Airpods Max, Homepod, Maps, MobileMe, Ping, Music Connect, AirPower, Airport).
DonsDiscountGas · 22m ago
They absolutely were not first to the smart phone, that was blackberry. It's just that blackberry sucked. They were first to PC but I don't think they were first to laptop.
paxys · 14m ago
Sure you can go back well before blackberry to find even earlier versions of the smartphone but the one we all use today was introduced by Apple.
Philpax · 15m ago
...what?
Aside from maybe the personal computer, they were not the first to any of those. BlackBerry/Palm/Windows Mobile devices all existed prior to the iPhone; the LG Prada was announced prior to the iPhone and had a similar form factor. Many tablet PCs existed before the iPad. Many Bluetooth earbuds existed prior to the AirPods.
They did a much better job of integrating each of these into a cohesive experience, but they absolutely had predecessors in each category.
jrowen · 56m ago
I think continuing to go for the classic Ray-Ban look is a mistake. I don't think this product is enticing to the Ray-Ban crowd at this point. Ray-Bans are for looking effortlessly cool, not maybe secretly filming people, it's a wolf in sheep's (bulging) clothing. I would go for more steampunk goggles. Get nerds and hobbyists really excited about it. Create a new lane.
kstrauser · 44m ago
I don't think these look like class Ray-Ban. It looks like someone selected Wayfarers and then ran stroke path 30px. They're basically the clip art version of Ray-Bans.
JKCalhoun · 13m ago
Ray-Buns.
yakz · 48m ago
A version that is just plainly nerdy (and more comfortable) might not be a bad idea; maybe call it the developer version or something to avoid any association with fashion or luxury.
boxerab · 16m ago
I continue to be amazed by people rushing to give away even more of their personal data to a large corporation, especially one with Meta's privacy-challenged history.
bryant · 1h ago
The biggest thing stopping me from getting these is knowing that a derivative of Meta's Orion AR prototype will release to manufacturing in the next few years, and this just feels like a stop-gap.
But the wrist/hand control is the thing that impressed me the most in today's release. I'd hope for this to go far beyond just the glasses.
paxys · 5m ago
Every piece of tech has a better version a year or two away. If you keep waiting then you are never going to buy anything.
SequoiaHope · 16m ago
The nice thing about AR/VR is that a better version will always come out in a couple of years so you can always wait. I love VR as a concept and some years late I bought a Valve Index and am considering a Bigscreen 2 but really the best thing to do is always wait.
jayd16 · 3m ago
I was a bit disappointed to see it was a single display and no mention of AR. Even if it wasn't stereoscopic you could still have world locked visuals.
But I realized this is a pretty clever move. Only allowing a fixed, inset screen really hides any issues with display field of view.
post_break · 53m ago
Still no way to replace battery, so in 3 years tops this thing is e-waste.
Philpax · 1m ago
That is also true of most smartphones. Smartphone batteries can be replaced, but specialty equipment and training is required. It's the same problem here, but much worse: they have to pack a significant amount of hardware into the space available. Even if they wanted to, it's unlikely that they could offer user-serviceable batteries.
geuis · 40m ago
Interesting tech, but the item is completely without any attractive style. Look up "army birth control glasses"
(Sorry about the google search link. Apple and Google go out of their way to hide the url when doing searches on Google from mobile Safari.)
This is what no one else can seem to understand. The iPad was created in Apple's labs before the iPhone. But Jobs and other staff made the decision to wait several years to launch the phone until the tech caught up to the ambition. They had a certain ascetic they wanted in addition to the hardware and it required time.
In this case, it looks like opposite. The tech is finally getting there, but the design team has no sense of making a daily wear product that people should reasonably want to wear. If I imagine a large population of people wearing these daily, it's going to look like middle and high school students from the 70s and 80s in yearbook photos.
What's awful is that I'm one of the most fashion ignorant people I know. I wear the same type of shirts and shoes because they're comfortable not stylish. And my glasses are as minimal frame as possible because I don't want a large mass of matter sitting on my face. Even that being said, this product just reminds me of my buddy's army photo of him wearing the Army issued glasses. Not good.
dylan604 · 33m ago
>Apple and Google go out of their way to hide the url when doing searches on Google from mobile Safari.
