Meta and Snap battle for your face

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1:18Visit apple.com slash apple watch series 12. Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of the metaverse. Still, I'm David Amell, and today we're talking about smart glasses. Meta announced a boatload of new glasses last night. There's new Ray-Ban Metas, including an audio-only version and some new VR glasses. And last week, Snap showed off its new specs. The Verge's Jay Peters and V song are here to talk about it. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today. I'm David Amell, and this is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, September 24th, 2026. Google has formally announced Project Suncatcher, a new venture to test how well satellites with AI processors perform in space.

2:02The satellite's equipped with Google's tensor processing units and will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on October 1st, harnessing the power of the sun in low Earth orbit. The goal of the mission is to test how well its TPUs handle the physical stress of space flight, as well as the radiation and the thermal extremes of space. Next, Nintendo has won its$4.5 million lawsuit against James Williams, a Reddit moderator accused of distributing pirated Switch games. In a judgment issued on Wednesday, a Washington federal court ordered Williams to shut down the online stores, allegedly housing libraries of games.

2:34In the complaint, Nintendo claimed that Williams had allegedly solicited donations of Nintendo eShop gift cards alongside physical copies of Switch games to be copied and distributed on online pirate stores. Nintendo asked the court for a default judgment of$4.5 million after Williams didn't respond to the lawsuit. And finally, OpenAI artificial intelligence agents have hacked an Australian government website and attempted to breach numerous other government and university websites. Speaking on the sidelines at the UN General Assembly in New York, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent infiltrated Australia's Medicare statistics portal and accessed both public and non-public files.

3:12In a statement to The Verge, OpenAI spokesperson Oscar Haynes said the models were attempting to look up answers during an internal evaluation and in the process took actions that OpenAI did not intend. You can read more at TheVerge.com. That's 90 Seconds on The Verge for Thursday, September 24th, 2026.

3:34Some of us are blessed with a natural ability to do gift giving right. You probably have a few in your life. People who can make a mental ledger of what their loved ones like and buy things here and there throughout the year. My mom has always been the best gift giver in my life. She could even make the smallest gift feel incredibly special because you knew that she had really thought about that person receiving it. It doesn't have to be the biggest or the most expensive gift. It just has to show someone you were thinking about them. Well, for the rest of us, here's a tip. Prime Big Deal Days is coming October 6th and 7th.

4:09That means that for two straight days, you can get deals on those kitchen gadgets for your dad, electronics for your brother, fitness equipment for your bestie, toys for the cousins, and so much more. There's new deals dropping every day so you can become one of those expert gift givers that we all know. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. so no more scrambling to come up with something last minute. The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all. Mark your calendars. Shop new deals every day at this prime big deal days, October 6th and 7th. Support for the show comes from Square, the system that fixes one of the biggest headaches in running a business.

4:52Starting a business is exciting. Running it is where things get complicated. You end up juggling payments, inventory, staff, scheduling, online orders, reports, and somehow you're still supposed to serve customers. Square simplifies it all. It does that by bringing payments, point of sales, inventory, staffing, and online sales together in one easy-to-use system. You get sleek hardware and intuitive software, plus a host of AI-powered tools that help automate routine tasks, giving you more time back as a seller. With Square, you can sell online, in-store, or both, and customize your setup as your business evolves.

5:30If you're starting a business or running one that deserves better tools, Square helps you sell, manage, and grow without slowing down. Right now, you can get up to$200 off Square hardware at square.com slash go slash verge. That's square.com slash go slash verge. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Jay and V, welcome to The Vergecast. Thanks for having us.

6:00Victoria Song:Thanks for having us. All right, so we got to start with MetaConnect. We taped this after a press preview where you guys got to go hands-on with the new products, but before the actual public event that happened last night, question for V. The Verge ran a piece a few days ago called, Can You Forget How You Feel About Meta? So my question to you is, have you forgotten how you feel about Meta? No. I have not forgotten how I feel about meta. It is, that was a really big effort across, it was me, Mia, Hayden, and Lauren, just kind of all, I called it the meta Voltron while we were writing it. And just kind of all coming in with our various expertise about how people feel about meta kind of ties into the various tentacles it has in all of these businesses.

6:50Victoria Song:And obviously I was addressing the glasses portion of it and their XR efforts. And so that was like really kind of on display while we were walking through the meta headquarters. And it was kind of impossible to forget how I feel about testing these devices and then how other people feel about these devices now that they're increasingly in the wild. And that was very much at the forefront of my mind. And so, no, I was not able to forget how I and other people feel about meta in general. I think there's a clear reason why they probably decided to release some smart glasses without cameras, even though they're still kind of barreling ahead with the cameras.

