Speaker 1: Our memories have never been more interesting to tech companies. We're in a whole new period here. There are a couple of products that even capitalize on that. One of them I'm wearing on my face. These are met as RayBan glasses. There's also a product I've looked at a lot, the Apple Vision Pro. Both of these talk about reliving your memories and recording your memories, but they're really different products and different prices. I mean, this is 300 something [00:00:30] dollars, this is $3,500. Which one do you get if you want to capture and relive your memories? Well, maybe one or the other, but also why not both? Let me talk to you about what they do and why the future of immersive memories might involve the fusion of both forms. So we've talked about Apple Vision Pro a lot. In case you haven't been following. Let me catch you up.
Speaker 1: Apple's headset, which is like a mixed reality VR computer, has the ability to play back 3D videos that you can record on your iPhone 15 [00:01:00] Pro or on this device itself. If you're brave enough, I don't want to record my kid's birthday party in the headset, I'm going to be using a phone for that, but both of them record video and play it back in a larger fuzzy screen border that feels more immersive than playing it back on your phone and even more immersive than 3D videos I played before. It's not fully wraparound, but it does feel like I'm suddenly looking through a window into the moment and I've been recording a ton of [00:01:30] videos on Apple Vision Pro in that spatial video format on my phone, taking it on vacation where I was recording a lot of things at Disney, bringing out my phone is not my favorite thing to do.
Speaker 1: And on Apple's format, you have to hold your phone in landscape mode. A lot of people want to shoot photos and videos quickly and vertical can't do that. So you really have to frame it up and then you're walking around like this. If you put up with that, playing it back later, those memories are pretty fantastic. But I like the idea of something a little more innocuous. [00:02:00] A phone's pretty innocuous. A headset really isn't. But what Meta is doing with its glasses, that's a lot more innocuous. Meta's RayBan glasses, which came out last year or on my face right now, you probably don't even notice them. They're Ray Band Wayfarers. They look really normal and they even have my prescription so outfitted with that, they are my everyday glasses, which is pretty fantastic and I like the way they look. Nobody really points out that they look like smart glasses.
Speaker 1: What they do is they've got speakers, they've got microphones and they've got [00:02:30] a camera. So basically camera equipped headphone glasses is what you call them. Nothing like a VR headset because there's no display, but what you can do is record quick clips to sync over to your phone and be able to relive as little wearable memories. Of course, we've already got something in our pocket that does memories. It's our phone. Why would you need a pair of glasses? Well, what I found is when I went on vacation at Disney, it was actually really fantastic to have because when I was going on rides or [00:03:00] hanging out with friends, I didn't feel like I was pulling out this phone and letting it get in the way. I would just say, Hey, meta, take a photo, or I would use this little shutter button, or I would record a bit like this and it would start recording only a minute at a time for the video.
Speaker 1: But you get these vertical videos that look surprisingly good and you can share them. The video quality doesn't look as good as my phone, but I used it on things like tron Light Cycle run, and it was fantastic and it was great to actually wear it on the ride when I certainly would not be taking out my phone. [00:03:30] The one thing though is that the battery life is really short. It's about a couple of hours at best, and I found that when I was using them to take photos and video, I had to recharge by about noon and then I had to recharge again in late afternoon, which means that if I'm taking these glasses off to recharge the battery with this case, well then I don't have glasses. So now I've got to get a spare pair of glasses. I did bring a spare pair of glasses, which I swapped into, traded these out at the locker [00:04:00] and that was pretty frustrating.
Speaker 1: You can use these as everyday glasses without the battery being charged, but what's the point? You can't record video with them. Also, the video plays back in a vertical format, which is great for sharing on Instagram or online, and it's fine for looking at it on your phone, but when you look at it on a VR headset like Apple Vision Pro, the formatting doesn't feel ideal for how you're looking at it on your face. I really preferred looking at something like spatial video, which was shot in landscape format for [00:04:30] that immersive memory experience. But the audio on this is good when I record audio and I can play it back, I hear it in the glasses like it's spatial or when you're playing back with headphones and the audio feels fine if you're playing back for music and messages. If you're just using this as a pair of glasses, that can also be your headphones, but they're not the same thing as AR and vr.
Speaker 1: At some point they might be, and I would love if these had some sort of 3D spatial video recording in them [00:05:00] recording through both lenses as opposed to just one. Maybe that'll come next. So after recording a lot of videos in Met is Ray Band Glasses and a bunch of videos in Apple's spatial video and then playing them back both on my phone and in Apple's Apple Vision Pro VR headset. It gave me the feeling that my memories are kind of being split in two different directions. I mean, they are coming together in one photo library, but I've got these quick videos which are really easy to record on the glasses, which I don't have to feel distracted by looking [00:05:30] at my phone and I feel like I'm really there playing them back on a phone. It looks great in vertical video format on the headset, it looks a little like I'm just playing back a video, whereas when I'm recording stuff on my phone, yes, it's annoying to hold up the phone, but when I play it back, it does make me feel a little more like I'm there with spatial video.
Speaker 1: So which one do you get? I mean, they're really different propositions and you technically could afford both. I mean, the Apple Vision Pro is really expensive at $3,500. These glasses at a couple of hundred dollars are not too expensive, [00:06:00] although you may have to outfit them with prescription lenses like I did, which costs a bit more. But these are a different type of product. These are meant to be worn a lot and used pretty frequently worn like your everyday glasses, and then they beam those images and photos and videos back to your phone, back to the device, which I then look at later. So that's a difference for me. This is an outside product. Vision Pro is an inside wear later product. I really love recording videos in these, even though the battery runs out quickly [00:06:30] and maybe people find that a little bit weird that I'm recording video in my glasses. I found that it's pretty laid back and that's something that VR headsets are definitely not, they're not as laid back. So I want to live my life in these and I want to replay my life in something like this. Anyway, that's my vision of the future. Thanks for watching and if you have abstract comments or thoughts, make sure to put them below and thanks for watching.
