[jyl]

Well, I wonder if my words (two posts above) are tasty, should I have to eat them, because I bought a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. I have the stock in portfolios, and this Meta product is getting significant buzz online, so call it investment research and a business expense.

First reactions, very very preliminary
- Setup is easy, there are quite a few steps because you need to authorize the glasses to connect to your apps, photos, location, contacts, and so on, but it’s straightforward
- They look like Ray-Bans, with thicker temples (not noticeable except if you’re inspecting them), discreet slits for speakers and mics, and two not-so-discreet circles on the corners of the frame at the temples, being camera lens and notification LED to tell people you’re taking a photo or video. LED cannot be turned off or covered up.
- I snapped a photo, shot a bit of video, simple enough. I don’t think I care much about the photo aspect and even less about the video aspect, but I might be surprised.
- The speakers and mics make the glasses usable for listening to music, phone calls, voice commands (“Send a message to _____”, “Call ______”, etc), and voice interaction. Haven’t checked on sound quality on either end of a call, yet.
- What is the second most interesting thing to me is that you can ask it questions which are answered, verbally, by Meta’s generative AI via your phone and its internet connection. Not confirmed yet, but I think this will be similar to Chat GPT, Bing AI, Bard AI, etc in capabilities and limitations.
- What is the most interesting thing to me is still in beta and I don’t have access to it, yet. Meta’s AI can look through the glasses’ camera and give you information about what it sees. What kind of information I don’t know, it will probably start out limited and evolve and be subject to privacy issues. Translating stuff, identifying things, probably not identifying people, and I don’t know what else.

I saw a video about how smart glasses and VR-AR goggles are starting from opposite ends of the continuum and trying to race to the middle. Meta has both ends of the race covered, with Quest 3 and Meta glasses.

The Quest 2 was interesting even for a non-gamer. My only goal was to work in VR (with multiple virtual monitors) and it was maybe 80% of the way there. From reports, the Quest 3 may have closed the gap, I’ll have to get a pair to try out.

Apple’s Vision Pro sounds very impressive, but $3,500? I read an estimate that Apple has sold about 200,000 pairs. That’s not nothing, but isn’t a lot either.