7:33But we're going to get to that. Jay, I want to talk to you first. The Muse agent is coming to these glasses, all these new glasses they're releasing. Can you tell me more about what that means exactly? That means you can take the Muse agent, which is primarily run through an app on your phone, and you can be looking at something and ask your Muse agent about it. And so how that's different from like talking to just the HeyMeta more generally is in theory, your agent is really dialed into kind of your specific needs. If you've used it a while, maybe it understands your personal context a little bit better.

8:12and so in theory this agent is that much more helpful about telling you about what you're looking at we were given a theoretical example of like we were speaking with henry which was a muse ai agent for a 38 year old marketing professional who wanted to be uh who's really focusing on his fitness and they had a bunch of food right in front of us and so we could ask like what is this food in front of us. Yeah, it was a food demo. And like, which one is best for my macros? Can you add this to my cart? And you're just chatting with the agent on your glasses. It was a little slow in my experience, like you'd wait many seconds before it would respond to you, which kind of took it, it didn't feel as conversational as maybe just chatting through an app.

9:01But you can see how as meta wants to make its glasses very smart and make them your constant AI companion for everything that you do. This is how Muse ties in with that. It feels that that would require quite a bit of confidence in the fact that this AI agent is just doing things for you automatically, right? Because at least if you're chatting with it on your phone, you kind of see the tasks that it's taking. Did that seem weird to you at all? Did you feel like you wouldn't really trust it to do the right things? Well, in one of my demos, it was looking at a box of protein bars and it said, this has 15 grams of protein and the box definitely said it had 20 grams of protein.

9:40So, you know, you have to like... That's not great. Kind of the constant, how much do you trust your AI to be telling you the correct information? That still right now is a concern with using this agent. And it's not out yet, I don't think. It might be something that's coming later this year, But still, we'd have to try it ourselves with our own agent.

10:01Victoria Song:I tried the same demo as Jay did, but with a different pair of glasses. They just had these stations set up. And I kind of had a similar experience where I was also just like, you can't see that it's thinking. So I was like, there's no like, do-do-do, do-do-do. Like, you don't know. Sometimes you'd be like, let me check on that for you. And then it's just silence while you just wait. Yeah. And so it's like, oh, is it listening? Did it forget? Is it just thinking? You know, this is early kind of demo versions. It could very much change before it gets public. But I was telling them, like, it should make some, like, way for me to know if it's actually doing something or if it's just, like, lost connection or whatnot.

10:48Victoria Song:And I tried putting something into my cart and it was like, ah, yeah. So these little granola bite bars, they're not part of the catalog. And I was like, what catalog?

11:00So let's let's break down exactly what new hardware they announced, specifically with the Ray-Ban glasses. So you mentioned they have a new Meta Ray-Ban Gen 3, I'm assuming with cameras. And then there's an audio only version. Can you guys describe the difference between the two? Maybe V take the camera version.

11:17Victoria Song:Okay, so there's a lot that's coming out. And what I'm going to say is it's more. There's just more happening. And a lot of that is to give new styles for everyone. Because the camera glasses, like we've got these meta Ray-Ban Gen 3s on my face. And do I look like Jeffrey Dahmer? Because they're aviators. There's aviator versions now. Hello, I'm wearing them. Are they faster or is it just different styles? What's different with the Gen 3? Different styles. There are adjustable temple tips. So that's something that they took from the optics glasses, which were meant to be more ergonomic and more prescription friendly.

11:59Victoria Song:And so you have these temple tips here, which can be adjusted. They recommend you go to an optician to do that. There is six mics in these instead of five. So call quality should be better. And they last longer, one hour longer than the Gen 2s. So not a huge, crazy hardware update on this front. There's these aviator glasses and this. It's not the Warrior Princess, but they have a Xena model. And that's kind of like a geometric cat eye situation. And then that's the Gen 3s. And these are still Ray-Ban meta, correct? They're not just the meta glasses. Okay. Yeah, these. We'll get into some crazy naming conventions as well.

12:43Victoria Song:These are still the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3. And then we saw the Ray-Ban Meta Audio glasses, which are no camera. That's the big thing. No camera. Well, how are they pitching the no camera version? I mean, obviously, there is a big backlash against smart glasses right now. Meta is probably trying to salvage their reputation a little bit. It doesn't help as much when they're releasing camera versions and non-camera versions, especially if they look similar because people cannot really tell the difference. jay how are they like how are they pitching that to people did they include any of that skepticism in there not directly in the folks that we talked to um i mean a thing to know about connect is you're walking around meta's campus and like ev the vast majority of people are wearing meta glasses in some way so it's like this alternate reality universe where like everybody's chill with glasses yeah um but for the audio focused versions the big thing is that they're lighter and because there is no camera and in theory like less technology in the temples, that means they can offer slightly different styles.

