I was recently asked for my thoughts on Meta’s Orion AR glasses. Specifically, he was asked whether such glasses could become as big as (or even replace) smartphones in the future.
I was recently asked for my thoughts, so life wire An article about Meta’s Orion AR glasses and the future they may or may not point to. Only a small portion of my entire answer was used in support of the article’s (reasonable) skepticism about the future of AR glasses. However, given my position, I certainly think that AR glasses are the inevitable future of smartphones and will become a staple of our daily digital lives. I think it’s worth sharing all my answers for the record.
question: Everyone owning a smartphone is an unprecedented problem for the market. Smartphones are subsidized and can replace the mobile phones that everyone had. Do you think most people would actually buy AR glasses?
Ben: I, like the world’s largest technology companies (Meta, Apple, Google, etc.), believe that AR glasses are a natural evolution of smartphones in the long term. By “easy sell” (if you can work out all the other factors) imagine if you could do everything a cell phone can do today, except for a magic screen that floats in front of you and can expand to any size you want. That’s it. Always needed. So when you’re walking down the street, it’s a little window that shows you a message, but when you get home it could be a 100-foot movie screen on your wall.
If we can build a device that can do this (and we have reason to believe we can’t), we’ve done more than just replace smartphones… Also I replaced the TV. Think about all the screens in your life besides your phone and TV. Laptop screens, desktop monitors, smartwatches, etc. can all be replaced with virtual screens from a single device you always carry with you. You can’t put a 65-inch 4K TV in your pocket…but if you have glasses that can replicate that display, you can literally take it anywhere.
Once you’ve had a chance to use Apple Vision Pro, you’ll clearly see that this idea is no pipe dream. The virtual screens created by Vision Pro are incredibly high quality. For most people, Vision Pro’s virtual TV window will be higher quality than any TV they may own (not to mention, by using one display for each eye, it will be better than any existing 3DTV or works better than 3D movie theaters). (Provides better 3D images than the glasses you wear for 3DTV or movies).
All of that is true, but the Vision Pro is still huge. The technology industry’s current challenge is to find a way to incorporate Vision Pro’s features, specifications, and quality into glasses the same size as Orion. it is large scale Technological challenges require multiple breakthroughs.
Again, this is long term Vision for at least 10 years. Orion is a real step towards making this a reality, but it’s still very limited compared to the experience you get from bulkier headsets like the Vision Pro. Orion itself do not have It’s a good enough replacement for a smartphone, but its future direction is clear.
For these reasons, yes, I think people will buy AR glasses, but they won’t buy them until they offer better value than smartphones. And that will take at least another 10 years.
question: You can’t type, the battery life isn’t as good as larger phones, and you have to wear glasses. teeth [AR glasses] dead end? Why or why not?
Ben: Input in XR has not been completely decrypted, but there is no reason to think it will never be decrypted. It’s like thinking that a software keyboard on a smartphone can’t be any better than a physical keyboard like the one on a Blackberry. But this cannot be disproved any more thoroughly.
There are many research avenues to achieve comfortable typing on this type of device. You may want to consider the EMG input device being developed by Meta.
There’s no reason to think the battery life won’t be comparable to a cell phone. Meta is already working with Orion to address this challenge. Orion uses a wireless “compute pack” (with a larger battery and processor) that offloads the glasses’ heaviest workload to this much larger device. This means you can keep the glasses’ power fairly low while the compute pack does most of the computing before streaming for display on the glasses. Because this compute pack doesn’t have to be taken out of your pocket all the time like a smartphone (no screen, camera, etc.), it could actually have a bigger battery than your average smartphone.
question: Why are Zuckerberg and Mehta so desperate for an alternative to Android and iOS phones?
Ben: Meta has always been beholden to Google and Apple. Because these companies control the platforms that Meta relies on to reach its audience. Meta must follow their rules.
Meta’s entire immersive technology effort, which began with the acquisition of VR startup Oculus in 2014, has centered around Zuckerberg’s desire to beat Google and Apple with the “next computing platform” and not be at their mercy. I was moved by thoughts. I broke down this situation earlier this year in an article chronicling Zuckerberg’s decade-long attempts to outdo Apple and Google with immersive technology.
