Final thoughts on smart glasses

Hello and welcome to the Birge Cast, the flagship podcast of NosePads. I'm your friend David Peerce, and today on the show, we're going to talk about smart classes. spepecifically Why smart glasses are such a pervasive idea in the tech industry right now We've talked a lot about them. We've been covering smart glasses since the days of Google Glass And there are so many problems and challenges with smart glasses. There was the whole glass hole problem. There are huge technological problems with actually making this stuff real. There are supply chain issues. There are display things no one has invented yet Smart glasses are going to be very hard to do correctly and even if they're done correctly, It's still very much in the air whether people want them and what they want them for And yet, All of that aside a huge portion of the tech industry, including most of the biggest hardware manufacturers, abbsolutely convinced that smart glasses of the future. So the Virg' V song is going to come on. She has used all the smart glasses, she has reviewed all the smart glasses, and she and I are going to try to figure out why the tech industry can't quit smart classes to be great But first, here's everything else happening on the erge today This is Nanyny secondes on the verge for Tuesday, june twenty third, twenty twenty six. Meta is turning off, at least for now, a program that it created to log everything employees do on their computers. And I mean everything, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, all to use as AI training data Turns out, a lot of the data being collected was very private and made accessible across the entire company It seemems bad More broadly, there's been a lot of reporting recently about a huge morale problem at Meta, where everything and everyone is being pivoted toward AI, whether they like it or not Meanwhile, obviously, privacy and regulatory issues just abound at Meta In a lot of ways, the meta brand right now is just not great in general whichich makes this next thing frankly, very funny. Meta launched a new pair of smart glasses today, just called the Meta gllasses Cheaper than the Rayban models, which might be the big reason for dropping the partnership with such an expensive brand and they come in several new fits, including one made with Kylie Jenner Meta also told The Verge's Victorious Song that the company is working on better privacy systems for the glasses and on making it harder to tamper with the smart glasses in order to record without people knowing Of course, Meta is also reportedly working on a facial recognition system for those very same smart glasses So you know, big grain of salt on all of that. And finally, some very important gadget news. The HP sixteen C, an iconic old school calculator that was once a big hit among nineteen eighties era programmers There's only ten thousand of them. It's one hundred and thirty dollars But now it has a faster chip and it can save and load programs your moveve clog code You can read more about all of this at theverge dot com dot That is ninety seconds on the Vverge for Tuesday, june twenty third Support for today's show comes from AtIO, the AI CRM for modern Teams Some companies pick us CRM because they have to Others pick one because it helps them win That's at you Every signal from emails and meetings to product usage sinks into a live picture of every account from day one AtTO's revenue agents instantly prospect and route leads and draft outreach and follow ups into your voice Others call it an unfair advantage You just call it your next move You can go to atio d. com slash Virchcast and you'll get fifteen percent off your first year A T T I O dot com slash Virgecast Support for the show comes from serervice Now AI is moving fast across the enterprise, but without visibility, it's just chaos Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways Service now turns that chaos into control With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place. What it's doing, what it's done and what it's about to do, so you stay in control To put AI to work for people, visit serviceNow. com It's time to talk glasses. The Virges V song is here, Hi V Hi Who are you wearing today? the These are the Meta Ray band Dick style ber That was a lot of words in a row. Yeah, that was a bunch of frickaking'ds, I said. So basically a couple months ago, Meta basically was like, hey, Some of you guys have really bad eyesight and prescriptions that are not handled by the original meta Ray band glasses or the Ray band metag gllasses, sorry, the naming convention of these glasses is very infuriating. So They came out with this version of the glasses, which can handle really terrible prescriptions like mine and have a slightly more ergonomic design that is supposedly is better for people's faces like the hinges go outwards. There's modular nose pads. So if you have like a really low nose bridge like mine, you can take this little guitar pick tool that's in the thing and pop them off and put them put a different pair of plastic bridges on there and Supposedly the fit is better and that's what I've been testing. This is very