Meta's Ray-Ban HUD: Groundbreaking Tech or a Stepping Stone?

In this episode, we cover the launch of Meta's Meta Ray-Ban Displays at the Meta Connect event, featuring a 46-megapixel camera and 18-hour battery life. Ejaaz and Josh discuss the technology's practicality, Zuckerberg's vision, and other devices like the Oakley Meta Vanguard glasses. We explore the future of ambient computing and invite listeners to share their thoughts on these innovations. Join us for a dynamic conversation on wearable tech!

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TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Meta's New AI Glasses Unveiled
2:52 Initial Reactions to the Meta Ray-Ban
5:23 The EMG Neural Wristband Explained
8:01 Exploring the Technical Features
12:00 User Experience Insights
15:27 The Demos: Successes and Failures
18:06 Live Translation Feature Discussion
19:27 The Fail Demos: A Closer Look
30:16 Other Products Announced at Meta Connect
38:09 Are Glasses the Final AI Form Factor?
38:56 The Future of AI Consumer Devices

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RESOURCES

Josh: https://x.com/Josh_Kale

Ejaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213

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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Creators and Guests

Host

Josh Kale

What is Limitless Podcast?

Exploring the frontiers of Technology and AI

Josh:
So just last night meta had their meta connect event where

Josh:
they unveiled three new flagship devices at the

Josh:
core of their ai hardware efforts the first

Josh:
one called the ray-ban meta gen 2s they had the oakley meta vanguard and the

Josh:
product that i think everyone's most excited about which is the meta ray-ban

Josh:
display now basically what this is pair of glasses you put them on your face

Josh:
and suddenly they have a display in one of the uh lenses that allows you to

Josh:
see all the the compute overlaid on the real world.

Josh:
So Ijaz, I want to talk about that first because that seems like the most exciting

Josh:
thing. Can you walk us through what exactly was announced last night with these

Josh:
cool new Meta Ray-Ban displays?

Ejaaz:
So imagine a pair of fancy sunglasses, except it's AI.

Ejaaz:
It has a high resolution display coupled with something called a metaneural wristband.

Ejaaz:
So imagine like a wristband on your arm, something maybe akin to a Fitbit or

Ejaaz:
a Whoop, And if you make any subtle gestures with your hand or your fingers,

Ejaaz:
it controls the display that you're looking at through your glasses.

Ejaaz:
And so you might be asking, well, what am I looking at through my glasses?

Ejaaz:
Well, pretty much anything you can do with a phone. You can scroll text.

Ejaaz:
You can reply to them. You can watch HD videos.

Ejaaz:
You can take photos, edit photos, and send them to your friends all in real time.

Ejaaz:
And if you're thinking, oh, this kind of sounds like Google Glass and we saw

Ejaaz:
how that went, I'm afraid we've been brought into the 21st, maybe even the 22nd

Ejaaz:
century here, where we have a full suite of apps.

Ejaaz:
We have a 46 megapixel camera and we have almost 18 hours of runtime.

Ejaaz:
But don't take my word for it. We have a video here demonstrated by none other

Ejaaz:
than Mark Zuckerberg himself when he walked onto the stage with a live demo. Check this out.

Ejaaz:
So for those who are listening, he's sitting in his trailer outside of the stage

Ejaaz:
and he's wearing these glasses and a calendar event pops up,

Ejaaz:
which says, hey, you've got your keynote now.

Ejaaz:
So he's like, OK, I guess I need to go onto the stage.

Ejaaz:
He selects a track because he wants to listen to some music whilst he walks

Ejaaz:
onto stage. So he accesses his Spotify and he plays a song. I think it's called Enjoy the Ride.

Ejaaz:
And the music is playing through headphones that are installed into the handles

Ejaaz:
of these sunglasses. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking.

Ejaaz:
This sounds obtrusive, right? I don't want people listening to my music on the train or whatever.

Ejaaz:
It's isolated towards your own ears. So no one else hears it but you.

Ejaaz:
It's a really remarkable attempt at a new form factor of technology where you

Ejaaz:
can interact with different types of social media, music, or anything like that.

Ejaaz:
What you can see on the screen now is he's chatting live with his friends in real time.

Ejaaz:
He's saying, hey, I'm on my way. I'll be there in about 20 seconds.

Ejaaz:
A friend replies saying, okay, cool.

Ejaaz:
I'm over here. Sends him a photo of what he's seeing through his meta ray display bands.

Josh:
It's all remarkably cool um before

Ejaaz:
I go into the features josh i want to get your initial gut take is this cool

Ejaaz:
to you or is this kind of novelty cringe.

Josh:
So so throughout the presentation i feel like inside of me there were two wolves

Josh:
there's like the techno optimist part of me that really wants this to be great

Josh:
that wants to believe that this is very much the future this is here right now

Josh:
these products are incredible and then there was like the more pragmatic,

Josh:
realistic version who has been in the tech world for decades of time, who is just like,

Josh:
oh my God, this is a toy.

Josh:
This is not real. This is not a serious presentation.

Josh:
This is like actually a joke. None of your demos work. Even the ones that do, the software is clunky.

Josh:
The hardware is very much version one. And at times it felt like they were advertising

Josh:
an action camera versus a real smart AI interface.

Josh:
And that to me kind of rubbed me the wrong way. So I think in terms of wanting

Josh:
progress, this is amazing.

Josh:
I am very glad that they're building in public and they are doing this in a

Josh:
way that is available to consumers starting September 30th for these glasses.

Josh:
But also, it feels like it is so early and so half-baked that even if you gave

Josh:
me one of these glasses for free, I would want to demo it, sure.

Josh:
But I'm not sure I'd actually walk around and interface with my regular life with them on.

Josh:
But there were some things that were really interesting. And I think throughout

Josh:
this presentation, there were there were signs of life.

Josh:
There were signs of hope that, OK, this very much is a new frontier that they're establishing.

