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Snap’s new Specs have one HUGE advantage over Meta’s Orion

Snap’s new Specs have one HUGE advantage over Meta’s Orion

Plus bowling with Apple Vision Pro

Cosmo Scharf
October 08, 2024

Hey everyone, it’s Cosmo.

Snap’s new Specs have one HUGE advantage over Meta’s Orion:

Any developer can purchase them (upon approval) and start developing now!

This gives Snap at least a two year advantage over Meta in AR app and community development.

I had the pleasure of trying the new Specs at Snap’s offices (thank you Sophia!) and was pleasantly surprised. Here are my initial impressions:

Hardware:
- These things are chonky!
- They’re mostly comfortable except they pinched my ears a bit too tight.
- The FOV was large enough to get lost in the content and not be bothered by the postage stamp like experience of other AR devices.
- It’s not well known, but you can plug in the glasses to an external battery and extend battery life like Vision Pro.

Lenses:
- My favorite lens was one that used generative AI to let a small group of us bring objects to life with our voice. If you’re paying attention to AI, it’s easy to feel a bit jaded as we see new text-to-3D models regularly, but the ability to produce 3D objects that manifest within a shared space was remarkable.
- A social painting app, another connected lens, was like TiltBrush in AR.
- Peridot was super cute although I didn’t have time to fully explore this one.
- I saw a human anatomy app that displayed a 3D model of a body with interactive annotations. This reaffirmed the profound evolution education will have with AR.

Snap OS User Interface:
- I loved the hand-oriented UI. Touching buttons in the palm of my hand was intuitive and pleasant.
- The overall experience had a surprising level of polish.
- The jelly/glass aesthetic was refreshing and paired well with the pinchable buttons.
- The interaction paradigm takes a little getting used to if you’re familiar with visionOS, but it’s pretty similar.

Two Features Apple Needs to Steal:
- AR Spectator Mode: Snap makes it seamless to use AR on your phone to view what someone else wearing Specs is looking at. Yes, we have mirroring between visionOS, iOS, and macOS, but it’s a bit shocking to see Snap demonstrate this first, especially given Apple’s ecosystem value prop.
- Phone Controller: On a similar note, using your phone as a controller for AR glasses is another no-brainer. I tried an app where I used my phone as a golf club and it worked quite well!

Overall, I enjoyed the new Spectacles and I think they will be a fun platform to develop for! As a dev kit, there are certain aspects like comfort I can cut them some slack, but it’s clear that a lot of care was put into these! I’m very curious to see how Snap brings these to market.

Bowling with Apple Vision Pro

This is a bit of a silly one. Shortly after getting our Vision Pros, Brian and I went bowling to see what it’d be like wearing them. We both got strikes! Super nerdy.