Meta and Snap battle for your face

The Vergecast

The episode explores the recent wave of smart glasses announcements from Meta and Snap, focusing on the technical capabilities and social im

Key takeaways

• Meta's Ray-Ban Gen 3 features improved call quality with six microphones and adjustable temple tips for better ergonomics.
• A new camera-free audio version of Meta glasses aims to mitigate privacy backlash while offering a lighter, more classic aesthetic.

Main topics

• Meta smart glasses
• Snap AR Specs

Notable quotes

How much do you trust your AI to be telling you the correct information?

Conclusion

While the new hardware offers impressive technical leaps in AR and aud

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) I'm Ina Garten, and each week on Happy Hour, I invite new and old friends for a drink and a fun conversation at my kitchen table in New York City. On this week's episode, I'm joined by Sofia Coppola. Sofia is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker. We chat about the hilarious way that we met, our shared love of Paris, and what influences her iconic personal style. New episodes of Happy Hour are available every Wednesday. You can watch on YouTube, or listen wherever you get your podcasts. Cheers. Speaker 1 (0:39) SpaceX had a huge opening on the public stock exchange, but their story has changed a lot since opening day. Anthropic and OpenAI are lining up to IPO next. What does that mean for them? And more importantly, what does that mean for you? What's an IPO anyway? And should you be investing in them? I'm Vivian Tu, your rich BFF, and on this week's episode of Net Worth and Chill, we're getting into the weeds on IPOs, what they tell us, and what we should and should not be doing with them. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. Speaker 4 (1:12) Welcome to The Verge Cast, 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. The 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 spaceflight, 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 store's allegedly housing libraries of games. In 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. In 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. Speaker 5 (3:21) So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyle is a priority. Motivation is being inspired. But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z. It's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Speaker 8 (3:42) Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties, Speaker 1 (3:47) many now more likely to identify as independent. So Speaker 5 (3:50) what is going on with the kids? I Speaker 1 (3:53) think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialists. That is just not the case. Speaker 5 (3:58) They are Speaker 1 (3:59) embracing candidates who are offering new, bold ideas in the absence of those ideas from establishment Democrats. Speaker 5 (4:06) This week on America Actually, Gen Z researcher Rachel Jambaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's Speaker 1 (4:14) not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch Speaker 5 (4:19) us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (4:25) Support for the show comes from Square, the system that fixes one of the biggest headaches in running a business. Starting 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. If you're starting a business or wanting 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. Speaker 5 (5:30) Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today. Speaker 4 (5:36) J and V, welcome to the Verge cast. Thanks for having us. Speaker 6 (5:39) Thanks for having us. Speaker 4 (5:41) 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? Speaker 6 (6:02) 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 their various expertise about how people feel about meta kind of ties into the various tentacles it has in all of these businesses. 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. That was very much at the forefront of my mind. So no, I was not able to forget how I and other people feel about meta in general. I Speaker 3 (7:03) think there's a clear reason Speaker 4 (7:04) why they probably decided to release some smart glasses without cameras, even though they're still kind of barreling ahead with the cameras. But 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 Speaker 7 (7:25) 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 Hey Meta 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. And 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 who was 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. But you can