Exciting. I am right now in Menlo Park. I'm here for Meta Connect, flying in all the way from Dubai. Last week I was in the Bay Area as well for the iPhone launch. But I was so excited to be here again because I knew it's Meta and considering all the leaks and what Meta is up to, I was like, they're going to have something big for sure. So here I am. The guy sitting next to me is Andrew Bosworth, dearly known as Boz. And he's the one behind all what you see because he is the chief technology officer at Meta. Gorav Technical Guru Guru.
Andrew, welcome. Thanks for coming in. We're so glad we got to show it off. Yeah, all excited about this lineup. Thrilled. The response has been so positive already. It's pretty gratifying. These products come together really late actually. A month ago was the first time I got my full metamaterial displays working well. And as soon as I started wearing it two to three days in, I felt I knew we had it. We had the goods. It feels great. You're used to it. I've got the band on. What's funny now is when I don't have my display glasses on, I'll still be doing the gestures and I'm like, 'Ah, it's not working. Why can't I bring my messages up?' So yeah, we're pretty excited about it.
I've been using these for some time now. And the gestures, I was a bit skeptical to begin with, but when I tried for the first time, I was like, it's real time. The haptics come in instantly, as if it's aware of what I'm supposed to do beforehand.
Yeah, it's worth noting right before you're doing it and anticipating that. I got to put it back off now. So we had a very good stroke of luck here, which is we launched the Orion prototype last year, the full AR glasses. And now the full AR glasses aren't ready yet, but the neural band was. That gave us an entire year to optimize the interface, to design the gestures, to make sure it worked for everybody. And that has proven to be the difference. That is actually what makes this product delightful.
You know what, with this form factor, we are fighting on space, weight, aesthetics, and everything, and then to include a good quality display. I was watching reels and I was like, okay, I can still have four or five in a row and I'd still not be worried about the quality. How difficult from an engineering perspective is it to have a screen that is efficient on the battery and doesn't sip too much power?
Yeah, we partnered with Schott to build these geometric waveguides. Geometric waveguides are complicated to build. It's hard to manufacture them effectively and have good yields. They have some limitations on field of view, but they do give you tremendous efficiency and brightness. A shout out to our design team. We were able to design them to have only 2% light leakage, which helps with battery life and means you're not seeing a bunch of weird holograms in front of your eyes. It's very discreet. So every time we do a technology track, we do multiple approaches. We have four or five different waveguide designs, four or five different materials, four or five different light sources. Then as we down select closer to launch, we pick the best one. That leaves us at every given point in a great position to integrate a good product. This one came together even better than we expected.
Yeah, also the fact that it's slightly on the side, so it's there but not in the way of you doing normal things.
Yeah, if you think about some of the use cases we have in mind, we're captioning people, for example. Somebody who speaks a different language, being able to do live translations underneath them, or you're in a crowded restaurant or hard of hearing, being able to buy a caption. I don't want it to go right on top of your face. I want it to go a little bit down to the side so I can still make solid eye contact. That really was our number one goal. Mark talked about this yesterday. It's making sure they're great glasses first. Great glasses don't make it harder for you to connect with somebody you're talking to. Technology on the side. Hopefully, what it actually helps you do is take your phone out of your pocket less. Now you get a message coming in, you deal with it, and you're back engaged.
I would say 90% of what you would do on your phone, you can do on them without taking it out. Message, navigate, Google search, Spotify, it's right here.
Music, photos, videos. Yeah, it's all right there.
You said they need to be glasses first. You have this entire lineup, the standard ones, the latest Wayfarers, the Houston. I even brought for you to see the display clears.
Yeah, we're not shipping these, but we build them internally. It gives you a good sneak preview into all the tech inside the displays that you and I are wearing.
I see you have utilized every square millimeter for the battery. This right here, the speaker unit, not a lot of space left over.
Yeah, this is what real engineering looks like.
But this is not shipping. The reason we're not shipping this one, I love clear and I've made that my iconic style. Light can get into the waveguide from the side because they're clear. Maybe we can work on a little clouding just this segment in.
So now that you have this versatile lineup, there's something for everyone. How important is it to have this as a lifestyle thing? Because as a piece of tech, it gets too nerdy, but the moment you make it a lifestyle thing, everyone wants one.
Yeah. Glasses are so personal. We get a hard time sometimes. People say, 'Oh, Google Glass did it, Vuzix did it, North did it.' And they're right. Those were tremendous technological achievements of their time, but the reason they're not the same as this is because they didn't show enough respect to the first rule: glasses first. Great glasses aren't just functional. They're how you look and how people see you in the world. People care about that. If you identify as an athlete, making sure you wear something that delivers on the premise. It's part of your identity. It's how you see yourself. It's both the functionality and how you see yourself coming together. You're never going to do that with one pair of glasses, one frame, one style. Our partners at EssilorLuxottica understand that better than anybody. They can bring us all the iconic frame styles that people love. Wayfarer is forever. But then we add the Hins, and for my wife, this frame looks amazing on her. Now her chances of feeling like this is a pair of glasses she can use are higher. It's so personal. That's something we've believed in from day one. The tech crowd often misses the importance of style and how we show the masses. I think we've done that here. Even with these, from far away or up close, they don't feel out of place. We got lucky too. This year's trend in glasses is chunky glasses.
So let's say you design a pair of glasses with a camera, microphones, display, everything. But the cherry on top is AI. Because it enables so much more for you to achieve with that hardware.
100%. The Ray-Ban Metas were not designed with AI in mind. It ended up being a happy marriage. We came in very late before we launched them and realized we were missing a huge opportunity for these glasses to answer questions for you, in addition to music and photos and videos. Now when you add a display, I can trigger the AI without having to say a wake word, which I've just done. I'm going to cancel that. And also get my answer visually instead of read back to me. You can't believe how the usefulness jumps up. First, a lot of questions are visual. Second, it's a much more efficient way to interact. You read faster than someone speaks. It's more subtle. In the middle of a conversation, you can grab information and go. I've been really pleased with this intersection. We thought augmented reality would come first and AI later, and we were always investing in both. The fact that they're coming together, with AI a little ahead, is awesome. It makes them so much more useful day one.