13:48Like one, they're just, they're like thinner temple bands that like sit on your ears. And I think that the styles look nicer personally. They just look that much less like computer glasses on your face.

14:03Victoria Song:I think Mad Men 50s Clubmaster style glasses, kind of like the horn-rimmed. Here, for folks on audio, it's the style where like there's like a little metal wire in the middle and you can see some plastic on top. But on the bottom, it's more of kind of a you can see the metal of the lens. And this is not what the glasses are, but it is a close approximation of one of the styles. OK, I heard something about a hearing enhancement feature, but that costs extra. Can you talk about that? It's FDA cleared. It is, so, you know, SLR Luxottica has a different type of glasses called Nuance Audio, and they're just basically using AI to enhance the audio, kind of give it a conversation.

14:48Victoria Song:It's similar to Conversation Boost. It's similar to over-the-counter hearing aids that we've seen in the past. The FDA has given clearance because it's meant to be kind of an aid-type feature. It does cost about$150 extra. Wow. The way that they told me it's going to work is that it's like it's a one time fee that you pay up front. Got it. So it's not necessarily like a extra fee or whatnot. And then you just have it there. It's meant to be kind of an aid for people who need that. So. OK. Yeah. I mean, the more hearing aids, the better, I would suppose, out in the wild. There's apparently also Dolby Atmos audio capture, spatial audio.

15:34Is that only on the audio-only glasses, or is that on both of them?

15:38Victoria Song:I think that's going to be on any of them. So a lot of the stuff is they're not gatekeeping things to the audio glasses only. I think the only thing about the audio glasses to keep in mind is that it's meant to, one, it feels like the timing is very pointed because hot surveillance summer, right? Yep. But they were very adamant in insisting that this has been in the works since 2024. Back when they launched the Metaglasses, there was a press event and Boz was there and he's just like, you know, we know that people love using the audio. We're exploring audio only. So he was kind of teasing it a couple of months ago before things really blew up with the backlash.

16:21Victoria Song:so it just happens to be that they're launching it at this time where people are like ah we hate these cameras and so now we have a camera-free version that's only going to be audio very convenient timing for them um yeah and the dolby atmos thing i think that ties into another product that we saw today but in general the audio you capture when you're recording is spatial now Oh, for immersive. That's the word. Immersive content. Immersive content. Right. Well, better than Metaverse. But speaking of Metaverse, it seems that Meta has not completely given up on the Metaverse as they have announced a new pair of VR, AR, mixed reality glasses.

17:02Jay, can you take me through this? They're$12.99 launching in the spring of next year. It seems like an early announcement. What exactly are these things? They are the Meta VR glasses. and honestly the best way to think about them is if meta took a quest headset and smashed it down into a glasses form factor it's you wear them much more like glasses than like strapping a whole headset over your face and they have what meta calls a i think it was a 5k infinite display was the term that we heard it's a micro led display it looks very nice though so like you You put them on and you see color pass through of the things around you.

17:44And of course, there's some, it's not the same as looking at the real world with your real eyeballs. Right. But like it was pretty passable. And then like content will appear in front of you. The big thing with the glasses is that instead of controllers as the primary input method, it uses eye tracking to look at what you're looking at on screen. And then as V on video is doing is pinchy pinch, lots of hand tracking. Okay. So they're taking inspo for the Vision Pro. Yeah. And so the combo of that, you just, you, you interact with it a little bit differently than you want with the VR headset, but you still get to do a lot of VR type things.

18:24How exactly were these positioned? Were these similar to like the Quest Pro where it was productivity focus and work focus? Or are these more of like a Quest 3 where it's sort of a lot of games? Or was it a little bit of both? It's kind of all the above. they showed us three kind of main demos. One was playing a new version of Beat Saber made specifically for the glasses called Beat Saber Flux, where instead of like waving your controllers with the imaginary wands, you use your hands, which had these like energy balls attached to them and a lightning bolt line that went between them. And you would manipulate that in response to like these like poles and dots that would appear on the screen.

19:06I thought it was pretty fun. That feels a lot like supernatural VR kind of situation. Yeah. Like it was very similar. It was pretty cool. Another demo we did was just very, the classic pitch with immersive glasses of, you can watch a movie with a giant virtual display. And for me, it was pretty good. Actually, we watched a little bit of Avengers Endgame and a bit of the twist meta is pitching is that around the display for certain films, they're going to add like a computerized set that matches very similar to what you're seeing on screen. So like the scene I saw was a scene from Avengers Endgame where I think they're on a spaceship.