What? It's only 2 clicks away. You can click the copy button after hitting the share button. /s
geuis · 8m ago
Yup. I can go to any other of billions of domains in the world and just see the url, but because Google and Apple have a special compensatory friendship we can't do that.
spot · 1h ago
AI Glasses With an EMG Wristband available Sept 30 for $799
nubela · 1h ago
I think the tech is really cool. But I was actually hoping for a device that does the whole "phone strapped to my face" thing without actually looking like one. I mean if I'm already staring at my screen, why not make it easier?
chatmasta · 54m ago
This is getting closer to the ideal product, but I’m gonna wait for the one from Apple that I know it will be well-tested and integrate with my device. I’m sure it’s coming in the next few years. I can only imagine the pain that will come with trying to get the half-baked Meta ecosystem to cooperate with my iPhone.
hanief · 44m ago
I refuse to buy hardware from Meta again. I bought two Portal TV from them and it discontinued and not supported within two years. Now I have two junks in my drawer. :(
amatecha · 41m ago
cries in Oculus Go :(
> released on May 1, 2018 to generally positive reviews. By July 2019, the Go was estimated to have sold over two million units. On June 23, 2020, Facebook Technologies announced it would be ending the sales of the Oculus Go later that year
where they announced they were working on a 'haptic vocabulary' for a skin interface as well as noninvasive brain scanning technologyu\
addaon · 1h ago
Pretty cool hardware. Count me in if and when it supports interesting software.
tootie · 26m ago
There's the rub isn't it? We've been doing AR for over ten years at this point and I can't name a single blockbuster app besides Pokemon Go.
homeonthemtn · 1h ago
It's fine. I still don't have a need for this in my life, and it's impractical as a replacement (good luck keeping them on once you start sweating) - you're still going to need your phone.
So that means this is just adding 2 more gadgets, both of which I now need to wear?
Nah. Not happening.
Neat gestures though.
JKCalhoun · 9m ago
> So that means this is just adding 2 more gadgets
Yeah, I see where this is going. (And here I am wanting less gadgets.)
paxys · 47m ago
You'll still need to have a phone, yes, but if the glasses reduce the number of times you pull it out of your pocket then I'd consider them worthwhile. Same as a smartwatch.
303uru · 48m ago
I could not be less interested. As the world determine their relationship with their phone needs distance, Zuck has decided everyone wants a phone on their face. Doubt it.
barbazoo · 1h ago
My neighbour is gonna buy this one as well and I bet it’s going to end up in the same junk drawer as the last one.
jsheard · 56m ago
It seems like a pattern that Meta hardware usually sells relatively well, but then struggles with user retention. It happened with the Quest and so far it's happening with the glasses too. People like the idea of the products much more than the reality of actually using them.
It's not so much the hardware, it's the lack of software to use with the hardware. Nobody wants to wait until real hardware exists and risk losing consumer interest, yet they risk losing consumer interest with these half baked products. Sibling comment claims a killer app, but there hasn't truly been a killer app that makes people willing to use the product all the time. The new wears off, and then the use just craters.
aerostable_slug · 50m ago
Good point.
OTOH, for me the Quest killer app is Ace. I can practice pistol shooting any time I want, which keeps me using the headset every day. For the glasses, the killer app might be translation. Now, I couldn't say if that will 'translate' into widespread user retention, or — like Ace — only really keep a smaller community engaged (I don't think most users need translation services on a regular basis).
lostmsu · 41m ago
The camera access is limited to Meta, no 3rd party developers. For privacy reasons. Meta ♥ privacy
Huge respect to Zuck and co; I much rather authentic demos where stuff goes pear than some glossy marketing spiel by a non-technical exec.