exciting. Yeah, especially for my prescription. Like I got a little card and it's like, we gave you the good one point seven four high index lenses. And I was like, oh, I can tell ' the glasses aren't popping out on the other side. like they usually are for me. So that's nice. Yeah. Yeah, this is good news. So I've brought you here for a specific this today Um We talk a lot about smart glasses on this show. I think in particular, we have spent a lot of time talking about the challenges of smart glasses. And all the reasons it's going to be very hard to pull them off, all the reasons they are a total surveillance hellscape, all of the reasons, none of this might work I want to go all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum today because throughout all of this I continue to be struck by the fact that everyveryone in tech has decided that this is going to work And I think it's pretty unusual actually to have this many companies this aligned on a particular kind of project Even as we look at AI, right? Like everybody has different ideas about AI things everybody thinks it's going to be smart classes And so what I want to do with you is I have found ten different things a pair of smart glasses can do. I didn't prepare you for this. We're just gonna do this off the top, and it's going to be great Ten things and you're going you're going to give me a one to five score for each one Five being like this is a killer app for smart glasses. This is why we're doing this. This is This is smart classes One being like, nobody cares, this is not a long run important The overarching question here is basically like why can't tech quit smart classes? Do that soundreasonable to you Yeah, thats that sounds reasonable me. There's a lot of reasons why, but Let's get into it. Okay. have I have ten features for you and then at the end, you get to fill in any gaps that I missed U This is in no particular order The first one is navigation. basically like heads up navigation through the world with with directions that you can see One to five, how important is that as a smmart gllasses feature I think it's a three Because if you are traveling and you're in someplace you don't know, that's great. It's like a super great use case when I went to Italy and I had the meta The Meta Rayband display I have to like buffer for a second when I'm talking about their glasses just because they changed the naming conventions. But when I had the display glasses with me in Italy and we were trying to get our way to the Vatican Museum, it was great. I had these heads up directions, the it's not like New York City where you have a grid layout and it's just All you need are your cross streets and you can get anywhere just fine. You don't need to really have a great sense of direction. Italy iss not that. Rome is not that. There's a lot of twisty little windy roads there. So it was actually really helpful. And it was a great little experiment because my family, my in laws, they had their phones out with the Google maps and I had the glasses on. and I was just zooming going fast, I was weaving my way through things. I had my heads up. I was like, oh, this is fantastic. This is great, but then I come back home to New York City and places that I know and I never use that feature So it's one of those things where it's like, if you travel a lot or you're just someplace you don't know very well What a game changer to have it, especially if you're like in older city that doesn't have logical grid. navigation But if you're somewhere at home, you know, where you know the streets, well, you're never turning that on, right? Why would you do that? So it's sort of like to me a great use case for when you're traveling, but you know, these glasses are things that bigig tech wants you to wear every day. So it's a nice to have, not necessarily a need to have, but when you have it super great in a pinch, especially if you know, like in Italy, the traffic laws are suggestion and there's always someone on a on a opPed just going real fast and so you need that awareness about you. That was the time or the navigational features. I was like, oh yes. Love this Super great. And they all have different ideas about how they want to do it, like when I did the Android XR demo One thing I really liked is that when you look down you can kind of have a map orienting you where you are. So even, you know, maybe When I am able to have an Android XR, a pair of glasses to test in New York City, when I get out of a subway and I'm disoriented about where in my grid I'm looking, I can look down and kind of see that automatically. And then by the way, is a demo we've been seeing for like a decade. They'll like walk out and it'll tell you what direction to turn is a a terrific idea and be a very old idea about very old ideas this might be And it's just like, I would love to have a pair of glasses that actually does that in the wild outside of a control demo just to see how much would I actually use that? Be I'm always like getting out of the subway and going like, oh, my eyes are garbage. Time to use my phones Gazillion time zoom to see what the street says over there. Okay, that's the wrong direction. I just