Josh:
There's a lot of potential here. There's a lot of technology that's built into

Josh:
not only the glasses, but the wrist strap that we're going to talk about soon.

Josh:
And that to me was the exciting part. It was more the promise of what we're

Josh:
going to get versus what was revealed today.

Josh:
And I'm wondering, Ijaz, you seemed pretty enthusiastic about it.

Josh:
Did you have a different type of sentiment than me?

Ejaaz:
Okay, so I went through the same rollercoaster that you did,

Ejaaz:
which was incredibly pessimistic when a few of the demos that they tried to attempt live failed.

Ejaaz:
And then I realized that what they were trying to achieve here,

Ejaaz:
what they were trying to build was incredibly ambitious. And for a V1,

Ejaaz:
this was actually pretty impressive.

Ejaaz:
And I'll tell you why, right? My gut at the end of the presentation was,

Ejaaz:
maybe this isn't the coolest V1, but for the price of $799, I would buy it.

Ejaaz:
It has enough for me that I think it would be useful for me to at least try

Ejaaz:
out and maybe see what it can do. You know what it reminded me of, Josh?

Josh:
What's that?

Ejaaz:
Do you remember Steve Jobs' keynote for the iPhone 4? I was like a little teenager.

Ejaaz:
At that point but i remember him launching it and he did a live demo on stage

Ejaaz:
i think it was demonstrating uh i think it was like some kind of like new camera

Ejaaz:
feature and it flopped and,

Ejaaz:
yeah safari and potentially facetime exactly and and

Ejaaz:
it flopped in real time and that was because you

Ejaaz:
know there was like wi-fi connections or whatever and that ended up being okay

Ejaaz:
at the end of the day now i know this isn't v4 of these ray-ban uh glasses but

Ejaaz:
i feel like it we can give it a little bit of room to to kind of grow um but

Ejaaz:
the coolest part of these ai glasses josh,

Ejaaz:
isn't actually the glasses to me it's the wristband i.

Josh:
Think that is

Ejaaz:
I i think that is super super cool um so to kind of dig into what the wristband

Ejaaz:
does um for the viewers it's called an EMG neural band.

Ejaaz:
It basically lets you scroll, pinch, or even write in the air,

Ejaaz:
and it transcribes straight onto the display that you have within your glasses.

Ejaaz:
And the reason why I think this is cool is this kind of like moves away from

Ejaaz:
the Nintendo Wii controller to something that is a little more accessible to

Ejaaz:
the average day-to-day person, something that is way more useful for someone.

Ejaaz:
It is also a remarkable invention of technology.

Ejaaz:
Josh, do you remember when we actually spoke about the research paper that Meta

Ejaaz:
released of this neural band? I think it was like...

Ejaaz:
It feels like a while ago, but

Ejaaz:
I think it was literally only a month and a half, maybe two months ago.

Ejaaz:
When we went through that paper on our show, it was remarkable how much detail

Ejaaz:
and effort had gone into this.

Ejaaz:
It's evident that Meta had been working on this for a number of different years,

Ejaaz:
and Zuckerberg actually confirmed that on stage.

Ejaaz:
But even the slightest of gestures can be picked up by this neural wristband,

Ejaaz:
and it detects muscle movement.

Ejaaz:
So it's not really kind of like checking your pulse or looking at any kind of

Ejaaz:
sensory type of things. through your nerves.

Ejaaz:
It's just muscle twitches. And you might be thinking, well, I might use my hand

Ejaaz:
to do something else and it might cause the screen to do blah, blah, blah.

Ejaaz:
It's incredibly intuitive, as we've seen from some of the demos that have been

Ejaaz:
released so far. So that's the thing I'm most excited about, less so the glasses.

Josh:
Yeah, same. So let's summarize. So basically, with these glasses,

Josh:
you get two things, right?

Josh:
You get the pair of wearable glasses, and then you also get this wrist strap, this EMG.

Josh:
And the way these glasses compute and they connect to the world is through a tether with your phone.

Josh:
So if your phone has connection, well, your glasses have connection as well.

Josh:
The cool thing about the EMG sensor that you talked about, I kind of want to

Josh:
walk through the technicals of it because I think a lot of people don't understand

Josh:
the difference between an interface like the Apple Watch.

Josh:
If you've used a new Apple Watch, it detects if you're pinching your fingers.

Josh:
That's using muscular detection. It's not quite using the same technology that Matt is using today.

Josh:
So EMG, it stands for electromyography, and the band works by using these surface

Josh:
electromyography sensors to detect these tiny little electrical signals in your

Josh:
muscle form, which is really cool.

Josh:
So it contacts your skin, it detects the signals, and it processes it using

Josh:
this machine learning algorithm to analyze the signals

Josh:
Detect the subtle movements that allow you to interact with the actual device.

Josh:
So I was watching a few demos of people using it.

Josh:
A single tap with your pointer finger and your thumb is the select button.

Josh:
And then a double tap with your middle finger and your thumb is the back button.

Josh:
And you navigate the menus by actually moving your finger around your

Josh:
hand and simulating the actual movement that the band then understands

Josh:
and intuitively allows you to interact with the device with

Josh:
so it's this really cool companion piece to

Josh:
the glasses and i think in terms of of

Josh:
this new frontier of computing the way that we

Josh:
interact with it is really important like the last big one

Josh:
we got was multi-touch and the way you interact with glass is actually

Josh:
just with your fingers and it accepts multiple touches at once well the

Josh:
way you interact with this like ar not that

Josh:
these are ar glasses but this new like spatial world of computing

Josh:
the the electro thing is like pretty freaking cool so that got me really excited

Josh:
and i think that's the thing i want to test the most is how accurate it is and

Josh:
kind of thinking about how much further they can push that because it feels

Josh:
like this technology is certainly not limited to just navigating a simple menu

Josh:
but there's a lot more here for them to unpack i

Ejaaz:
Also want to bring it back to the glasses itself which is actually a pretty

Ejaaz:
impressive invention in itself the amount of technology and compute that they're

Ejaaz:
packed into what is essentially like something that is the weight of a couple of feathers is insane.

