Meta is apparently deprioritizing VR and its Oculus business to focus on reproducing the surprising success of its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. And it makes sense — VR is out, AI is in, and Meta’s smart glasses are the absolute standout gadget thus far for AI. But in the same week that Alex Heath reported this shake-up in Command Line, The Information reported that Apple is focusing on a cheaper Vision headset in favor of a successor to the Vision Pro. Something’s happening here, and it feels like it’s going to have a major impact on the most distinct visions of our VR and AR future.
So with David stepping away for a show, Alex Heath joins Nilay and myself to talk about what the heck is going on with AR and VR in Silicon Valley right now. But that’s not all we talk about. There’s also a very cool new universal remote with a big screen and a limited audience, Framework has a new laptop with a very curious processor, and Qualcomm’s new laptop processors are finally available to reviewers and the general public. While our team furiously benchmarks them, we dig into what it could mean for the wider industry.
And after those big discussions we, like Big Tech, pivot to talking about AI — because there was big news in that space this week, too! Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist and one of the major participants in last November’s attempted coup, has a whole new AI company. He doesn’t appear to have a big business plan, but he has grand ideas for the future of AI. Plus, Perplexity appears to be burning bridges to create a competitive AI search engine, and the tension between creators and the AI companies who want them both as customers and for training data grows more taut.
Finally, we hit a lightning round that’s got a surprising fashion focus.
If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started. First, we talked a lot about cool gadgets:
- Happy Windows on Arm day.
- Qualcomm inside.
- Apple’s new hands-free unlocking feature won’t work with existing smart locks
- Apple’s fancy new CarPlay will only work wirelessly
- This universal remote wants to control your smart home sans hub
- The Framework Laptop 13 is about to become one of the world’s first RISC-V laptops
- Apple’s Vision Pro team is reportedly focused on building a cheaper headset
- Meta forms new Wearables group and lays off some employees
And then, we made a pivot to AI:
- OpenAI’s former chief scientist is starting a new AI company
- Perplexity continues to piss off publishers.
- An AI video tool just launched, and it’s already copying Disney’s IP
- Anthropic has a fast new AI model — and a clever new way to interact with chatbots
- AIs are coming for social networks
- TikTok ads may soon contain AI avatars of your favorite creators
- McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now
Finally, we had a lightning round:
- Nvidia overtakes Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company
- US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel
- Tech CEOs are hot now, so workers are hiring $500-an-hour fashion consultants
