GADGET GURU
T3’s all-seeing tech titan makes your gadgety world a little clearer
Honestly, they work a lot better than X-ray specs
ILLUSTRATIONS: STEPHEN KELLY
Q Meta Glasses - what’s the point?
HARRY, VIA EMAIL
A Allow Guru to tell you a story. He has, after angering the Big Man at the local Turkish barber, moved his follicle adjustments to a more young and hip place. Prominent logo with a very 2020s font, scientific hair products, slight background smell of magic tobacco, you know the sort of place. Nice young folks working there, with enough brass balls to put a 20-year-old’s haircut on Guru’s distinctly 40-four-year-old head. Anyway, there is a point to all this: they were chatting amongst themselves about the Ray- Ban Metas, and for the first time, GaGu saw the point.
The stylists want to be able to film haircuts hands free, to show off the back of the head to customers without the awkward mirror or do a bit of advertising. They want to be able to communicate with their foreign clientele – a large influx of Romanians, they say, that don’t speak a word of English – without clumsily switching between scissors and Google Translate. They want to up the experience, and spoke of roofer friends who’ve used Meta Glasses to film inspections without risking a plummet.
Meta’s specs are all about practical filming, much like most drones are best suited to aerial reconnaissance
That, reader, is the point. Social media preening is only a side effect. Meta’s specs are all about practical filming, much like most drones are best suited to aerial reconnaissance. So as much as Meta might be trying to sell you the Glasses by (perhaps foolishly) placing them on Mark Zuckerberg’s head to try to make them look cool, they’re tools. Forget Ray-Ban and Oakley – you might as well get Black & Decker to make a pair.