walk until I can see the street sign and then realize I've gone the wrong way and then I walk to the other street sign Take out your phone Find the closest street sign, just zoom in car. then and thenll you'll be able to tell. So these are like things that I've done as someone with garbage eyeballs. Yeah, so three feels right to me here. It's like, yeah, feature you will use if you buy a pair of smart glasses, probably not the reason you will buy smart glasses. Yes in theory. I buy that And nice to have. Sure sometimes. ye. Okay. Th number two a big ass monitor for your computer 's going to be a two. But I want to caveat this here. Honestly, two feels generous. Tw feels generous. I'm gonna caveat this. I'm giving it a two because there is a certain subsct of people who I've interviewed for various things who are just like, this is the number one reason for XR We call these people people who bought Vision pros and refuse to feel bad about it is that's what those people are called Correct Yeah. And, you know, I've I've been in situations where I've used a pair of Xial glasses and been able to have a second monitor on a plane where you know if you use a second monitor often and're and you're on a place where all of a sudden you're like, oh, crap, I only have thirteen inches of my MacBook air to work with. How dare anyone expect me to work with such limited screen real estate? And you there are people who have called into the hotline who have been like, I need my second monitor in a coffee shop. What do I wear? And then I tell them that the XRial glasses exist There is a very loyal, passionate subset of people who will absolutely buy a pair of glasses for this reason and this reason alone. Hence I give it a too. But when we talk about The general public. There are a couple on this list that I think are going to be Either a one or a five and nothing in between. But like some people, they will be the reason they buy the thing and for other people, utterly irrelevant feuture And I think I think this goes on that list, but I think it is mostly irrelevant Gods speed if this is the thing that you want out of your smart glasses. I don't think this is for most people This is not for the, I want to say ninety percent of people, but for the ten percent of hyper passionate people who love XR, who think this is the ultimate way to experience productivity in a coffee shop Yeah, they're going to one hundred percent buy the first pair ofmart glasses that allow them to do this. So And honestly prefer that. forur your plane work than a Vision Pro Just saying like have we seen people with vision pros on planes in the wild frequently? No, because it's heavy. So yeah Someday, I'm gonna to reveal My take about VR on planes and how it's a terrific idea and your mind is just gonna to melt. But today is not that day Th number three camera justust pure hands free on your face camera for taking pictures and video becausecause Again, we're going have a subset of people who are being like, if I see a camera on your face, I'm gonna punch you. And I will say I will say that when I go out into the world,, Sometimes I take my little bangs go like this over the camera so that people not because I'm using it in that way, I try to be very mindful about when I'm using these devices, but because I just don't want people to notice that I'm not using it, but that it has the potential to be used. like and I'm just using my side bang cut to to like slightly obscure the camera because one If the camera's on, I'm going to ruin the shot anyway with bangs. And this is actually why I've had a lot of higher cuts with bangs recently because it's great for testing, not only camera placement and how often I tilt my head in these photos, but yeah, but I will say that when I wear these at home I get reallyally great. David Attenborough level cat videos. And I love that. And there are so many people I know who, you know their main reason for that is in the privacy of their own home when they want to have really great candid videos of their kids, this is something they really enjoy doing content creators, I haveve seen some like recipe creators use metaay band glasses or Rayband metaglasses, whichever model they have U, while they're doing POV shots of like recipes and doing I have seen some of that pop up in my TikTok feed and obviously some commenters are always disappointed in that creator for submitting to surveillance tech, whatever. but you know, there are certain public or in the privacy of your own home where you can a little more comfortable with those things, where the camera as a content creation tool is very popular. And then you have accessibility communities where like we've done Rchcast on this before, where the low vision and blind communities for some of them, they feel that the ability to have the real time AI, like the be My Eyes feature with these glasses is super helpful for them to be you know, just kind of living more independent lives where they can get help. via the camera as to what they're seeing, what they're doing. So it is a very powerful tool, which is why I give it a four as the reason why a lot of people are going to buy it, but it doesn't get a five because it's going to be a reason why some people don't buy specific glasses as well. So I've heard that from people. That is fair. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think to the extent that there is going to be a market for smmart glasses without a camera I think you're probably right that it is not like the killer app for these things. It's not the killer. becausecause it is going to convince a lot of people not to buy it or or to buy one that doesn't have a camera I think the solution and I don't you know, this is free. I'm putting this out here. I think the solution is some sort of physical shutter or a modular camera where you can stick it in and out so that when you're in a situation where you're like, I don't want to make people feel uncomfortable. I can actually put a physical shutter or something over the camera to just visually signify that I'm not being a creep right now. You know, like a version of my bangs U that's not so finicky or whatnot. I think that would be a really smart solution. There's probably reasons why they haven't done that. I'm just saying. We need free idea. Beanies that you wear that have little flaps that come down Yeah, or like, you know, with with, um your webcams on your computer where you just have a thing where you go, it's not on Like yeah, I feel like that would be super easy. to do to make other people feel comfortable. I don't know why we haven't done that yet. so yeah agree All right, let's keep moving. Th number four and you kind of mentioned this already and I think this is actually a quick five and we just move on is accessibility stuff. And this is the sort of be my eyes stuff. It's live captioning, which comes up a lot, but the idea that basically for people who are low vision or have hearing difficulties, These are an accessibility And I think you've reported on this enough to know that like this is very much a killer app for people, right? Like for people who need this Ey huge victory Yeah, huge victory. The only thing is that they need to commit to supporting it because there are people within that community who are worried that, oh like in three years, they're just going to take this tool that I've come to rely on away. But like they're wor five It's very fair worry, but like But easy five for me. Yeah. Okay. cool. Next one, music and podcasts, just basically like smart glasses as headphones. five Really it is it is higher than camera Because's there's no downside really to it. I get to have my situational awareness. It is actually easily the feature I use the most. So like I'm in a house It was a very vertical narrow house and sometimes I have to yell to my spouse or something where they're yelling to me. And if we have our earpods in, we just can't hear each other. So then we have to track up three floors of things seem to be like I've been yelling hear me And it's like, oh, sorry I got my really great noise canceling whatever's on. So when I'm doing laundry and I'm just listening to an audioobook or a podcast and I have these on where they're not sunglasses indoors. I just use this and I can hear things going on when I'm outside on a walk and there's my agro neighbor going fifty in a residential area in a giant Range rover I can keep my awareness and not turn into a pancake while I'm walking about listening to my music and audio books. The only time it iss not great is if you're on the subway, yes, you are going to have to pil out your AirPods are or whatever you use at that point, but I use the audio all the time for my podcast and all of that. is like the number one uncontroversial feature that I use these for. I'm with you, actually. and the meta ones in particular are like a sneakily great phone call device Yes, they sound good. The mic is pretty good. My only caveat is that I often have to do this when I'm on calls because of my low nose bridge. You go full librarian? I go full librarian because the way my nose is shaped and I even have the low nose bridge modular things that I put on here. I still on some sound on some phone calls, I've been told, I sound muffled and I'm like, hold on just how do I sound now? And they're like, you sound great. So that is my one feedback. But for most people who don't have a very low profile nose, you probably won't ever have that issue. So yeah. Okay. U so that's that's a five for headphones. That actually makes me happy because I'm with you in that that is my single most used feature U but I kind of controversial That was just me. Yeah. so that makes me happy. Yeah. And actually contro related to this one The next one on my list is communication u like calls Video calls is a thing that has been demoed since like Google Glass. basasically just any sort of communication tool phone, video, whatever you want on smart gllasses, one to five just because I don't think they have tweaked what the best use of for it is because I have the non display version on right now. I get a text on my phone. It's like, Someone has texted you, and then I either have to like out loud say that or pull out my phone. So it's not really a replacement. The spoken communication stuff is awful that way. It's not great about being in public So