Also, I didn't know this demo was taking place until afterwards, meta really should do more to publicise their demos, especially given they're actually making cool new stuff, unlike a lot of other big tech companies who are more about rent-seeking, advertising and enshitifying than inventing.
jhatemyjob · 1h ago
I'm getting Macworld 2007 vibes
enos_feedler · 1h ago
I am getting Phillips CDI vibes. It takes me back to a mid 90s infomercial where products will built by marketing departments and companies with cash to splash. There is just no bottom up cool factor. At all.
The wrist thing is kind of cool but he has to set his arm down to type 30wpm so maybe in a few iterations it’ll be more compelling.
The glasses seem pointless to me for now. I’m surprised he didn’t add a booty zoom in view. We thought of that idea way back in middle school. Seems like something he’d vibe with.
enos_feedler · 1h ago
Did you watch the video link and compare? Curious what you think? Or are you just trolling? I bring substance and you bring negging
tinyhouse · 53m ago
So this is like Alexa in glasses with a band that lets you do things without speaking? Sounds like a cool technology. I can see how it is useful for sport (bike riding, running, etc; hopefully people don't use it while driving), but to be honest, not something I'm too excited about buying. It feels more of the same.
m3kw9 · 27m ago
nobody is gonna use this, it's the Humane device except on a glasses.
smitty1e · 56m ago
As a theoretical matter, this is some nifty stuff. Hats off to everyone involved, as a simple matter of engineering.
As a practical matter, this feels too Orwellian. I don't want necessarily want to emit that much information (he said, looking at his Galaxy smart phone and watch) all the time.
Possibly I'm trending Luddite in my dotage.
ivape · 59m ago
I feel like this and this (https://www.visor.com/) are going to converge into the same thing. If you really think about it, the average person will only ever use AR glasses for hands free camera, mic/headphone, and to see notifications. If they get really good, then a map overlay of the world. But real productivity will require it to start converging into a bigger visor type headset that is definitely not the same bulky VR form factor. The bulky VR form factor is DOA ergonomically for productivity imho.
Lastly, I don't put it past humanity to actually be interested in seeing ad overlays throughout the world because it's just ... cool, at least at first.
Killer feature for me:
I'd like to see that 3D marker in the world that I need to walk towards like a video game.
herval · 41m ago
Visor is largely vaporware (to put it mildly). It’s the form factor Apple is aiming with version 2 or 3 of Vision Pro
It’s a very different experience to passthrough, no matter how small you make the glasses, so I’m not sure there’s a clear path to convergence
moralestapia · 1h ago
>The only wave guide device out there with > 42 pixels per degree (ppd) is a giant headset that isn’t sold commercially anymore.
Magic Leap.
dylan604 · 29m ago
Are you countering that's the name of a device that does this, or the name of the device that isn't sold any more? I didn't think ML ever made it to anything viable. They just gave great demo
Philpax · 13m ago
The Magic Leap 1 and 2 were commercially available to some degree, but they were not successful. I can't speak to their PPD, but I can't imagine it was that amazing.
The HoloLens devices might be another set of candidates.
josephpmay · 49m ago
It's weird that they give a figure for PPV but not FOV. That tells me that the FOV must be pretty terrible
jsheard · 39m ago
The Verge's article says it's 600x600 over a 20 degree FOV.
moron4hire · 1h ago
CapitalOne Meta Ray-Ban Display, brought to you by Costco.
babelfish · 46m ago
Pretty disappointed that prescription is limited to -4/+4!
65 · 33m ago
It's cool in theory, but frankly my mental health is significantly improved if I don't stare at a screen all day.
rvz · 1h ago
This is very impressive for a first version of the AI glasses from Meta.
Zuck really has cracked this one.
To Downvoters:
Give credit where credit is due.
I think you are going to realize in a few years why tens of billions was poured into Reality Labs and Oculus.
Version 2 or 3 of these glasses is going to set Meta ahead of the rest (except at least Apple).
considering meta is short for metadata, this opens up whole new avenues of data harvesting
thot_experiment · 38m ago
Just in case someone is working on this type of thing. I will easily pay $1000 for an open source glasses thingy that has a monochrome laser display projecting directly onto my retina. IIRC Bosch and Intel have tried this before and the prototypes never went anywhere so there's probably a really good hardware reason why it's not happening but I want that more than any other hardware, it doesn't even have to be both eyes.
