Meta and Snap battle for your face

The Vergecast hosts David Pierce, V Song, and Jay Peters gathered to discuss a packed week of smart glasses announcements from Meta and Snap, just as public skepticism about wearable cameras reaches a fever pitch. Meta announced a whole lineup of new Ray-Ban glasses—including camera versions, an audio-only model, and a new VR headset that looks like glasses—while Snap finally released its long-awaited Spectacles with full augmented reality displays. But the question hanging over all of it: does anyone actually want this?

Meta's three-pronged glasses strategy

Meta's big announcement at Meta Connect was a flood of new hardware rather than a single flagship device. The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 3 glasses are the direct successor to last year's camera-equipped smart glasses. The hardware changes are modest—six microphones instead of five, one hour longer battery life, adjustable temple tips borrowed from the optical line, and new styles including aviators and a geometric cat-eye called the Zeno model. The bigger news is the software: the Meta AI agent, called Muse, is coming to the glasses. In demos, users could look at a box of protein bars and ask Muse which one best fits their macros, or ask it to add items to a shopping cart. But the demos were slow—several seconds of silence before a response—and prone to errors. Jay Peters tested a box that c