Mobile Devices Lack Built-in Lighting Features

Mark Zuckerberg has recently defended the Ray-Ban Meta glasses by claiming they provide a clearer indication of when a photo is being taken compared to smartphones. He highlighted in multiple interviews that the glasses feature a light that activates during photo capture, a feature absent in most phones. Joanna Stern pointed out that while phones don’t always have a visible indicator, the act of holding a phone up is quite noticeable in itself.

In the latest Vergecast episode, we dive into Meta Connect, the Muse AI assistant, and the latest smart glasses hardware, along with Zuckerberg’s response to privacy concerns surrounding wearable cameras. We start by exploring Muse, which has significantly improved perceptions of Meta’s AI advancements by making its features more user-friendly than previous iterations. This discussion ties into the ongoing debate about whether users will trust Meta enough to integrate their services with Muse.

There’s plenty of hardware to unpack as well. We share our thoughts on the new audio-only Ray-Ban Meta glasses and the latest Meta VR Glasses. We also touch on Googlebooks, which launched this week with impressively refined hardware and seamless integration between desktop and mobile. Convincing users to switch from Windows will be a challenge, but the laptops present intriguing concepts that have us eager to explore them.

Lastly, our favorite podcast segment returns after a short break, leading us into the Lightning Round. Here, we cover the Paramount settlement, YouTube’s adoption of AI tools, the current state of Xbox, and Rode’s new 4K support for its users.