(admittedly with the recent Android news perhaps non-exploitative mobile computing is about to be dead and buried but shit, I'd lug around a backpack module everywhere running linux if it came to that)
Many earbuds, like Airpods, have transparency mode. The end result is the same…music while hearing background noise. In fact airpods are better because of the ANC mode that tunes out noise except conversation and other “important” sounds. I can also wear airpods indoors without looking like a dork, so that’s also plus. I’m not seeing why this is novel or interesting?
> I've recorded some of the most amazing videos of my baby with them.
This seems like a compelling use case. How is the video quality?
...unless part of the package for the improvements are things like "more likely to catch fire"
2: Users get to look like
3: The rest seems like creepy-spying-on-friends-or-strangers kinds of things. Any constructive suggestions? I'm willing to be enlightened...
https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs?si=nTLQO4G2OIPcMkwX
Normal method:
* Search for a recipe
* Leave my phone on a stand and glance at it if I forget a step
Meta glasses:
* Put glasses on (there's a reason I got lasek, it's because wearing glasses sucks)
* Talk into the void, trying to figure out how to describe my problem as well as the format that I want the LLM to structure the response
* Correct it when it misreads one of my ingredients
* Hope that the rng gods give me a decent recipe
Or basically any of the things shown off for Apple's headset. Strap on a giant headset just so I can... browse photos? or take a video call where the other person can't even see my face?
I bet the device hardware is small/cheap and susceptible to interference
(I didn't have control over temperature settings.)
But hey, at least it's not all faked
Pitches can be spun, data is cherry picked. But the proof is always in the pudding.
This is embarrassing for sure, but from the ashes of this failure we find the resolve to make the next version better.
For an internal team sure absolutely, but for public-facing work, prerecorded is the way to go
Not doing it live would've been an embarrassment. I don't think the thought ever crossed anyone's mind, of course we'd do it live. Sure the machines were super customized, bare bones Windows installs stripped back to the minimum amount of software needed for just one demo, but at the end of the day it sure as hell was real software running up there on stage.
Zuckerberg handling it reasonably well was nice.
(Though the tone at the end of "we'll go check out what he made later" sounded dismissive. The blame-free post-mortem will include each of the personnel involved in the failure, in a series of one-on-one MMA sparring rounds. "I'm up there, launching a milestone in a trillion-dollar strategic push, and you left me @#$*&^ my @#*$&^@#( like a #@&#^@! I'll show you post-mortem!")
live demonstrations are tough - i wish apple would go back to them.
I wonder how the etiquette will evolve for people with legitimate needs to use them in polite company.
Can you imagine trying to talk to someone face to face, but they are giving you a blank stare as random notifications and tiktok videos are being beamed inbetween their eyeballs and you.
Meta seems like one of the few large tech companies where if the whole company vanished, the world would be purely a better place.
They wouldn't do this if the conversation is important to them. Not as much as one would glance on a smartwatch when they get a chirp, which, I believe is perfectly socially acceptable in most business/casual situations.
And if they do it's nothing new - it's a literal equivalent of talking to a person deep into their phone. Exact same audiovisual media consumption - just a different form factor and display technology. Or, in a pre-phone era, a newspaper.
I don't think this technology introduces anything new to this issue.
It can therefore translate it to a handwritten stroke and then do classical handwriting to text conversion.
Skip to around 53:00
Unfortunately, Meta, and Zuckerberg, have been involved in far too much malfeasance. I just can't ethically justify buying a product from them again. I'm hoping that viable competitors become available, but it's going to be hard to compete with Meta's investment, especially on the HCI front.
These glasses are just "annotated reality" rather than full AR, with just 1 small display; think Google Glass but 100x more discreet. So discreet input and output on a device with a camera.
Insanely cool, and awesome to see a viable wave guide device.
It's so cool that it might outweigh my reluctance to strap facebook to my face.