the vast majority of what people will probably buy at this point is the model that I'm wearing, which is just mostly audio. So when it's a mostly audio experience It's not that different from a smartwatch and a smartw can be a little more discreet and easy to interact with in my opinion. But when we get to the display glasses at a price that's affordable to people, I do think being able to see a calendar notification, being able to see who texts you and what very quickly, very discreetly is going to be much more of a reason. We're just not fully there yet that people can have. And I also very mindful of once you put the display in, you just inevitably are always looking off to the side every so often and people just start feeling a little disrespected when you do that a little too often. so I'm not sure how that will lay out in the long term, which is why I say three because I think it could be a very good use case, but not sure how people feel long term. Are you at all compelled by the idea of the like first person video call that you can see what I see as we're on a Facetime or whatever together? That's like a sometimes thing for me. I don't think that's going to be I think that s way more sense in an enterprise or a workspace. So it's sort of like Hey, I'm trying to fix this thing. I don't know how to do this. Call my father and lobby and like, I don't know how to fix my toilet. Yes, that's gonna be great. That's awesome. This by the way, our killer app for smmart glasses in general is like in general see instructions next to you as you do stuff remote support, like all this stuff There's a reason smmart gllasses have found genuine like honest to God product market fit in Like. Like's that's a real good thing. and I think you're probably right that this works there better than anywhere right now. Yeah, it's going to be it's going to be like the heads up directions where when you need it Great. I have a use case for it. I am sure many husbands will be using it when their wives are like, I asked you to get Hollanda sauce. I can't find it in the grocery store and then the wife is just like, I'm just gonna to give you directions. Turn left here, go there. Yes, I think that'll be a use case, but it'll also be a sometimes thing. You're not going to buy it just so you can do that, but when you need it, it'll be cool sort of thing. Okay upp for the show comes from Framer If your team wants a website that looks and feels handcrafted, but is still fast to ship, Framer is built for that. You design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, posting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production ready from day one Agents work alongside you to draft pages and polish sections, thenen you review and publish what goes live Framer is the pro site builder for creators, teams and businesses that want a professional site and care enough to get every detail right. agents solve the gap between AI generated ideas and production ready website work. 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And for our listeners, use promo code Verge at evenrealities. com to get ten percent off E Ring one and or even cllip When you add them to your even G two order That's even realalities d. com Promo code Vverge Support for the show comes from Fetch Pet Insurance Do you have a pet Every six seconds, a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill of over a thousand dollars, and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise That's where Fetch pet insurance comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills. You can use any vet in the US and Canada. All vets are in network Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account If between won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bone. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is gonna be all trampoline, bro. What the hell a pad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just big babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to sayve some hard earned cash. It feels good to Geico Okay, so so far, we've talked through navigation. Big ass monitor camera. acccessibility U what I would just call headphone mode and communication The next one on my list is kind of next to communication, which is notifications and reminders. And this becomes, I think, another question of matters in audio versus what matters when there's a display in front of you But again, in terms of like why big tech can't quit this idea, you do see nototifications in the corner of your vision in every single one of these demos and concept videos But for people who might someday buy these that is that a killer app? One to five, What do you think And the funny thing is that I just got a notification through these glasses saying that my best friend had texted me. And that's That's good. That is cool. But the reason why I don't give it a full five because I do think there are a lot of people who would love a discrete way to be like, oh, I got notified while I' heads down and doing stuff is that we haven't found the tweak yet of how to filter these notifications in a way that's truly useful because I know for a fact that my best friend probably