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Comment by ranger_danger | Hacker News Reader

Since the article didn't seem to mention... can someone explain why this is newsworthy? My smoothbrained self just doesn't get it.

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The Meta Ray-Bans have been extremely successful for a completely new consumer device form factor. But they don't have a screen. Meta is releasing new glasses with a screen and this is a look into the display technology they are using. It is "newsworthy" for tech people who are interested in the development of new technology in displays and optics, and new computing devices more generally.

This is the kind of content HN was made for, much more so than the Israel/Gaza or Bertrand Russell stories I see on the front page right now for example.

> The Meta Ray-Bans have been extremely successful for a completely new consumer device form factor.

Do you have any sources on them being a successful product by any measurable standard? I honestly wasn't aware that they were even being sold, and I'm sure I don't know anyone that owns a pair. I'm not exactly their target market, but I think at least some in my social circle are.

My friend in England has a pair. They’re selling extremely well

My mate Paul says they're not.

over 2mil sold since oct 2023.

.... thats nothing. Id hardly call that a success when you consider Meta's resources for marketing.

Google is also finding that blasting YT with ads of Google Pixel does not work very well.

To be honest the best adverstisement for the Google Pixel series is GrapheneOS :-).

2 million hardware devices sold is not nothing, that is a pretty significant amount of hardware to ship.

When you have a 1+ billion of users to market to, practically for free, it is actually a tiny number.

Periodic reminder to flag submissions that are off-topic, and comments that break the guidelines. HN is mostly moderated by users - dang and tomhow don't do as much moderation as you might think.

2 million sold in three years is hardly ‘extremely successful’.

It is "for a completely new consumer device form factor"

New? “wearable camera with headphones” is not exactly groundbreaking.

Even a new model with a screen would only be semi-new, other AR glasses have existed for over a decade - with Apple releasing a consumer-focused product last year.

Vision Pro is the same form factor as Meta's glasses in the same sense that a semi truck is the same form factor as a moped.

That's why I gave other examples :)

Compare it to devices with similar form factors or use cases sold by competitors:

- Snapchat - has been trying for a decade and has sold ~220K Spectacles.

- Amazon Echo Frames - Reuters estimated less than 10,000 units sold.

- Humane AI Pin - the less said about it the better.

- Google Glass - neat but way ahead of its time, and barely made it to consumers before being quickly discontinued.

- Hololens/Magic Leap - both duds.

- Lengthy list of startups with smart glasses and other wearables that have gained no traction.

Meta glasses are noteworthy because there's finally a company making an AR wearable catch on among a mainstream audience.

Or they are all failures, including Meta’s…?

Well let's just agree to call it "the most successful smart glasses ever by a long way".

The original iPhone sold 1.3 million units in its first year. I suppose you consider that a massive failure as well?

It's not 2007 anymore. You can't judge a product today with the standards of almost 20 years ago. Additionally, Wikipedia says it sold 6.1 million units within 12.5 months.

The iPhone was not a completely new consumer device form factor. There was a huge existing market for cellular phones, even smartphones with touchscreens. There is no equivalent pre-existing market for smart glasses today.

Thanks for posting, your comment was informative and didn't contain hate and boring tropes.

My understanding is that this specific type of lens projection technology hasn't been available at the consumer level before, and is a step up from previous AR approaches.

Noteworthy because it's an interesting extra technical insight about a soon to be announced Meta product, if that's your kind of thing

The site’s “about us” page appears to be lorem ipsum, so I guess it is probably just somebody’s blog. Showing up there doesn’t make it necessarily newsworthy I guess.

Lumus is just a company. So “Lumus waveguide” doesn’t seem to tell us much other than the supplier.

Karl Guttag has published far more information than you ever wanted to know about Lumus in the past, e.g. https://kguttag.com/2021/05/24/exclusive-lumus-maximus-2k-x-...

The "About" link on the upper left of the site's homepage goes here: https://kguttag.com/about-karl-guttag/

But I found his blog a couple years ago and have been reading it ever since. Karl follows VR/AR display tech obsessively, goes to all the shows/conferences and talks with all the companies - then does highly technical, in-depth write-ups of what's new and notable - which often includes his unvarnished opinions. His blog is read by basically everyone in the industry, so all the companies give him briefings and demos despite the fact he'll call it like he sees it. Which is why he's pretty much my go to source when any new VR/AR display tech gets announced.

Even more valuable to me, he'll mention when companies are lagging or falling short of expectations and he'll even speculate about where things could (or should) go. His blog is basically like having a buddy who's an expert industry insider who'll tell you what he really thinks over a beer - which is pretty invaluable if you're someone who's interested and technical but doesn't follow this space that closely. That doesn't mean Karl's opinion is always correct but it is certainly well-informed and usually supported with technical data - although he did say this post was just a quick note that a video was leaked. He'll probably have a real post after it's announced and a deep dive once he gets his hands on one.

Interesting fact: Karl's career was as a chip architect. He designed key parts of the the Texas Instruments 9918 - the first general purpose video display processor which was used in dozens of 80s computers and game systems including Sega Master System (and coined the term "sprite"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29 https://kguttag.com/2025/07/01/tms9918-the-first-sprite-chip... So yeah, he's just "some random retired guy with a blog" but a guy with 150 patents and dozens of published technical papers. But being some random retired guy with a blog, he makes little effort to be accessible to first-time visitors or do design, marketing, etc. You just have to read-in and when you do, you pretty quickly figure out this guy knows his stuff.

Folks have been predicting that the next big shift in computing will be onto glasses that we wear and away from our phones.

The tech just hasn’t been there yet and most of the devices that do this are heavy clunky and hot

Meta is investing billions to get out ahead of this shift and to own the entertainment and data (and thus advertising) layers that sit on top of the real world through these glasses

The rumor mill is abuzz that Facebook finally making a play for it in the next set of smart glasses after a few years of sticking to VR headsets and audio/camera only glasses

Facebook is trying so very hard to be Innovative Online Industries.

"I get that reference."

And that's the whole book

No deep insights there, but it was a beautiful romp while it lasted :)

Why do they call the smart glasses when they just send everything to the smart phone? Nothing is done on device.

They're also called smartwatches, when most of them are pretty useless without a phone. Even if they offload everything to the phone, they're still much "smarter" than normal glasses, which just sit there doing nothing but correcting vision.

You know, I never thought of this until I took my phone into a repair shop. I was just like “give me a call, I have my watch.”

Two seconds after I walked out … I was like, “oh, that’s not going to work…” so I just sat around for an hour.

If you have wifi calling enabled on your mobile account and your watch has wifi connection, you can receive calls to it. Or you can get a watch that has mobile data connection.

You still need the original phone to forward the call. If it is out of commission, nothing will happen.

It's a marketing term not a technical term

The "old man yelling at the sky" part of me can only hope the side effects of something like this gaining traction might be that physical-world advertisements fade away.

I'd love ad-blokcer in my glasses. Replace every billboard I see with fine art.

Or dad jokes.

They’ve actually had this cool feature at art galleries and museums for quite a while now ;)

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