> In an interesting twist, CTRL-Labs purchased a series of patents earlier this year around the Myo armband, a gesture and motion control device developed by North, formerly known as Thalmic Labs. The Myo armband measured electromyography, or EEG, to translate muscle activity into gesture-related software inputs, but North moved on from the product and now makes a stylish pair of AR glasses known as Focals. It now appears the technology North developed may in some way make its way into a Focals competitor by way of CTRL-Labs.
Should be EMG, but is it normal EMG or sEMG?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09255-w
yes the Myo was a similar, earlier, and less capable technology also based on EMG sensing.
The Apple Vision Pro is AR glasses at the Apple Newton evolutionary stage, an early smart PDA (Yes I'm the sucker that bought both at their respective launch, 3 decades apart).
The Meta Ray-Ban Display is AR glasses at the Windows Mobile/Blackberry stage.
Apple will likely swoop in and launch the final refined version of the AR glasses (thin, 8 hour battery, eye gaze control, retina based authentication, tethered to the iPhone, Apple AI, etc), when the tech is available at a decent price point for mainstream launch.
And yes, being the unrepentant Apple FanBoi, will be buying the Apple iGlass at the launch.
Why do I need to pay $800 for this? I already paid a grand to have a phone disrupt my every waking moment!
That's funny because the ones sold on my street are $10 and they definitely have the rayban logo
They account for 30% of the global market. They own key brands, license key premium names, and control key distributors like sunglass hut and LensCrafters.
Their cost to manufacture vs sale price shows a clear ability to price like a monopoly. As does their ability to box out competitors.
The $10 look alikes are not identical. They generally are cheaper materials, not polarized or coated, etc.
With traditional cameras, feature phones, and smartphones, if someone wanted to be creepy with the camera, they'd have to point the device at someone, which tended to look exactly like they are using the camera.
(IIUC, some countries even required a shutter sound, for anti-creepy reasons, when the pointing of the phone wasn't enough warning.)
Now, the wearer of the glasses spy camera just has to look in the general direction that creepiness should be sprayed.
The creepiness isn't even that of the wearer; it could also be that of the tech company.
Is this going to end up another Google "Glassholes" situation, with the wearers shunned?
And also, I hereby ban them in our office. Thou shalt not wear spyware while looking at the screens that contain our company IP.
If an employee wants to steal your IP, they will.
And yes, if someone made a habit of pointing their cellphone camera at the screen all day, I would ask them to please knock it off.
I don't trust Facebook installing cameras in our workspace, or trust that they couldn't be compromised by another party who might want to watch what we're doing.
Source: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/05/21/apple-smart-glasses-eve... or some other Mark Gurman leak
Personal computers? Apple wasn’t first. Smartphones with screens? Apple wasn’t first. Tablets? Not first by a mile. True Wireless Earbuds? Nope, not at all first. Smartwatches? Hell no, not first.
And yet, Apple’s a category leader in every single one of these areas.
I don’t think it matters if Meta releases something first; Apple wins by doing it way better. Arguably, Vision Pro was way too early, even though it’s an incredible experience.
You can't just jump in, the lead up to getting this stuff going is a 5 year+ horizon, and Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic are still moving exceptionally fast. Apple has shown they are nowhere near. They missed the boat on buying Anthropic, OpenAI was never going to sell with Musk behind it. There's no path forward for them, let alone catching up.
But the reality of it is that it's probably still to early to say if these devices will have mainstream appeal. I see a lot of people saying "well, i no longer need to take the phone out my pocket", but that has been the case for a couple of years with smartwatches, for example, and it has not meaningfully changed our dependency from the smartphone or the smartphone market dynamics that much.
Apple was first to the personal computer. First to the smartphone. First to the tablet. First to wireless earbuds. The vast majority of the company's revenue comes from segments where they had a multi-year head start over their competitors.
In fact products where they play catch up are more prone to failing (Airpods Max, Homepod, Maps, MobileMe, Ping, Music Connect, AirPower, Airport).
Aside from maybe the personal computer, they were not the first to any of those. BlackBerry/Palm/Windows Mobile devices all existed prior to the iPhone; the LG Prada was announced prior to the iPhone and had a similar form factor. Many tablet PCs existed before the iPad. Many Bluetooth earbuds existed prior to the AirPods.
