An Apple Shortcuts masterclass | Vergecast

The Meta Ray-Ban display smart glasses impress with their engineering and gesture controls, offering potential for useful applications like hands-free navigation and accessibility, but they suffer from weight, limited prescription support, battery life issues, and significant privacy concerns that raise questions about their societal desirability.

• Meta Ray-Ban display offers advanced engineering and gesture controls but struggles with weight, fit, and privacy implications.

• Apple Shortcuts is a powerful automation tool, especially with AI integration, despite its perceived complexity for average users.

• The societal impact and ethical considerations of smart glasses and advanced automation tools require careful thought and proactive measures from developers.

The podcast critically examines the Meta Ray-Ban display smart glasses, praising their advanced engineering and intuitive neural band gesture controls, which allow for seamless interaction without visible hand movements. However, the glasses face significant hurdles due to their weight, limited prescription compatibility, and battery performance, making them unsuitable for all-day wear. A major ethical concern is the potential for misuse and privacy violations, with the discreet display technology raising questions about transparency and trust in social interactions.

Initial Impressions of Smart Glasses

• 00:01:42 The discussion begins with V Song, wearing the Meta Ray-Ban display smart glasses, sharing her experience managing multiple pairs of smart glasses. She highlights the ongoing 'wearable hell' due to the need to carry various devices, noting that the Meta Ray-Ban glasses, despite their advanced features, add to this complexity. The conversation sets the stage for a deeper dive into the practicalities and societal implications of current smart glasses technology, emphasizing the challenge of integrating multiple gadgets into daily life.

Meta Ray-Ban Display: Pros and Cons

• 00:03:56 A key positive feature of the Meta Ray-Ban display is its neural band for gesture controls, praised for its intuitiveness and ability to function even when the hand is out of sight, making users feel like 'wizards.' However, significant drawbacks include the glasses' 69-gram weight, which causes discomfort and leaves marks after prolonged wear, especially for those with low nose bridges. Additionally, limited prescription support (-4 to +4) and short battery life (3.5-4 hours with intensive use) restrict their appeal and usability for many, particularly those with severe myopia or who require all-day functionality.

The Ethics of Discreet Technology

• 00:20:51 The conversation delves into the ethical implications of the Meta Ray-Ban display's discreet nature, noting that its impressive engineering can feel like 'dark sorcery.' The ability to perform actions like framing photos or accessing information without others knowing raises privacy concerns, with analogies drawn to the misuse of Apple AirTags. This lack of transparency can create uncomfortable social situations, prompting critical questions about Meta's proactive measures to prevent abuse beyond a simple recording light and a 'don't be a jerk' policy.

Accessibility and Social Impact of Smart Glasses

• 00:31:01 Mark Zuckerberg's claim that not owning these glasses makes one 'cognitively disadvantaged' is strongly refuted, as the device's monocular display (right lens only) and limited prescription range exclude a significant portion of the population, including those with lazy eyes or severe visual impairments. Conversely, the glasses offer transformative benefits for the disabled community, such as enabling AI narration via 'Be My Eyes' for blind individuals or providing hands-free capabilities for amputees, though these users should not have to compromise their privacy for essential accessibility.

Critiquing Apple Shortcuts as a Developer Tool

• 00:39:59 David Pierce criticizes Apple Shortcuts, arguing that while its underlying concept of deep infrastructural access is fascinating, the product itself is overly complicated and acts more as a 'developer tool masquerading as something else.' He believes it demands a level of programming knowledge beyond that of an average user, making it inaccessible for simple automations despite its potential power. The difficulty in creating basic shortcuts independently highlights a significant usability barrier, in contrast to the effortless experience of downloading complex pre-built shortcuts.

The Power of Shortcuts and AI Integration

• 00:46:19 Steven Robas argues that Shortcuts, especially with Apple Intelligence and third-party API integrations, is incredibly powerful and becoming even more so, transforming complex, repetitive tasks into simple automations. Examples include auto-generating podcast show notes, extracting recipes from Instagram reels, and automatically sorting files or notes based on AI analysis. He believes that AI will not obviate Shortcuts but rather enhance its capabilities, allowing for more sophisticated automations, such as transcribing and summarizing audio files or emails in the background with zero user interaction.