just texted me some TikTok video of something and that that can wait. And that you know, it kind of distracted me from this thing that I need my full focus on right now, which is doing a great Virch cast So in some ways, yes, great. loveove it. G to be super helpful when I can see, oh I I have a meeting coming up soon. I got to go and do all that sort of stuff. I think that'll be great for a lot of people. but The notification bellues just why we don't want to look at our phones anymore too. And you can't not see it in front of your eye or in your ears. So I think for some people in some cases a four, it is a very powerful use case, but what they haven't figured out is how to have intelligent notifications. So ones that you really it's just everything at the moment and you don't always need everything coming through on your glasses You just don't, you don't want that It's going to make you super tired of it long term. So I think they need to do a little more tweaking and fine tuning and giving you more control over all the different types of smart classes for it to be a super killer use case, which is why it's only getting a four Yeah, I think I think you're right. I remember I had a conversation with a very senior Google executive like ten or eleven years ago now. And what he told me is that the single hardest problem for all of this is A. Understanding as a product maker that most of the time your job is to not be visible at all, that in fact, your AR glasses should be nowhere most of the time. uh, and that B figuring out the when you've hit the level of actually putting yourself in somebody's face is so different than the level of buzzing somebody's phone in their pocket that it is going to take a long time to figure out. And boy are we not anywhere close to anybody actually solving that problem. Nowhere near. But I think you're right that like done correctly becomes a killer app for this thing, but that done correctly is a big giant ask. They pitch these as AI glasses and what I want the AI in these glasses to actually do is know when I'm in a meeting and when to silence notifications and then maybe surface the not notification that it reads as urgent or not urgent so it decide for me when I'm in a thing, whether I actually need to know it at what moment. And like that, they can't do that. They can just push it All they do is they push it. So you know, we're not at the point where it makes where it's killer, it's just another phone on your face kind of situation. Agreed. Okay. I'm glad you brought up AI because I have three AI ones for you in a row. Let's go. AI thing number one translation. Another one that comes up in all of these demos, the idea of like you and I are talking and I can either see or hear you speaking in another language in my language in real time. it's B in theory idea than it is in practice for me thus far. because one, how often are you in a situation that you need things translated There's going to be some people who travel a lot love that. There's going to be people in multilingual families in which case, how good are you at doing pigeon because my family speaks Conglish and they They do things to these language that are very creative and I think has thus far really tripped up these AI translators that I've tested. and then There's just like the the the whole issue of again, I was in Italy. I put these translating things on And when you have everyone in Italian yelling around you mix with English. It doesn't know who to translate when that is a thing that's really tough. So right now these live AI translations with these glasses and other devices, they're great for when you're in a quiet place, one on one with someone Again, I was on I wrote about an optimizer. I was on a train with this really cute Chinese grandma and she only trusted me like I don't know why well, I know why look at my face. But she she went up to me and she's like, I'm so afraid, I'm not going to get off the thing. And we were using these AI translators. And that was a really wonderful experience because she was so scared and I was able to help her even though I'm not the right kind of East Asian for her in that in that particular experience. So I think onnce in a while, it'll be great, but quite as well as you want and there's a lot of technical challenges, so too right now. I think I agree.'s it's a better It's a terrific demo more than it is like a really sort of everyday mainstream And it probably will be that way for a while Everyday life is very loud. We do horrible things to language that the AI has a hard time keeping up with. So we'll have to see. And actually, in a weird way, the behavior of like holding my phone up to my mouth while I talk and then holding my phone up to your mouth while you talk is actually kind of solves a bunch of those problems in a way that like ambiently listening with my smart glasses doesn't Yeah It feels awkward, but it like weirdly kind of works. Every time I've tried that, it has worked better than works because we understand, o, I have to talk slow. R. We know I have to be more patient where if they don't know And it's just happening, and it's a one way translation where you understand