19:50It's been years since I've seen the movie. I apologize. But around us on the display was like more of this. If you imagine this set completely extended beyond the screen, that's what it would be. Is that like on the fly generative AI or how are they doing this? No, the way we were told is that they're working with Disney and Industrial Light and Magic to work to make these. And they'll be like handcrafted to be timed with each film. So like as we were watching this five minute clip or whatever, the scene changed a couple of times in time with whatever was happening with the movie. So like it's kind of interesting, but.

20:27Victoria Song:Gary's head came out of the frame. Uh-huh. That was a big 3D moment that we saw as well. The other demo where I was looking at an Instagram page and they suggested putting in a comment and instead of having to like hunt and peck type on a virtual keyboard in front of you, you put your hands flat on the table and a keyboard appeared with a trackpad, very similar to like a Mac keyboard and a Mac trackpad. And you just typed and for the most part it worked really well it's obviously not as fast as typing on a physical keyboard yeah but way better than any sort of like immersive keyboard experience i've used before and the the trackpad was maybe even more impressive i just like use my finger on the table like an imaginary trackpad and the mouse followed exactly where i expected it to go that's quite cool it was surprisingly good i have nails on and it worked with my nails which can't say the same for every keyboard but i think if you're having trouble thinking about what this device is like it's like what if you had a vision pro right but it didn't weigh a gajillion pounds on your head and i actually forgot almost the most important part of the glasses is everything all the compute and battery and storage and stuff in the glasses is in a puck like like with the vision pro it even has a belt clip like with the meta logo on it so they know that this is something you're gonna like put on your pocket or put in a desk so the vision pros m5 chip is in the actual glasses is this the processing in the puck or is it in the glasses as well okay so the glasses probably won't heat up uh i don't think so yeah i actually asked because when we were watching the movie the movie clip i heard a fan and i was trying to ask where's that fan coming from and The fan was coming from the puck itself.

22:19And they cautioned like, oh, we haven't, you know, dialed in all the fan stuff or whatever. But as far as I know, there was not a fan inside the actual glasses itself. So would you say that this product sits a little bit in between like the Quest 3 and the Vision Pro? Because there definitely is a market opportunity for something that's more expensive than Quest 3, but not$3 ,200 or whatever Apple is charging for the Vision Pro these days. you almost feel like maybe this is what Apple should have done first is something like this. And, you know, I don't know if the technology was there in 2024 for Apple to do something like this, but it's just a form factor that I think makes a lot more sense and is just way less burdensome than the heavy, bulky headset of it all instead of just a pair of glasses you can take on and off.

23:04Victoria Song:You know, Jay and I were talking about it earlier. It's kind of interesting to see this kind of third band of like smart eyewear device that's coming out. That's not a headset. It's not what they're calling AI glasses right now. It's smooshing them together in the middle for both. But it's not quite AR glasses as we were sold them in the past. It's just, I think you're really seeing the technical limitations here because, you know, X-Reels famously not having the display glasses situation. It's like birdbath optics. So, you know, you kind of have this weird third middle child. Nobody knows what to call it.

23:46Is there anything that they're calling it that Meta is calling these glasses?

23:50Victoria Song:VR glasses. It's probably the way to go. at T-Mobile the new iPhone 18 Pro is here with a big leap in battery life and you can get it on us with so many reasons to choose T-Mobile you'll want to talk about it at T-Mobile you can get iPhone 18 Pro on them pass it on my friend said you can get it on T-Mobile pass it on they got the best network with the fastest speeds hey Mickey pass it on iPhone 18 Pro has the most advanced iPhone camera ever. Pass it on. I heard a T-Mobile. You can get it on them. Pass it on. For a limited time at T-Mobile, get the amazing iPhone 18 Pro on us. With up to 36 monthly bill credits, when you're trading an eligible device, example iPhone 16 on a qualifying plan, example$100 plus a month plan without a pay plus taxes and fees.

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25:10My mom has always been the best gift giver in my life. She could even make the smallest gift feel incredibly special because you knew that she had really thought about that person receiving it. It doesn't have to be the biggest or the most expensive gift. It just has to show someone you were thinking about them. Well, for the rest of us, here's a tip. Prime Big Deal Days is coming October 6th and 7th. That means that for two straight days, you can get deals on those kitchen gadgets for your dad, electronics for your brother, fitness equipment for your bestie, toys for the cousins, and so much more.