Meta obviously believes in smart glasses. It’s not alone: Google, Apple, Samsung, and others all appear to be heavily invested in the idea that the next big gadget will be on your face. But at least for now, it appears Meta is the company building the best, most interesting, and most successful version of that gadget.
Meta’s quest to own your face
On The Vergecast: Jimmy Kimmel, smart glasses, TikTok, and much more.
On The Vergecast: Jimmy Kimmel, smart glasses, TikTok, and much more.
is editor-at-large and Vergecast co-host with over a decade of experience covering consumer tech. Previously, at Protocol, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired.
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk a lot about Meta’s big bet on face computers. But first, a surprise! Nilay joins the show for a special episode of Brendan Carr is a Dummy, America’s favorite podcast within a podcast, to talk about why it matters so much that Jimmy Kimmel’s show was suspended, how Carr and the Trump administration are finding leverage to control speech, and why this incident has caused such backlash across the political spectrum.
After that, Nilay goes back to parental leave, and we turn to Meta. The Verge’s Jake Kastrenakes and Richard Lawler discuss the Meta Ray-Ban Display (the one with the screen), the Oakley Meta Vanguard (the one with the sick wraparounds) and the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 (the one that’s like the old one.) These devices are name crimes, and we say so. Then we talk about Meta’s differing approaches to each model, and whether any of them are likely to convince people who wear glasses — and, even tougher, people who don’t — to put on a new pair.
Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about the maybe-possibly-sorta TikTok deal, Reddit’s power on the open web, Nvidia’s deal with Intel, and much more.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first on Brendan Carr and the FCC:
- Jimmy Kimmel Live pulled after FCC threat over Charlie Kirk joke
- Here’s the Jimmy Kimmel clip that got him pulled off the air
- Republicans are honoring Charlie Kirk’s memory by declaring war on the First Amendment
- Charlie Kirk’s death got complicated by “extremely online” culture
- The right wing is creating a society of snitches
And in Meta Connect news:
- Meta Ray-Ban Display hands-on: the best smart glasses I’ve ever tried
- Oakley Meta Vanguard hands-on: what athletes actually want
- Meta’s new Ray-Ban smart glasses have twice the battery life
- I sat down with Mark Zuckerberg to try Meta’s impressive new Ray-Ban Display glasses
- Meta is opening up its smart glasses to developers
And in the lightning round:
- The US and China might finally have a TikTok deal
- Reddit wants a better AI deal with Google: users in exchange for content
- Android’s next flagship processor is the ‘Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’
- Nothing wants you to talk to your earbuds’ charging case
- Nvidia invests $5 billion into Intel to jointly develop PC and data center chips
- YouTube is inching closer to becoming a shopping channel
- Samsung brings ads to US refrigerators
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