Limitless Podcast

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.

Music:
Music