Ejaaz:
So I've pulled up a few stats here, Josh, that I want to walk through because

Ejaaz:
I know what a lot of people are thinking here, which was an initial thought that I had, which is,

Ejaaz:
if I have a high resolution display over my eyes, how am I going to interact

Ejaaz:
with the world? I'm going to walk into someone.

Ejaaz:
I'm going to knock into something. They're going to be able to see what I'm

Ejaaz:
seeing on my screen. That isn't actually the case.

Ejaaz:
The 600 by 600 pixel resolution is only located in one of the lenses.

Ejaaz:
So you can pretty much have about 85% of your view unobstructed.

Ejaaz:
It's also a 20 degree field of view. So whereas you normally would see kind

Ejaaz:
of like everything everywhere through a 180 perspective.

Ejaaz:
This kind of like limits you in some sense, but gives you a wide enough angle

Ejaaz:
such that you are aware of people that are walking around you,

Ejaaz:
objects that are surrounding you, can interact with things in relative perspective.

Ejaaz:
It has about 5,000 nits of brightness, which compared to the latest iPhone,

Ejaaz:
which is around 3,000 nits, I believe, it's comparably larger, right?

Ejaaz:
So this is no kind of meager effort or mediocre effort.

Ejaaz:
This is high-grade, high-resolution technology for the new age, essentially.

Ejaaz:
2% light leakage. What this essentially means is for someone,

Ejaaz:
Let's say I'm wearing the glasses right now, Josh, and you're looking at me and you're like,

Ejaaz:
why there's some flashing lights in Ejaz's lenses, you actually won't see that

Ejaaz:
at all because the light leakage just does not occur.

Ejaaz:
It's all contained within these glasses, which is crazy because it's an open

Ejaaz:
device, right? You can move the handles up and down.

Ejaaz:
There are speakers on these handles. You would think otherwise,

Ejaaz:
but it's super cool. And then they have microphones, speakers,

Ejaaz:
and cameras, all the usual gizmos that you would get with your phone.

Josh:
Yeah, so there's a lot of specs here. There's a lot of numbers.

Josh:
I was really interested in the actual usability.

Josh:
So late last night after the presentation, I kind of I went on X and I was scrolling

Josh:
through and seeing videos of people actually using the device and the way it's

Josh:
used seems pretty unique.

Josh:
I think the the highlight features are the resolution is actually pretty good.

Josh:
So when you are actually wearing the glasses it's not very pixelated because

Josh:
of that 5000 nit display you can look everywhere but the sun and it will actually

Josh:
show you a bright display so you don't have to worry about going outside or

Josh:
being in direct sunlight and in fact the lenses are transition lenses so as

Josh:
you go outside into brighter territory it may take a second to darken but once

Josh:
it darkens the display will be very clear and obvious

Josh:
so it seems like in terms of the actual user experience of the device it's pretty

Josh:
good so long as you don't mind the limited functionality of the device and using

Josh:
meta's ecosystem which we can probably talk about in a little bit but ijaz i

Josh:
know we have a couple demos that we want to show or maybe the lack thereof demos

Josh:
some worked some didn't which one are we going to start with here let's

Ejaaz:
Uh let's start with the ones that actually worked.

Josh:
Okay this one is cool I loved this one.

Ejaaz:
Exactly, yeah. So one of the coolest features from the presentation was the

Ejaaz:
fact that you could make subtle gestures for writing words on any kind of platform.

Ejaaz:
In this example, it's Zuckerberg writing on a kind of like very conveniently

Ejaaz:
placed pedestal, which is right next to him.

Ejaaz:
And he's writing out words and it's appearing in actual text in his text chain

Ejaaz:
or in his WhatsApp chat that he's having with someone live on stage.

Ejaaz:
And this is all done live.

Ejaaz:
So if you look at this video, So his hand is casually placed on this pedestal

Ejaaz:
and he is just writing out words as if you would write in a notebook or a textbook,

Ejaaz:
for example, and it appears live.

Ejaaz:
On his screen in his WhatsApp chat. And then he clicks send.

Ejaaz:
And what's interesting here is during this demo, he kind of makes the case that

Ejaaz:
whilst you're talking to a human or whilst you're listening to a human,

Ejaaz:
you might want to make notes.

Ejaaz:
You might want to interact and have a conversation with someone else.

Ejaaz:
And what he's suggesting is you can do this subtly because you can just use

Ejaaz:
your hand and this EMG Neural Band.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if I agree with that. I already get annoyed when people are wearing

Ejaaz:
AirPods in real time when I'm having a conversation with them.

Ejaaz:
I don't care if you're not listening to music.

Ejaaz:
It's kind of disrespectful in my opinion.

Ejaaz:
So I don't quite agree with that particular use case, but I think it's cool

Ejaaz:
that I don't have to type out, that I don't have to whip out my phone and tap

Ejaaz:
with my thumbs. I could just kind of make subtle gestures.

Josh:
Yeah, this was one of the few things that it rubbed me a little bit the wrong way.

Josh:
The first one being when he walked out and he kind of led the conference and

Josh:
presentation with like, hey, this is the convergence of super intelligence and hardware.

Josh:
And this is a very far cry from super intelligence and and

Josh:
using the s word to lead the presentation it felt a little

Josh:
disingenuous and not real this was the second one where okay you

Josh:
have these glasses which it's bad enough that now if

Josh:
anyone walks up to you with a pair of glasses the societal effects

Josh:
of that will be a little awkward like hey am i being recorded uh like i know

Josh:
even if you're not going to record it is meta recording and now am i going to

Josh:
be part of meta's database but in addition during this demo he pitched it as

Josh:
a multitasking device which i thought was really interesting to use the word

Josh:
multitasking when you're already

Josh:
going up against so much friction in this human-to-human interaction,

Josh:
where now not only are you going to be

Josh:
Maybe perhaps recording the person across from you, but now also kind of distracted

Josh:
by this device on your face where now, oh, and not only am I barely listening

Josh:
to you, but I'm looking at this display because when you look at the display,

Josh:
your eyes kind of wander a little bit, you don't make direct eye contact.

