At this year’s Meta Connect event, Meta unveiled a rather impressive early prototype of Augmented Reality glasses codenamed Orion. Similar to products in the market today like the Meta Ray Ban Sunglasses, Orion looks like a super thick, but otherwise normal pair of glasses. Unlike the Meta Ray Bans, this product is intended to provide a holographic Augmented Reality (AR) experience that doesn’t overlay elements over a camera feed like the Vision Pro or Meta Quest 3, but actually utilizes miniaturized mini-led projectors to project content into your field of view. Meta has no current plans to ship Orion as a consumer product, as it reportedly costs around $10,000 to build a single unit.

Now, I don’t believe anyone, including Apple, believes that AR/VR headsets are the ultimate form of this technology. Just as the convergence of MP3 players into smartphones appeared inevitable in the early 2000s, the players and observers in this field recognize that glasses offer the best opportunity for achieving widespread adoption of spatial computing.

Meta can take credit for showing off their prototype first, and lots of people seem to be missing the part where this isn’t a shipping product, but let’s not pretend Apple doesn’t have similar prototypes in their labs. They almost never discuss prototypes in public (AirPower being a prototype is up for debate), so the narrative they’ve already “lost” the AR race is obnoxious, especially since the race hasn’t really even started yet.

The Race For The Next Big Thing

As smartphone sales continue to plateau, consumer tech companies are racing to be the one to create The Next Big Thing. We’ve have a number of false starts since the iPhone, such as Wearables (Apple Watch, Android Wear), Digital Assistants (Alexa, Siri) and Smart Speakers (Amazon Echo, Google Nest Speakers, HomePod). We’ve even been through a phase of VR being next before seemingly concluding that non-gamers didn’t see the value of an expensive VR headset.

When the original iPhone was unveiled, Steve Jobs remarked that it was a rare privilege to witness a product of such caliber in one’s lifetime, and I believe he was spot on. Creating a product or platform that fundamentally revolutionizes the way we live, like the Macintosh or the iPhone, doesn’t happen every day.

That’s one of the things that makes me a little uneasy about Meta’s Metaverse ambitions. It feels less like they’re working towards building great products and platforms, and more like they just want to own the next big platform.

Meta’s conflicts with Apple over App Store policies are well documented. Google and Apple owning the entirety of the mobile market allows those companies to collect virtually all of the profits, leaving little room for other companies to profit. In the same way that Android was a way to ensure Google services weren’t blocked or restricted on mobile, Meta has been building a platform of its own where it can retain control.

I don’t believe the team that created the original iPhone was deliberately trying to build a product that would change the world. I believe they were just trying to make the best smartphone they could. With Meta, in this moment, it feels like their sole goal is to build the next Macintosh or next iPhone, and I really don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. There were so many other factors that went into why those products had the cultural and societal impact they did. You can’t replicate it or plan for it. Society gets to decide when you’ve made a breakthrough, revolutionary, and actually innovative product.

People Actually Like Their Phones

Another point that stood out from Meta’s keynote was the idea that we’ve reached the point where people are tired of their phones and want something new. We’ve seen this idea driving the recent wave of AI gadgets like the Humane Pin or the Rabbit R1.

I don’t know about you, but everyone I know still loves their phones. If there’s a “problem”, it’s that people love them too much. We all know that we spend a lot of time on our phones, but very few seem to actually have a problem with it.

One of the reasons I love working in the mobile space is that people acutually like their phones. They love their mobile devices in a way they generally don’t love their laptops or desktops. Laptops and desktops are tools, but your phone is fun. Your phone has your life on it. Your phone is how you communicate with the people you care about the most.

This is what a smartphone killer must overcome. Just as the smartphone and tablet didn’t render laptops obsolete, I wouldn’t anticipate AR glasses to make everyone throw away their phones.

This feels like Meta, and perhaps Mark Zuckerberg in particular, are sour that they are beholden to Apple and Google in the mobile space as gatekeepers. Without a mobile platform of their own, they are limited in what they can do (maybe that’s a good thing).

Meta Has a Good Start With Horizon OS

I recently picked up the Meta Quest 3 headset to try out. Since Meta was positioning the Quest as the Android of the VR industry, I thought it was important to try it out before I get a Vision Pro. The Quest 3 represents the current state-of-the-art in consumer AR and VR.

I knew enough about what I was getting into to know that the Quest headset, like the Oculus headsets before them, are designed for VR gaming (even though I’m not really interested in it). So I tried not to be too picky about the software experience.

Recent software updates to the Quest’s Horizon operating system have greatly improved the general experience of wearing the headset. There’s now more free placement of windows. Apps can be placed “spatially” throughout your environment, breaking you out of the fixed app positioning the Quest defaults to. Hand tracking seems to be improving. I’m really enjoying the illusion of being able to physically “tap” on your apps with an accompanying sound that somehow really completes the effect for me.

I’ve been using the Quest as YouTube device, and it’s pretty good at that (the YouTube app itself needs a little work). You can see that Meta is starting to address their shortcomings with productivity by supporting 2D Android apps on Horizon OS. This is in contrast to Apple’s decision to lean Vision Pro more into productivity, with gaming seemingly something of an afterthought.

Standalone AR is Still A Hard Sell

As of 2023, Meta was reported to have sold 20 million Quest headsets, which is quite impressive. However, in the same presentation where this was disclosed, Meta acknowledged that they were struggling to keep new users engaged and using the headsets after they bought them.

This matches up with my anecdotal experience. Before I bought my Quest 3, I had multiple people suggest I should just borrow theirs and not buy one of my own. Why? Because none of them were still actively using theirs. And these are young techies. Maybe that’s because previous headsets were primarily focused on VR gaming and augmented reality was still in its early infancy. Who knows?

For normal people, there hasn’t been. compelling case for strapping a computer on your face beyond gaming, and even that use case is seeing less and less investment over time. The consumer market is seemingly uninterested in AR/VR in its current state, and it’s unclear if that will ever actually change. Growth in both sales and interest in this space has been slow. Getting consumers interested in spatial computing may not even start until we hit the glasses phase, which is years away.

The road to bring AR into the mainstream is long, and success is not guaranteed. You can’t have winners or losers in a race when the competitors haven’t made it to the starting line.