Shift gears entirely. Let's go to the Meta display glasses. You're not wearing the Meta display glasses, unfortunately, here on the... Oh, he's... Wait, he's going off screen. Is he going to put them on? Going to... Of course, he has to keep his normal glasses on to wear.
So, they do work on top of...
Double glass it.
Great. Double glass it for the segment here. So, you hit me up last week and we were going to discuss it on the podcast. We didn't end up discussing it on the podcast, but you hit me up saying you had a great experience with the Meta Display. And I just love when you love technology. So, take me inside the Meta Display. You look so ridiculous. We'll have to make a video out of this and put it on YouTube for people.
They keep falling down. Yeah.
Yeah. I don't think you're gonna be able to sustain it, but what did you love about them?
I've used them for a long time this way.
Great. Okay. Well, why do you like these glasses so much and what's different from your experience with Orion roughly nine months ago?
Yeah. So, this... I mean I was not able to attend... I went to that YouTube event last year. It was the same week as Meta. Yeah. There was kind of rumored they were going to announce these glasses. But part of my thinking at the time was I already used Orion. This is going to be like derivative of that. So I kind of know what it is. So I didn't use them at the time. I'm like, 'Oh, you know, I'll get a pair and try them then.' Turned out to get a pair, you had to like go to a store and do this whole thing. And the nearest store for me was like in Chicago, like downtown Chicago. And the sign up was like two months away. I'm like, I cross that bridge when we get there. This is not going to happen. So yeah, so I hadn't tried them and I'm actually glad because I happen to be in San Francisco and so I ping someone. I'm like, I would really like to try the display. You know, I've never been able to get a sign up XYZ. Can I stop by and try it out? And not only was I able to try them out, but also I was able to try Orion again. So, use them side by side like take one off, put one on, take one off, put one on. And I thought that was the single most interesting aspect. So, just to make clear the differences, and I feel like I might have not done this enough in the update. To make clear the difference, Orion, they announced, I think it was, it's been a while now, year and a half, was it 2024, where Mark Zuckerberg wore them on stage. These are quite thick glasses that you put on and it's unbelievable. Like they're totally clear glasses that then a display is projected. It's on both eyes. It's pretty bright. And it's like a computer in your glasses frames.
It's like a Vision Pro but it's clear. There's no pass through. You're actually looking through glass.
Mhm. And so you have this and it does so and it's the same as the Vision Pro with the eye tracking. So the eye tracking so you look around you look at an object and then you select it by doing your fingers together. And this is the other big thing part of the reason they can do it with just a pair of glasses. And again we're being generous by saying just pair of glasses. They are pretty thick. There is a brick that has the compute like a Vision Pro but no cord. It's all wireless. The Vision Pro has cameras in the bottom of it that looks at your hands. Your hands have to be visible to the Vision Pro to actually control the Vision Pro. Meta has this thing called the neural band which you know I'm wearing one right now with my glasses over glasses. And the neural band it has sensors all along the bottom and along the top that feels your muscles moving and like the electrical signals. I'm not sure exactly how it works. I should probably be more exact on that. But what it means is you can do the same thing in the Vision Pro. Like you touch two fingers together and the Vision Pro sees that and registers it. The Meta Neural Band feels it and registers it. And so this has a lot of advantages because you could have your hand in your pocket for example. Your hand could be behind your back. It could be pitch black and you still have control.
Can I say as a Vision Pro power user, one of the only Vision Pro power users on the face of the earth, one issue that I run into frequently with the Vision Pro is I'll be watching the Vision Pro, watching a basketball game in bed and in the dark. It is very hard to pick up the finger gestures and whatnot, the pinching gestures. So I'll have to turn like my iPhone light on furtively next to my wife and use it that way.
So I need a little neural band on the wrist so it could just pick up my like wrist gestures or whatever or muscle movements.
This whole thing's awesome to be clear, but because it's still very early tech, it's pretty low resolution. And what was interesting, I actually tried a high resolution one. It was still amazing because the whole world's in high resolution, right? So, it's like whatever is in your eye is it's not like it's going to be that clear. What was interesting about what I... this made me happy because I feel like my intuition with the Orion was actually ended up being quite accurate. I just didn't realize why. In that I did not like the Orion software. It felt like Quest software. It's like stuff in front of you. There's like an Instagram app and there was games. Too much noise. Well, it's just like I couldn't figure out quite why I didn't like it, but I knew it wasn't right. What I said at the time was my favorite Orion experience was you're wearing it and the person I was dubbing with, so I had a step out. They stepped out. They called me and a notification popped up. I clicked my fingers together, the neural band, and now I was on a call with them. I think it might even been a video call. So, I could see them and be talking to them. And what was so compelling about that was the point of glasses is I want to see the real world. That UI only appeared at the exact moment that it needed to be there. I could interact with it and then it went away when it was gone. This sort of idea of just-in-time UI. I've been writing about this a lot about where I think UI interfaces are going. And it was querying with Orion that was the best part of it and I didn't love the other but I kind of gave them an excuse in that it's super early they've been they're just getting the hardware to work no surprise.