They did a much better job of integrating each of these into a cohesive experience, but they absolutely had predecessors in each category.
But the wrist/hand control is the thing that impressed me the most in today's release. I'd hope for this to go far beyond just the glasses.
But I realized this is a pretty clever move. Only allowing a fixed, inset screen really hides any issues with display field of view.
(Sorry about the google search link. Apple and Google go out of their way to hide the url when doing searches on Google from mobile Safari.)
https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=046dc2c9c0fa6748&udm=2...
This is what no one else can seem to understand. The iPad was created in Apple's labs before the iPhone. But Jobs and other staff made the decision to wait several years to launch the phone until the tech caught up to the ambition. They had a certain ascetic they wanted in addition to the hardware and it required time.
In this case, it looks like opposite. The tech is finally getting there, but the design team has no sense of making a daily wear product that people should reasonably want to wear. If I imagine a large population of people wearing these daily, it's going to look like middle and high school students from the 70s and 80s in yearbook photos.
What's awful is that I'm one of the most fashion ignorant people I know. I wear the same type of shirts and shoes because they're comfortable not stylish. And my glasses are as minimal frame as possible because I don't want a large mass of matter sitting on my face. Even that being said, this product just reminds me of my buddy's army photo of him wearing the Army issued glasses. Not good.
What? It's only 2 clicks away. You can click the copy button after hitting the share button. /s
> released on May 1, 2018 to generally positive reviews. By July 2019, the Go was estimated to have sold over two million units. On June 23, 2020, Facebook Technologies announced it would be ending the sales of the Oculus Go later that year
No comments yet
regina dugan's f8 keynote 8 years ago
where they announced they were working on a 'haptic vocabulary' for a skin interface as well as noninvasive brain scanning technologyu\
So that means this is just adding 2 more gadgets, both of which I now need to wear?
Nah. Not happening.
Neat gestures though.
Yeah, I see where this is going. (And here I am wanting less gadgets.)
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/3/23818462/meta-ray-ban-stor...
OTOH, for me the Quest killer app is Ace. I can practice pistol shooting any time I want, which keeps me using the headset every day. For the glasses, the killer app might be translation. Now, I couldn't say if that will 'translate' into widespread user retention, or — like Ace — only really keep a smaller community engaged (I don't think most users need translation services on a regular basis).
Huge respect to Zuck and co; I much rather authentic demos where stuff goes pear than some glossy marketing spiel by a non-technical exec.
Also, I didn't know this demo was taking place until afterwards, meta really should do more to publicise their demos, especially given they're actually making cool new stuff, unlike a lot of other big tech companies who are more about rent-seeking, advertising and enshitifying than inventing.
reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhZdWvnF3do
That's just like, your opinion, man.
The glasses seem pointless to me for now. I’m surprised he didn’t add a booty zoom in view. We thought of that idea way back in middle school. Seems like something he’d vibe with.
As a practical matter, this feels too Orwellian. I don't want necessarily want to emit that much information (he said, looking at his Galaxy smart phone and watch) all the time.
Possibly I'm trending Luddite in my dotage.
Lastly, I don't put it past humanity to actually be interested in seeing ad overlays throughout the world because it's just ... cool, at least at first.
Killer feature for me:
I'd like to see that 3D marker in the world that I need to walk towards like a video game.
It’s a very different experience to passthrough, no matter how small you make the glasses, so I’m not sure there’s a clear path to convergence
Magic Leap.
The HoloLens devices might be another set of candidates.
Zuck really has cracked this one.
To Downvoters:
Give credit where credit is due.
I think you are going to realize in a few years why tens of billions was poured into Reality Labs and Oculus.
Version 2 or 3 of these glasses is going to set Meta ahead of the rest (except at least Apple).
Meta RayBan AR glasses shows Lumus waveguide structures in leaked video - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45266215 - Sept 2025 (124 comments)
(admittedly with the recent Android news perhaps non-exploitative mobile computing is about to be dead and buried but shit, I'd lug around a backpack module everywhere running linux if it came to that)