Meta working employees through weekends as AR glasses get tentative release window
Meta is about to release a new pair of smart glasses this year that will come a lot closer to the Orion AR glasses that the company showed off last year. However as the release nears the company is reportedly making employees work through the weekends to ensure that they can meet the deadline.
Meta is a major name in the consumer XR (Extended Reality) market and already has a pair of smart glasses available for purchase. However these Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses do not come with a display and rely solely on their speakers, a microphone and a camera. Despite these shortcomings the glasses were an unprecedented success and only became more popular after they received Meta AI support.
The Meta Orion glasses, which are the ultimate goal for the company, are still not ready for public release as a single pair is too expensive to manufacture. But Meta wants to get customers ready for its vision of a future without smartphones and so it will release a toned down pair of smart glasses later this year.
These glasses, while not equipped with true AR (Augmented Reality), will have a small display to view incoming notifications as well as use simple apps. Other AR glasses, with true AR, already exist and are offered by Xreal, Solos and a few other companies. But Meta’s glasses will aim to replace your phone as much as they can.
With Meta’s previous statements about laying off employees who are deemed to be under-performing I think it paints a bleak picture of how work is going on at the company. Meta has also very recently laid off employees from Reality Labs, its XR division, which means that people working on these glasses have likely been let go.
Whether these glasses make their release window or not, it’s worth discussing how Apple gave away market dominance to Meta due to its uncoordinated efforts. We could have very well had a major competitor to Meta’s offerings if Apple had not messed up so badly.
Meta is a major name in the consumer XR (Extended Reality) market and already has a pair of smart glasses available for purchase. However these Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses do not come with a display and rely solely on their speakers, a microphone and a camera. Despite these shortcomings the glasses were an unprecedented success and only became more popular after they received Meta AI support.
The Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses do not have a display. | Video credit — Meta
These glasses, while not equipped with true AR (Augmented Reality), will have a small display to view incoming notifications as well as use simple apps. Other AR glasses, with true AR, already exist and are offered by Xreal, Solos and a few other companies. But Meta’s glasses will aim to replace your phone as much as they can.
Meta apparently plans to release the glasses in October of this year but, according to industry insider Mark Gurman’s newsletter Power On, may have to delay the launch. To avoid doing so, managers have been telling employees to accelerate their work. This has often meant working through the weekends.
With Meta’s previous statements about laying off employees who are deemed to be under-performing I think it paints a bleak picture of how work is going on at the company. Meta has also very recently laid off employees from Reality Labs, its XR division, which means that people working on these glasses have likely been let go.
Whether these glasses make their release window or not, it’s worth discussing how Apple gave away market dominance to Meta due to its uncoordinated efforts. We could have very well had a major competitor to Meta’s offerings if Apple had not messed up so badly.
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