There’s this underlying sense in the world of tech that XR has been perpetually on its way for the last 15 years. Meta, Google, Snap, and countless startups have made real technological strides, fun, feature-rich environments, exciting demos, all built inside ugly, cumbersome headsets that render you useless to the world around you.

Recently, though (like four-ish years ago) Facebook, in partnership with Qualcomm and Ray-Ban, released a pair of “stylish” glasses with a camera discreetly embedded in the side. Around the same time- Zuckerberg announced the Metaverse as his next era defining product. The hype cycle that always surrounds new tech came roaring back to life for XR. Facebook even rebranded the entire company to Meta.

The Metaverse was the future. Virtual real estate, advertising, digital products, all non-physical, all being sold as if they were somehow resource-constrained. For millions. Even Snoop Dogg was getting in on the hype.

Turns out people weren’t clamoring to spend millions on virtual land in a world where nobody was hanging out.

Turns out none of that shit mattered at all.

After all the grand proclamations, the rebrand, the billions poured into the vision of a fully immersive digital world - what did Meta actually release? A pair of glasses with a camera on them. Not even paired with a compelling digital universe.

The world’s most bothersome, suspicious, and deviant consumers probably said something like, “This is exactly what I’ve been looking for.”

The rest of us were nonplussed, if not even a little bothered. A tech giant promising to lead the AR/XR revolution had finally unveiled its next step. Except the big reveal felt like watching your little cousin on a trampoline, begging you to look, except the tricks just aren’t that cool. They’re never that cool.

Glasses with a camera are a niche gadget, not the future of computing. They didn’t blow anyone away in capability, they weren’t nearly cool enough to overcome the social stigma, and - perhaps most importantly - they didn’t sell well.

But as stated - XR is coming. People actually seem to really want it to. But what is with all of these bullshit, stop-start, projects happening in the interim?

Big Tech Doesn’t Get Wearable Tech or XR

There are plenty of people who’d love a faster, more convenient way to capture video. Without the creepy factor, I could even see myself enjoying something similar.

But here’s the thing: Even without the social stigma, I still wouldn’t have bought them. Because the ability to record video from my glasses just isn’t a compelling enough reason to wear something on my face.

It’s also an inherently terrible launch point for wearable tech meant to usher in a mixed reality race.

Here’s a list of other features I’m not interested in strapping to my face for any meaningful length of time:

Advanced Tracking Systems
Gaming Consoles
Over-Ear Audio Systems
Reality-Bending Overlays
AI Integration
Cross-Tech Compatibility
Application Ecosystems

That’s a pretty generous list, considering no glasses-sized product actually delivers most of these things yet. But even if they did, I still would not wear them all day.

Tech giants and startups alike keep bashing their heads against perfecting these features, making solid progress—all to applause that’s either mute or quick to fade.

But Why?

Because the approach to XR we see represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how truly disruptive and ubiquitous tech takes hold.

That feeling we all have, that something big is coming with AR/XR? It’s real. There will come a day when everyone has a wearable that seamlessly integrates their digital and physical worlds. But it won’t arrive like an amusement park, it’ll arrive like the mobile phone: as a tool so necessary that its adoption becomes a foregone conclusion. The people who use it will gain such a monumental advantage that competing with them will require getting on board.

The product will quite likely be boring.

It might arrive, for example, in the form of glasses that are just really fucking good at helping people see.

Instead of glasses designed to help influencers more discreetly capture videos of unassuming women just minding their own business, they could deliver glasses that solve one of the most fundamental issues of human experience.

Glasses that eliminate the need to buy new prescriptions as your vision changes. Glasses that outperform contacts in quality and convenience. Glasses that solve vision itself—with a single purchase (and, let’s be real, a subscription).1

This is the kind of product that reaches ubiquity. Not because it’s flashy or futuristic, but because it solves a universal problem.

I don’t care if it’s smart glasses, contacts, or something implanted directly into my brain. When XR becomes essential, it won’t be because it’s cool. It’ll be because it’s necessary.

If Apple expects me to carry a $3,500, six-pound headset everywhere, I expect that headset to make my life easier in a very fundamental way. If they want to deliver an amusement park I can strap to my face - then expect me to only visit once or twice a year.

But Apple’s Vision Pro, despite its futuristic appearance, felt like it completely lacked its own stated vision. The world is ready for AR/XR to come to fruition. Apple isn’t. They just won’t admit it.

Ubiquitous problems beg for ubiquitous products.

Creating fun gadgets and niche hobbyist tools is great. But AR/XR has loftier potential, and whether it succeeds is more a matter of whenthan if.

Adoption will accelerate when companies stop flooding the market with overpriced, half-hearted experiments that don’t meet consumers where they are. The future won’t be forced onto our faces—it’ll slide on as effortlessly as a good pair of glasses, blending into life rather than disrupting it.

This is just an example. I’m not a hardware developer, and the technical difficulty of this is likely to high to even explain to me. But the logic stands—we carry phones everywhere we go because they solve a problem. They didn’t succeed because they were futuristic or ambitious. They succeeded because they made life easier in a way that was immediately useful.

Why Isn't XR taking hold?

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