Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast

Meta’s AI Vision..for your Face!

September 19, 2025

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  • The new iPhone Air, while aesthetically pleasing and featuring a Pro chip, suffers from significantly poor battery life, making it a less practical choice compared to other available phones with better battery and camera features. 
  • Apple's new MacBook Pros are rumored to feature OLED touchscreens next year, a move that could enhance user interaction but raises concerns about screen smudging and potential repairability issues. 
  • YouTube is rolling out numerous new features, including AI-powered auto-dubbing with lip-sync, dynamic ad insertion for creators, and likeness detection for AI-generated content, alongside AI assistants for video creation and analytics. 
  • Meta's new smart glasses, particularly the Ray-Ban Display model, aim to integrate AI and augmented reality into daily life through a monocular display and a neural band, offering features like live transcription, translation, and hands-free control, though reliance on Meta's own ecosystem and potential for distraction are concerns. 
  • Oakley's new smart glasses, priced at $500, offer integrated cameras and audio features designed for athletes, with a focus on capturing POV footage and providing performance feedback, positioning them as a potential competitor to action cameras like GoPro. 
  • The development of smart glasses and wearable AR/VR technology is progressing rapidly, with companies like Meta and Oakley pushing boundaries, but widespread adoption hinges on addressing issues of practicality, user experience, privacy, and integration with existing digital lives. 

Segments

iPhone Air Battery Woes
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(00:04:05)
  • Key Takeaway: The iPhone Air’s thinness and Pro chip are overshadowed by its poor battery life, failing to last a full day even with adaptive battery features enabled, resulting in only 3.5-4 hours of screen-on time.
  • Summary: The hosts discuss their initial experiences with the new iPhone Air, focusing heavily on its disappointing battery performance, comparing it to previous models and discussing the trade-offs for its thin design.
MacBook Pro Touchscreen Rumors
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(00:22:55)
  • Key Takeaway: Next year’s MacBook Pros are heavily rumored to feature OLED touchscreens, a move that could enhance user interaction but raises concerns about screen durability and the potential for increased smudging.
  • Summary: The conversation shifts to rumors about upcoming MacBook Pros, specifically the potential addition of OLED touchscreens, with the hosts debating the pros and cons, including user experience and potential issues like fingerprints and durability.
YouTube’s AI Feature Overload
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(00:28:52)
  • Key Takeaway: YouTube is rapidly integrating AI across its platform with over 30 new features, including dynamic ad insertion, AI-powered auto-dubbing with lip-sync, and AI assistants for content creation and analytics, aiming to democratize video production.
  • Summary: The hosts delve into the numerous new features announced by YouTube, with a particular focus on AI-driven tools for creators, discussing both potentially useful features like dynamic ads and auto-dubbing, and more questionable ones like AI-generated voiceovers for Shorts.
Meta’s Smart Glasses Evolution
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(00:44:44)
  • Key Takeaway: Meta’s latest smart glasses, including the second-gen Ray-Ban Meta and the Oakley Vanguard, offer improved cameras, audio, and AI integration, with a strong focus on sports and fitness tracking via Garmin and Strava, despite a poorly received live event demonstration.
  • Summary: The discussion covers Meta’s new AI-powered smart glasses, detailing the improvements in the Ray-Ban Meta and the sports-focused Oakley Vanguard, highlighting their camera capabilities, AI features, and integration with fitness platforms, while also noting the problematic live event presentation.
Oakley Smart Glasses Features
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(00:50:20)
  • Key Takeaway: Oakley’s smart glasses integrate audio and visual cues for runners, featuring customizable buttons and a 122-degree field of view camera for recording.
  • Summary: The discussion covers the features of Oakley’s smart glasses, including their loudness, launch timing, side lights for pace tracking, battery life, button placement, customizable action button, camera specifications (field of view, resolution, frame rates), and their potential as a new type of action camera similar to GoPro.
Meta Ray-Ban Display & Neural Band
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(00:53:50)
  • Key Takeaway: Meta’s $800 Ray-Ban Display glasses offer a monocular display for augmented reality, controlled by an EMG neural band, enabling features like navigation, live transcription, and translation.
  • Summary: This segment details the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, highlighting the single monocular display, its placement, the accompanying Meta Neural Band (EMG band) for gesture control, and its capabilities such as displaying navigation, live transcription/translation, viewing messages, and making video calls. The limitations of Meta’s ecosystem (e.g., WhatsApp for messaging) and the potential for distraction are also discussed.
Meta Ecosystem & Future of Smart Glasses
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(00:59:30)
  • Key Takeaway: Meta is strategically building its own ecosystem for smart glasses, prioritizing first-party services like WhatsApp and Instagram to encourage platform adoption, with plans for third-party app integration in later generations.
  • Summary: The conversation delves into Meta’s strategy of creating a self-contained ecosystem for its smart glasses, explaining the necessity of first-party actions due to API limitations from phone manufacturers. The discussion touches on the potential for app developers to create for the glasses in the future, similar to the early iPhone, and the company’s long-term goal of moving beyond smartphones with its metaverse vision.
Rivian E-Bike Leak & Market Crowding
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(01:17:04)
  • Key Takeaway: A leaked teaser video reveals Rivian’s upcoming e-bike, which appears to be a compact, cargo-focused design from a related company called Also, entering a highly competitive e-bike market.
  • Summary: The segment discusses rumors and a leaked teaser video of a Rivian e-bike, developed by a company called Also. The bike’s design is described as compact and cargo-oriented, with a whimsical promotional video. Concerns are raised about the crowded e-bike market and whether this product will be successful, especially given Rivian’s own financial considerations.