Josh:
And you're also like, oh, I'm also kind of writing on the side and I'm doing these things.

Josh:
And he's kind of digging himself a deeper hole by pitching it as this multitasking

Josh:
device, this intrusive device.

Josh:
It's just, it doesn't really sit well with me in terms of how i

Josh:
want to use it or how i would suggest other people use

Josh:
it so i don't know the demos again a little weird

Josh:
but the demo was great and one of the things that he

Josh:
bragged about was i think he said it was 30 words per minute he was able

Josh:
to achieve with the actual handwriting so it creates this cool thing where there's

Josh:
this new acquired skill set you'll need to learn to engage with these devices

Josh:
writing being one of them and i think that's that's a fun thing it's like okay

Josh:
cool we have this like new tool we can learn how to use it learn how to optimize

Josh:
it learn how to extracts more value out of it but yeah a little a little weird i

Ejaaz:
Um i i just remembered that he announced a new feature with these glasses um

Ejaaz:
which was conversation focus mode.

Josh:
Which is antithetical

Ejaaz:
To the case study that he's pitching on stage right now um for those of you

Ejaaz:
who didn't catch it it's basically like a button or a gesture that you can make

Ejaaz:
which um kind of like drowns out any other surrounding noise and amplifies the

Ejaaz:
voice of the person that's speaking in front of you.

Ejaaz:
So let's say you're in the room with me, Josh, and I'm speaking to you and you're

Ejaaz:
like, whatever, two feet, three feet, whatever away from me.

Ejaaz:
But we're in New York, there's a lot of traffic, there's a lot of construction.

Ejaaz:
It drowns all of that out and your voice is amplified into my ear through the

Ejaaz:
speakers in the handles.

Ejaaz:
So it's kind of like this push and pull of like, what are you trying to achieve with these glasses?

Ejaaz:
Is it multitasking or is it kind of focus or is it both it might work i don't know but i'm not

Ejaaz:
convinced.

Josh:
Yeah, you mentioned this earlier, the Steve Jobs demonstration.

Josh:
I think growing up watching Steve do these presentations has permanently tarnished

Josh:
all future presentations because they were really very, very focused.

Josh:
You left with a very clear vision of the future. They delivered on a very clear value in the present.

Josh:
And a lot of this presentation left me not only like feeling like it was kind

Josh:
of like not a serious thing, but wondering where's all this going?

Josh:
You're kind of seeing these small signs of life and small signs of this

Josh:
AI convergence with hardware one of them being the demo

Josh:
that you mentioned where it will actually pick up a voice and it will automatically amplify

Josh:
that voice it's a smart feature but it's kind of pitched in

Josh:
this weird convoluted confusing way where i'm not quite sure

Josh:
what i would use it for today being someone who doesn't use meta's ecosystem

Josh:
and i'm not quite sure what i'm going to use it for in the future because there

Josh:
was really wasn't a clear vision of where it's going just like these things

Josh:
are going to get better but i mean even if the voice amplification or the live

Josh:
translation gets it's better, like, I still, it's not going to do it for me.

Josh:
But there's another demo on screen. This wasn't the only demo that worked.

Josh:
Here's the second one that worked.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, yeah, it's a live translation feature. So for all my subtitle reader fans out here, I'm one of you.

Ejaaz:
The ones who read the subs despite the movie being in your native language or

Ejaaz:
in English or whatever it might be.

Ejaaz:
This is the ideal feature for you. It is basically live subtitles as the person

Ejaaz:
in front of you is speaking. So it appears on the high res display.

Ejaaz:
So for those people who kind of like mumble or who talk quietly, no more.

Ejaaz:
You'll understand anything and everything that they say in real time. It's pretty cool.

Ejaaz:
I don't know if this is groundbreaking to me, but it was one of the few demos

Ejaaz:
that actually worked. So we have to talk about it.

Josh:
There was, there's an interesting thing where you could see how this would be

Josh:
really cool for live translation in regards to like different languages.

Josh:
We saw that recently with the Apple event. We saw it again with the Google event

Josh:
where this live translation is becoming a cool thing.

Josh:
So this particular example was English, which was left a little to be desired.

Josh:
But I think the actual technology is pretty cool.

Josh:
The latency, it appears like it was pretty quick. So it's almost real-time translation.

Josh:
But again, it's like, okay, Do I want an $800 pair of glasses to amplify the

Josh:
person I'm talking to and then give me subtitles?

Josh:
It's like, I think these are a little uninspiring for the potential of this technology.

Ejaaz:
And they should have demonstrated it with a different language.

Ejaaz:
I looked up the features after this stream and apparently German and Portuguese

Ejaaz:
is available for live translation.

Ejaaz:
So why not demo that in the demo? It's just surprising.

Josh:
And why only those two languages too? It's bizarre. yeah going

Ejaaz:
Into uh yours maybe both of ours favorite topic the fail demos there were some

Ejaaz:
there were some pretty pretty awkward fails um so.

Josh:
I had i was looking at my notes i was

Josh:
taking live notes last night as i was watching this and i have a line

Josh:
in my notepad that says omg i can't believe

Josh:
this is real and it was happening as this demo was going on this was i like

Josh:
my my skin started to curl as i was watching this because it was so awkward

Josh:
and i love that they did live demos and like i trust zuck and the fact that

Josh:
like this this works sure but like my god that was tough to watch

Ejaaz:
It was super tough. And you know why it was a double whammy?

Ejaaz:
Okay, well, firstly, let me give you some context.