Orion if I recall was just an amazing piece of hardware generally and kind of a technological marvel.
So you fast forward to the display glasses. The display glasses this is how they're different than Orion. So number one, there's only one kind of square of display and it's in the right display. It was... and so and it kind of like shoots it onto the glasses whereas the Orion uses this I think it's silicon carbide like glasses. It's like crazy stuff. It like filters through the glass and like makes an image. In this case, it's kind of like it's like spraying the image onto the lens or something like that. You don't see it from the outside. But it's less impressive technology. It is somewhat higher resolution. It wasn't as bright. And so it's just sort of there in your vision. And whereas Orion was a true like Apple Vision Pro, if you're using pass through, you can like put something in the living room and put something over there and put something there and it stays there, right? It's like you're in a virtual environment and that thing you put there is there. Display is not like that. It's just always in the corner of your eye. So it's there. It has no relation or conception of the outside world in terms of that display. It's not like I can pin something in a place and I go back and it's there. It's just something that just are always in my eye. Sorry, I'm pointing to it. You can't see, but it's there right now. It's sort of and you can see my eyes sort of move down because it's a little down. It's not in the center of my vision. It's a little down and down into the corner. So, but most of the time it's not there at all.
Basically what it delivers is the best part of the Orion experience which is I could get a message right now so it's nothing there and boom suddenly a notification comes up that I can act on it or I can dismiss it and go on with my day and then it's gone and otherwise you're just present in the physical world.
Otherwise I'm just present in the physical world.
And then number two you actually do navigation with the neural link. So like you do... so I'm going to turn it on here. I'm double clicking my fingers together. Turn on and I move my thumb around to basically like swipe. One thing's very funny I realized is I always like there'll be these demos and they're like swipe right, swipe left and I always am not sure what they mean by swipe right is a grab or whatever.
Because we're like the post or pre-Tinder generation just there's a whole vocabulary around... I just I don't know it. What is swipe right? Which direction is it? Everyone younger than me, they immediately... neither of us ever swiping. Yeah. So I thought that was very funny. Which I related.
I should say fortunately, by the way, neither of us were ever swiping.
So I'm being exact. Do you see my... but this is the key thing. I can be looking. So now I was showing you that I was doing it.
I'm like I am also swiping right now and I'm looking directly at you. There always is the TV that's right there.
Yeah. I'm not seeing any of it. Wow. Why? because it's... my hand can be doing whatever it wants and my eyes don't need to be paying attention. To me the difference in... you the vision eye control which Orion is just like the Vision Pro versus using the neural link for everything is dramatic. I can't overstate what a difference this is. If I was talking to someone wearing Orion, I had to... it was and I could feel this so abruptly. I had to disconnect from the conversation, interact with Orion, and then reconnect to the conversation. I could not do both at the same time. It was just not possible. And even though I did I moved my head here, in this case, I wouldn't have needed to move my head because I could have the display right there. But it was a total mental shift. Whereas I can be talking to you with display and it's in my peripheral vision and I can be at the same time.
You can wear those bad boys for every single podcast we record and nobody will know the difference. You'll be fine. What comes to mind when you lay all that out is that the Orion might as well be a Vision Pro separating you from the rest of the physical world.
The Orion is awesome. And also I think a technological dead end at least for the next few years and why? Because it's sort of halfway between what the display glasses are and the high-end experience that Vision Pro is offering.
Yes. To me the immersion is... the glasses versus headset is an implementation detail. Immersion is a function of the degree of focus it takes from me to interact with it. If there is... if you're... the eye control is amazing. It's so cool. This is part of why putting on a Vision Pro still is so fun. It's like this is so cool. I look like I'm navigating with my eyes. It's amazing. It's so cool. It is also a modal shift. And to me, if I'm going to be forced to disconnect from my environment to engage with a display, I rather have a high resolution, high brightness display, which I'm going to get from a headset. I would just... The Vision Pro is just better than an Orion in every way in terms of actual like an immersive experience.
Yeah. On the other axis is being having something that's with me that doesn't... that is beneficial but doesn't require context switching for me mentally. Display is better than Orion in every way when it comes to that. I'd rather have a smaller display that shows stuff just in time than have this immersive shift. And so there's a Pareto frontier which is the best immersive experience and then the best augmented experience and there's a curve along it and Orion is inside that curve. It's not on the edge. And so yeah, which that's why I'm so glad it worked out this way that I could use them back to back. I found Orion unpleasant because of this aspect. It's like if I'm shifting it's low resolution. It's not that great.
What's the point? Why is it taking me out of the conversations that I'm having? Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, too, because from Apple's standpoint, one of my experiences as a Vision Pro user is like the pass through vision is actually incredible, like what they do with the cameras.
Well, no, it's useful in terms of not stepping on your MacBook Air next to your... Were you wearing a Vision Pro?
No, I wasn't wearing a Vision Pro. I can't even blame the Vision Pro. Can't blame my kids. This one's entirely on me. But yeah, it is like that's the extent to which it's useful. It's useful so that I don't hurt myself if I'm walking around. But like I've never...