what they're saying. You're Chewbacaing the experience Yes Yeah Twbacca as a verb is a new one. I really I likeked that very much. That's my life. All. AI thing number two, facial recognition, AKA, Neili Patel's ideal dystopian hellscape the thing where you're walking along and it pops up a thing over their head that says This is the person you met two weeks ago. This is a one. This is like a This is like you not want get this out of my face. I think the vast majority of people do not want get this out of my face. The only time that people actually want this is like when you are at a mixer or a meeting and you want to be saved, the point to Seconds of embarrassment when you're like, o Soot this person knows me and I don't know them. And honestly, that's easily solved by being a human and saying Hi Can I tell you my theory about this feature? Yes. I think this feature should only exist thirty minutes at a time, maybe not even maybe like ten minutes at a time, and it should cost five hundred dollars. And it should be this should be like, some charity should create this and it should give the money to a good cause and you should be able to very briefly turn it on to solve this one specific problem that you're talking about. and it should be prohibitively expensive But if you're like I am not going to get this job if I don't remember this person's name. It's worth it to me to turn this on for three minutes and I'm going to do it I'll allow it. This is like an ambient thing, I think, is just a complete societal nightmare But like let's, let's monetize. this in insane ways I'm all for it. I'm going to like kind of refiff on what your version is and I think geofencing. So like if you could geofence this feature to like a conference hall, or let's say you're working with dementia patients who can't remember people. And I think that's one use case that people sometimes quote facial recognition in these glasses for like, let's say you're a dementia patient, you need to remember who people in your family are. You can geofence your house for a certain amount of people in program who it's supposed to recognize. If you have heavy guardrails for specific places and or specific like in a hospital, maybe you're okay in a certain treatment ward for dementia patients And you can geofence the features so that it only works within that specific place I think maybe you could make an argument for it I also like the idea of it being like like a two way buddy list situation where like you sign up to remember me with your glasses and I sign up to be remembered by your glasses, that becomes like a a more give and take situation that works So like, yeah at a teeny tiny sort of want person to person scale, there is something here U. As a like overall feature of these devices, I'm with you. One out of five. Can we give a zero like zero out of five? Because I just know that like I've had people in my DMs just screaming that this is not something they want and totally feel like it's obvious why? Nor should they. It is Neili Patel's most monstrous take. It's my humble opinion All right, next one, last AI one is just sort of overall AI interactions. Everybody wants you to use these things to al to chat GP, talk to met AI as like the sort of ambient companionship of an AI bot One to five. What do you think? It's a two. There's always going to be someone who really argues or comes up with a really creative way. So I'm giving a an allowance for someone who finds a way that I'm not thinking of in this moment, that is creative, that is useful and that is helpful. But by and large I fundamentally disagree that AI is the killer use case for these things just because when I've used it outside of very heavily guardrailed demos. Faking useless. I've taken these glasses and looked at a pile of books and been like, hey, these are my books. I'm trying to figure out what to read. What do you recommend? And they go, I don't have an opinion Well, thank you. Like that is an actual demo like actual thing that I've tried with these glasses where it was like, I don't have an opinion. You should just read what interests you. Well, thank you. I bought the book because it interests me. I'm asking for a recommendation. I will say, we had friends over a couple of weeks ago And u The onene of them went to the wine store, pointed his phone at the shelf of wine and said, whichich one of these should I buy to go with? I think we werere having pizza And it recommended him like a pretty good bottle of wine. and he came and he was so proud of himself for having used AI to successfully solve this problem. And it was good wine. And I was like, A genuinely neat AI feature. B, Perfectly fine on your phone. Like we' solved no new problems by offsading this to smart classes O it's just like one of the suggested demos that I've done in the past is like, open your fridge and ask it to suggest a good recipe for you. I open my fridge, wilting vegetables on the left. sad other things on the right. And it was just like You could make scrambled eggs. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Yes. sccrambled eggs. that's what's I' sure. You know, so I think the correct answer there is like V, get your life together. loveove meta AI. Yeah. Or or, you know, my spouse As a super car person, I get dragged to car events. A lot of the testing I did with these for identification of objects was going up to cars and going, what am I looking at? What model of car is this Giant Ferrari logo, right? I'm like even I know a Ferrari logo at this point and it's just like, oh, that's a sports car can't tell you which sports c it is, not very great at logo recognition. And at that point, I'm like I don't see the point Yeah, I'm eager to see the ways in which that stuff gets better with camera stuff in particular But right now Uh that is like an ambient thing just doesn't really seem to Unless you're a museum and you've programmed these glasses and instead of like those crappy little audio tour things where you have to punch things in, you give them a pair of glasses, they look at a thing and it pops up what the thing is I tried doing that in Italy, but again, the Pope did not have holy Wiifi at the Vatican Museum. It worked for one Belvedere torso, and the rest it was like, here is a Renaissance butt that you can look at. So Hope Leo, if you're listening and I know that you are, fix this for V for next time. Yeah All right, I have one more for you And I save this for last for you in particular because it's fitness tracking. This is this is like a sort of niche thing right now. But I will say still to this day The nicest thing you have said about a pair of smart glasses was about the Oakley, where they call the vanguards which are fundamentally fitness based smart glasses So fitness tracking as a killer app for smmart glasses one to five, what do you think? Th Because it depends on the implementation. I think its assume if it's good Are we looking at like four or five? Like Do does this become a reason people a lot of people buy smart glasses? I think it's a reason why people might buy sports smart glasses, just very like specific use case sports smart glasses where you can swap the, which is an idea that the vanguards have, where you swap the lenses for the sport that you're doing. U And then you can get like cues like, oh, you've done a mile Here's your cue or o, your heart rate training, your heart rate's too high, Here's a visual cQue in here, like slow it down. L for those elite or like very intense athletes, I think that could be really useful, especially if you give heads up navigational directions where they can be like, oh, I know where I'm going or I know where I'm running, here's my route. That I think becomes a very useful and powerful training tool, but for the average person who's just like, I'm gonna run my local five K. You don't need that. Don't You're good. These are for the people who like to email me saying, actually garmins are better than the Apple Watch Like if that's you This is for you If that's you, I actually think you're really gonna enjoy the Oakley Bankuards. Like I really enjoy them when I'm just training and I could imagine them being, you know runners, they're always doing the vlog. they're like My what Mile two. mile three If that's you? I think you're going to have a good time with these Oakley Metavanguards and having time lapses that you can share on Strava. like that's You're going to love them. They're expensive, but you're going to love them. But it's a specific use case and it makes sense and it's a tool that is very clear.s like it's like a, I don't know, this is an idea I just had. What if we had smart glasses that are made for specific use cases that people are like, o, that totally makes sense. Like content creation glasses that you use for that specific purpose Eercise glasses for that specific purpose? Well that's what I was just going to say because I think everybody wants smart glasses to be like the smartphone in that it is sort of the one device you have for everything. And the advantage that the vanguards and things like them will have is that it is a specific thing for which people buy specific gear And there's no nobody feels bad taking off their running sunglasses at the end of a run R? Like it is, you bought it for that purpose, you use it for that purpose, and then you take it off. And that is such a lower bar for success than like Put your prescription in, use them all day every day for the rest of your life. and worry about battery life all day for the rest of your life. You wear those metaglasses, the Oakley ones I become Lady Gibroni. It's a different persona and everyone looking at me is just like, oh, she's just doing that thing good for her. but yeah, it's Lady Gibaroni parenthes is complimentary. Yeah. ye. I mean, I look. I look like a certain type of person when I put those on and that's fine. it's great. Yeah. that's what you're doing That that's Lady Gibroni is a vibe All right, so it seems like we're at the point now where we've gone through this whole list And the most basic use cases, basically headphone mode camera sort of notification stuff, fitness tracking, like there's a handful of things that have potential to get there. but right now it is still the simple stuff that is the best reason people might go buy a pair of smart glasses one hundred percent nothing