Ejaaz:
For those who are listening on the screen here, we have Mark demoing a live

Ejaaz:
video call that you can execute from these new glasses, except the call never went through.

Ejaaz:
He got called maybe five times from the person that he was trying to demo with.

Ejaaz:
And he was unable to pick up. He kept saying, answer the phone,

Ejaaz:
or he would gesture with his hand to answer the call.

Ejaaz:
And it just would not work. The reason why this is a double whammy is the app

Ejaaz:
they were using was WhatsApp, which is their own feature as well.

Ejaaz:
So it really wasn't a good demonstration of the technology or the app.

Ejaaz:
Now, to kind of give them a bit of slack, there has been Wi-Fi issues that have

Ejaaz:
failed live demos before, but you're meta.

Ejaaz:
You spent $25 billion to acquire 100 of the best AI researchers.

Ejaaz:
Can you spend a couple of that on maybe better Wi-Fi infrastructure?

Ejaaz:
I'm not trying to shit on you. I'm just trying to make a valid point here.

Ejaaz:
If you're going to live demo something that is a new form factor that is meant

Ejaaz:
to kill the iPhone, you need to kind of like be on it.

Josh:
Yeah, I think the the live demos I actually really admire and I appreciate the

Josh:
fact they did it because Google or Apple recently has strayed away from them.

Josh:
And I think it's just it's kind of gross. Do it in real time. Let's see that it works.

Josh:
The thing for me is that even if all of the live demos worked fine,

Josh:
like I actually don't care that they failed. I believe that they do work and

Josh:
I believe that they work well.

Josh:
But even if those features do work, I still don't really care.

Josh:
I'm looking at him use the interface. I'm looking at him navigate around.

Josh:
And I'm realizing, well, by signing up for these glasses, you're signing up

Josh:
for the meta ecosystem. And that is a place where I have zero roots or zero

Josh:
allegiance or zero interest in actually using.

Josh:
I'm seeing him. He's using WhatsApp and he's using Facebook Messenger.

Josh:
And that's where all these messages are kind of populating. And I'm like,

Josh:
this is not a device for me. And how many people is this actually a device for?

Josh:
It's funny. I don't have glasses. I don't wear glasses for this episode.

Josh:
I found a pair and I put them on because I was like, well, what does it feel

Josh:
like to actually wear glasses? Because I never do.

Josh:
And it's just like, if I if I have to wear an $800 pair of bulky glasses that

Josh:
I don't think looked that great just to translate some subtitles in a native

Josh:
language that i already understand it's like okay like where where are the really

Josh:
cool use cases that get me fired up they were mia

Ejaaz:
Okay i'm gonna do two things now i'm going to uh give you some counter arguments

Ejaaz:
so what do you just propose because i kind of disagree with a few things and

Ejaaz:
then i'm gonna kind of kind of agree with a few things and give examples of

Ejaaz:
where they actually succeeded in the Yeah, it's sick.

Ejaaz:
What do you got? So firstly, remember when the airports first came out and people

Ejaaz:
were like, oh, these kind of look weird. I like my wired headphones.

Ejaaz:
Now everyone and their mom wears them, right?

Ejaaz:
And the reason why is because they were just about cool enough to make it without

Ejaaz:
looking like chunky metal blocks in your ear. I think the same is going to happen with glasses.

Ejaaz:
And to be honest, if I look at the progression from Google Glass,

Ejaaz:
which was this futuristic, cringe-looking thing, to where we are with these

Ejaaz:
new Oakley and Meta Ray-Bans. I mean, it's literally in the name. It's Ray-Bans, right?

Ejaaz:
Ray-Bans have been known for killing the sunglass game for decades now.

Ejaaz:
I think we have a good shot at maybe producing a consumer wearable that anyone

Ejaaz:
and everyone will be cool with wearing, right? The second thing is...

Ejaaz:
I actually like the live demos, and I think at the end of the day,

Ejaaz:
I'm still optimistic about it because I know Meta will probably work through the bugs.

Ejaaz:
They're going to fix all of them, and it'll probably end up being a coherent, usable product.

Ejaaz:
The other thing is it's affordable.

Ejaaz:
Now, they didn't do the Apple thing where they were like, this is going to be

Ejaaz:
thousands of dollars or whatever the premium pricing is for whoever at this point.

Ejaaz:
It is something that is affordable, at least for most people in tech, to try out.

Ejaaz:
And I think the audience that they're going after is, you know,

Ejaaz:
these Gen Z kids, which want a MacBook, which want their iPhone,

Ejaaz:
which want a bunch of different things.

Ejaaz:
You know, they're willing to kind of spend this extra money to try this.

Ejaaz:
Now, where I agree with you heavily is the ecosystem.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, I don't use WhatsApp. It's just Instagram. So when I think about,

Ejaaz:
you know, being plugged into Meta AI and the quality of their AI assistant,

Ejaaz:
which I don't know about you, Josh, but I've never actually used to any length

Ejaaz:
of time outside of experiments.

Josh:
Yeah.

Ejaaz:
I'm not convinced. This kind of feels like me using some low-grade AI assistant. Dare I say Siri?

Ejaaz:
Shout out Apple. Sorry. But I don't think it's coherent or usable enough for

Ejaaz:
me to be really invested in these gases.

Ejaaz:
I think the object, the device is super cool,

Ejaaz:
but i think the technology and software which at the end of the day is going

Ejaaz:
to be the thing that scales it it's going to be the thing that puts the nail

Ejaaz:
in the coffin to an iphone if that ever exists is still unproved and yet to

Ejaaz:
be kind of built out um and i'm not quite seeing it with this release.

Josh:
Yeah so there's two two points that you made that i want

Josh:
to talk about because i think they're both interesting is is the google glass reference because

Josh:
google glass came out in 2013 that's 12

Josh:
years ago and a lot of the times when we're kind of

Josh:
analyzing these companies we're looking at the rate of acceleration the

Josh:
rate of improvement year over year as things gets better as a

Josh:
way to kind of judge future returns so you just kind of assume

Josh:
that they're on the flat part right now of the exponential curve but the

Josh:
progress that is being made year over year is is really

Josh:
marginal relative to what it should be where i can

Josh:
see the same presentation happening four years in advance with

Josh:
kind of like iphone level incrementation like oh now the camera instead

Josh:
of 3k it's 4k oh it has a wider field of view oh it

Josh:
has double the pixel count in the displays and it still doesn't change

Josh:
the fact that it's not an interesting product because it doesn't have the software ecosystem

Josh:
to back it up and then the second thing was on price which is eight hundred

Josh:
dollars you said it's like pretty affordable for what you're getting it's like

Josh:
you're getting these cool glasses with this display you're getting the wrist

Josh:
strap but he just do you not think that's subsidized in an attempt to gain users

Josh:
early before other companies release actually good hardware and

Josh:
I just bought, Apple has the Apple Watch Ultra. It drops tomorrow on Friday.

Josh:
And I paid $800 for a watch, just a single wrist strap.

Josh:
And yeah, it's made of titanium and has the cool chips, but it costs $800.

Josh:
And that is from Apple, who has a very well-established supply chain and manufacturing

Josh:
capabilities and prices at reasonable margins because they have a lot of competition.

Josh:
So for Meta to price a device this compelling in terms of frontier technology,

Josh:
I strongly suspect there's no way, including all the R&D costs and everything

Josh:
it took to get this thing out the door, that it really costs less than $800.

Josh:
This device absolutely costs more than $800. They have the wrist strap. They have the glasses.

Josh:
It's like, I very strongly suspect that they are subsidizing the price in order

Josh:
to gain users to sync them more into the ecosystem before, I mean,

Josh:
like I said earlier, before other companies actually make good products.

Josh:
If Apple released a pair of glasses that were even marginally close to this,

Josh:
I would spend twice as much.

Josh:
Even if Google did, I would probably spend a lot more because Google makes good hardware products.

Josh:
The reality is meta this is just like it's a mediocre hardware product

Josh:
and they're probably doing all they can to gain gain uses early which is like

Josh:
maybe a hot take in terms of the mediocrity because i mean again i don't want

Josh:
to judge it without using it because we haven't used it and all the people who've

Josh:
tried it said it's remarkable it's really cool so i think we should probably

Josh:
reserve final judgment until we hit the demo but just based on first impressions

Josh:
it's like okay this is probably their strategy let

Ejaaz:
Me steel man um what mess his argument might be.

Josh:
Right uh so what

Ejaaz:
So what? They haven't been in the hardware game meaningfully.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, they acquired Oculus and they've gone down the AR, VR route.

Ejaaz:
But this is the first, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, like homegrown product.

Ejaaz:
Like they have been working on this neural wristband for years now.

Ejaaz:
And it's their first kind of foray into a new form factor by far, right?

Josh:
So maybe pricing it at

Ejaaz:
A cheap enough point where the hardware is kind of gimmicky but good enough

Ejaaz:
is good enough to get a distribution to a loyal fan base, of which they already

Ejaaz:
have tons of online users, right?

Ejaaz:
And then number two, I'm thinking maybe this is a problem that solves itself

Ejaaz:
just by chucking money at it from the manufacturing perspective.

Ejaaz:
That might be a super, super naive take, but I'm guessing that that might be

Ejaaz:
a strategy that Zuck has thought about.

Ejaaz:
And we might end up seeing a bunch of infrastructure or hardware manufacturing

Ejaaz:
supply chain partnerships over the next couple of months. remains to be seen.

Ejaaz:
Now, if I'm to look at your point around Apple, I would say that not only would

Ejaaz:
people pay $800 or maybe even double that for the new watch,

Ejaaz:
it's because you have ecosystem lock-in.

Ejaaz:
It's because the software experience and the app experience is so damn good.

Ejaaz:
And that's kind of Apple's leverage at this point. It's this kind of like coherent

Ejaaz:
system where if they released an AI hardware product tomorrow, I'm there.

Ejaaz:
I'm buying it. All my friends are using the Apple ecosystem anyway, right?

Ejaaz:
So I'm still an Apple fanboy, and the meta AI stuff kind of icks me,

Ejaaz:
but I can appreciate the attempt that they're going for.

Ejaaz:
And if they have even one, Josh, okay, imagine this, just one novel use case that goes viral.

Ejaaz:
And let me make a guess at what that might be. Please. Okay.

Ejaaz:
Um it is going to be some form of

Ejaaz:
streaming streaming content is becoming super popular

Ejaaz:
amongst the gen z sports people social media

Ejaaz:
is everywhere if i can stream a video or stream

Ejaaz:
my life in general clip the cool clips post it on my social media it goes viral

Ejaaz:
that might be good enough to sway me to use it now are all demographics of people

Ejaaz:
using this probably not are you going to walk into your wall street job with

Ejaaz:
these glasses on and stare at the charts,

Ejaaz:
maybe 10 years from now, but certainly not now, right?

Ejaaz:
I feel like this appeals to maybe a younger audience. That might be why Zuck

Ejaaz:
is wearing gold chains every now and then.

Ejaaz:
But I feel like that's the that's the demographic that he's going for.

Ejaaz:
Kind of like Gen Z teenagers, social content people.

Josh:
Yeah, we're not even talking about the outfits he walked out on stage.

Josh:
We'll save that for later.

Josh:
There was like two more things, I guess. One is the AI that runs locally on the device.

Josh:
I'm unsure, EJ, if there is much of it. Like I'm very

Josh:
interested in the intelligence because he led with that super intelligence line

Josh:
he used the s word um but the intelligence seemed pretty rudimentary it was

Josh:
kind of like they showed a demo where they were in a surf shop and you look

Josh:
at a surfboard and they're like oh here's an email that you talked about a surfboard

Josh:
and it feels kind of like what what i would imagine siri and apple intelligence

Josh:
would be which is bad um but

Josh:
moderately helpful um and then also there was

Josh:
other things we probably should round this out with the rest of the stuff that

Josh:
was announced during the presentation because it wasn't just this one

Josh:
set of glasses there was a few things we could kind of speed run

Josh:
through them if you'd like um the first

Josh:
one oh here we are yes the oakley meta vanguard glasses so prior to making this

Josh:
big announcement of the displays they released a few glasses and to me this

Josh:
felt like so i love photography videography camera stuff this felt like i was

Josh:
watching a gopro announcement it was an action camera they partnered with red

Josh:
bull to do a promo video uh it's like it feels like a

Josh:
Really bizarre anomaly for a company like meta who's

Josh:
going for agi to drop an action camera attached to glasses um

Josh:
friend of the pod host of the pod david hoffman

Josh:
he messaged us he said i'm getting a pair of these this is

Josh:
my pair david loves climbing he loves i

Josh:
mean presumably recording the climbing and uses a bulky gopro setup

Josh:
so this is cool for people like that a few

Josh:
specs on these glasses because there was some interesting noteworthy

Josh:
things for these um they're targeted at athletes first

Josh:
sport specific glasses they are ip67 rated which means they're dust resistant

Josh:
and water resistant you can wear them get them wet drop them in water they have

Josh:
a 12 megapixel camera 122 field of view 122 degree field of view which is pretty

Josh:
wide for a lot of people who aren't familiar with that uh the battery lasts

Josh:
up to nine hours and it captures 3k video for

Josh:
499 so the 3k video i thought was funny um

Josh:
it's like okay why like it's like people don't call 2k video 2k at just 1080p

Josh:
because it's 1920 by 1080 and for 4k it's like 38 60 by 2010 uh so like the

Josh:
3k is just interesting marketing i guess it sounds cool i

Ejaaz:
Don't think i've ever heard anyone market it at 3k before.

Josh:
Yeah because like no like you do 1080p or 4k like you're just doing this weird

Josh:
incremental thing that i don't love but whatever um but the glasses i mean here

Josh:
they are they look interesting it's like my past self who was playing baseball

Josh:
games in the outfield i'd love this i can get some live content and be catching

Josh:
a fly ball but i'm not sure what

Ejaaz:
Do you think of the camera smack bang in the center.

Josh:
So look at this this is like this was not a

Josh:
serious presentation like it really like i

Josh:
don't know how what is this

Josh:
but like this was a presentation that needed to be made in

Josh:
two or three years this is like not a presentation that should have been made

Josh:
today and what we're seeing is just like this is not i mean it's a cute little

Josh:
action camera from a god knows how many hundreds of billions of dollars of r&d

Josh:
budget so like okay cool they also did this not just with oakley but with uh

Josh:
the ray-bans as well they released the ray-ban metagen twos which are like those

Josh:
trademarked yeah here they are those like trademarked glasses you see everywhere

Josh:
these look a little more compelling because they're just a little bit smaller

Josh:
um these start a little bit cheaper at 379 but again like okay they'll talk

Josh:
to you and you can kind of ask you questions there's no display integrated in

Josh:
them it's like it's a little bit better than the last generation um and that

Josh:
was that was it for the hardware there was three glasses one wrist strap and a lot of um

Josh:
enthusiasm and open-ended questions i

Ejaaz:
Have a question for you josh yes before we round up and this is a very important

Ejaaz:
question so think about it are glasses the final form factor for AI consumer devices?

Josh:
No, I don't think so. I think the final form isn't a single form.

Josh:
And I think this is something that is going to take a while to train people's

Josh:
brains because we've become so accustomed to relying on single devices like

Josh:
our iPhone to do everything.

Josh:
One of the benefits of AI that we get is a lot of context that is distributed across devices.

Josh:
So if you think of like EJazz as being a singular profile that exists in the cloud,

Josh:
that profile is it can be secured and it

Josh:
can be full of context and it can be uniquely you and that

Josh:
profile can be carried to a stream of devices that isn't one singular iphone

Josh:
so in the case of this new frontier there's new types of form factors glasses

Josh:
are absolutely not final form because there is no way in hell i'm going to be

Josh:
wearing a pair of glasses to like a private dinner and chatting with people

Josh:
and just letting it like it's just not it's too intrusive

Josh:
To have a series, a suite of devices, you have your phone, you have a display

Josh:
on the wall, you have glasses on your face, you have smart AI in your earbuds,

Josh:
you have a little puck on your desk.

Josh:
I think the future form factor is really varied.

Josh:
It exists in a lot of different forms, but it uses this one type of intelligence,

Josh:
which is AI, this context window.

Josh:
And the term that people are using for that is ambient AI, ambient intelligence.

Josh:
It just kind of exists in devices around you. it's very portable it's very modular

Josh:
but it's not locked into a singular device so while i think glasses are part

Josh:
of that ecosystem i do not like think they are the the single form that will

Josh:
lead the way in terms of replacing something like an iphone

Ejaaz:
Agreed it won't be the ultimate form i think the ultimate form of you and i

Ejaaz:
probably both agree here it will be some form of like chip in the brain and

Ejaaz:
the projection of display will be on our actual eyelids eyelids on our actual eye lens on.

Josh:
Your neural cortex forget the

Ejaaz:
Eyeballs those are lame okay there you

Ejaaz:
go so so we have basically an ai brain um

Ejaaz:
that does all the cool functions for us but that's

Ejaaz:
gonna take decades like you said so in the

Ejaaz:
intermediary what do you think is the new cell

Ejaaz:
phone moment it could it be glasses or

Ejaaz:
is it uh the puck like device that we

Ejaaz:
discussed in the past i'll give you i'll give you my take yeah let's hear it

Ejaaz:
i think i think glasses is a fantastic step in the right direction and i think

Ejaaz:
it'll be one if not the only intermediary device that's going to work at least

Ejaaz:
for the next decade and and here's my reasoning.

Ejaaz:
You need something visual that you kind of can wear, but doesn't bother you too much.

Ejaaz:
I think AirPods demonstrated that we're okay doing that with one form of medium,

Ejaaz:
which is music and listening and calls, that part of our social life.

Ejaaz:
But visual never really got kind of upgraded from staring at a metal slab and

Ejaaz:
having to pick it up, having to go to a bigger metal slab.

Ejaaz:
I'm gesturing to my laptop that's in front of me.

Ejaaz:
It's kind of clunky. So I feel like something that follows me everywhere.

Ejaaz:
Yeah, glasses kind of seem annoying, but I don't know.

Ejaaz:
If you can do it in a way where my vision isn't impaired too much,

Ejaaz:
where there's no like crazy filter or colored filter, I could wear it. Just make me look cool.

Ejaaz:
And I could wear it. That sounds good, right?

Ejaaz:
The other thing is last week, we spoke about Apple's new iPhone Air.

Ejaaz:
I have mine arriving tomorrow.

Josh:
I cannot wait. We're both getting new phones tomorrow. Let's go.

Ejaaz:
We're both getting new phones and it's actually both of the different

Ejaaz:
models so we can demonstrate that live but the amazing

Ejaaz:
um part of the iphone air

Ejaaz:
is the entire computer chips everything aside

Ejaaz:
from the battery was contained in just the camera slot where you would normally

Ejaaz:
see on your phone so like it's it's just in this tiny square for those of you

Ejaaz:
looking at this screen i'm holding up an iphone and the camera part of it the

Ejaaz:
plateau right um that suggests to me that they are also heading towards a world

Ejaaz:
where they're going to release some kind of small device,

Ejaaz:
most likely a wearable or something that you can wear on you that will do something

Ejaaz:
similar to what these glasses are doing.

Ejaaz:
It kind of indicates that glasses might be the thing. I might be getting ahead

Ejaaz:
of my skis on this one, but I think it's the ideal form factor for the next day.

Josh:
I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and the mistake that I caught myself

Josh:
making was thinking that there will be another iPhone.

Josh:
And I really, I genuinely don't believe there will be another iPhone.

Josh:
It is the singular moment in history that will not be replicated because the

Josh:
future technology does not enable it to happen.

Josh:
The glasses are awesome, and I very strongly agree that everyone's working on

Josh:
them and everyone will be wearing them.

Josh:
But it is part of a larger ecosystem that kind of exists in this ambient space

Josh:
versus a singular device.

Josh:
And I think that's what Meta is going for. I mean, that's why they changed their

Josh:
entire name from Facebook to Meta.

Josh:
They are building these devices for a metaverse, for a reality that exists multimodal.

Josh:
It exists in this like meat space that we're in today, but also in an overlaid

Josh:
world that is littered with virtual and digital avatars and worlds.

Josh:
So that's kind of where we land with Meta.

Josh:
It's like, OK, cool today. Ejaz, are you getting you're getting a pair?

Ejaaz:
I'm going to get a pair. And I just want to point out, Josh,

Ejaaz:
you're still wearing the glasses that you were demonstrating earlier.

Ejaaz:
So I'm just saying, I'm just saying maybe you may not care about it.

Josh:
They're comfortable. I can see why people wear these all day,

Josh:
even if they don't have a choice.

Ejaaz:
But these glasses come out on the 30th of September.

Ejaaz:
They are priced at $799, which is for the fancy new thing, the one that comes

Ejaaz:
with the neural wristband.

Ejaaz:
So you're getting two devices for a singular price of $799.

Ejaaz:
And if that's still out of your price range, you can get the Oakleys at $499

Ejaaz:
and the Ray-Ban Gen 2s at, I think it was $345.

Ejaaz:
Something like that. $379? Okay.

Ejaaz:
So, so much, much cheaper than the Apple ecosystem, but you know,

Ejaaz:
they come out on September 30th for the, for the new ones.

Josh:
We were yapping today. We're at 45 minutes long. If you made it to the end,

Josh:
thank you for sticking with us.

Josh:
Guys, the comment section and the reaction to some of our most recent episodes have been insane.

Josh:
You got like, whoever's been sticking to the end, whoever's been sending comments

Josh:
and messages, it's been so generous.

Josh:
And I woke up this morning and I messaged Ejaz, like just to go look at it because

Josh:
it was really, it's, it's so special.

Josh:
So we appreciate you not only sticking to the end of a 45 minute rant about

Josh:
the new frontier of this meta hardware technology, but also just engaging with

Josh:
all the content. You got a bunch of new subscribers.

Josh:
We have a bunch of comments like, thank you. We are so excited to wake up and

Josh:
record these episodes. We have so many more coming down the pipeline.

Josh:
And yeah, just appreciate you sticking with us. So again, as always,

Josh:
if you enjoyed, share with your friends. Any parting words, Ejaz,

Josh:
anything to leave the people with?

Ejaaz:
Leave more comments. Buy these glasses. Or will you not buy these glasses?

Ejaaz:
Tell us if you're not going to buy these glasses.

Ejaaz:
Tell us why it's not cool. Tell us why it's impractical or tell us why it's

Ejaaz:
the next best thing. We don't know.

Josh:
We want to hear from you. Yeah, prove me wrong. Tell me why it's sick.

Josh:
And like, I didn't waste an hour of my time last night. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Ejaaz:
It was cool, it was cool.

Josh:
Technooptimist, keep shipping in public.

Ejaaz:
We weren't going to do anything anyway last night, Josh, we're nerds.

Josh:
That's so true, that's so true. But yeah, pro team Zuck, keep shipping,

Josh:
keep spending those billions of dollars. We are building a brighter future.

Josh:
So as always, thank you for watching. We appreciate it. And we'll see you.

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