You can’t buy Meta’s most impressive new product, the smart glasses codenamed Orion. You might be able to buy something sort of like them a few years from now, but most of us will never get to so much as wear them. That doesn’t necessarily make them less impressive, though, or less important. Orion is a statement of purpose from Meta: that AR glasses really are the future and that we’re eventually going to get there.

On this episode of The Vergecast, The Verge’s Alex Heath joins the show to tell us all about his experience with Orion — two hours in the glasses of the future, playing Pong with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and making smoothies and doing all sorts of other things. He also tells us about his conversation with Zuckerberg (subscribe to Decoder!) about AR, AI, and the future of just about everything.

The occasion for all this news was Meta Connect, so we also go through all the other announcements from Connect. There are new smart glasses, new VR headsets, new celebrity AIs to replace the old celebrity AIs, voice modes, and more. But let’s be honest: we mostly talk about Orion. It’s either vaporware, a science project, a prototype, the unquestionable future, or somewhere in the center of the Venn diagram of all those things. And the fact that they exist at all says a lot about where we are in the evolution of technology.

Once we finally get done with Meta, we touch on all the executive and corporate changes going on at OpenAI. Then it’s time for a lightning round in which we talk about that new Jony Ive profile, pixel-peep the PS5 Pro, praise Google’s remarkable recent gadget run, and wonder exactly how many people are still using their Rabbit R1. It’s a lot of AI gadgets today.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with Orion and Meta’s other new gadgets:

• Meta Connect 2024: the biggest news and announcements
• Hands-on with Orion, Meta’s first pair of AR glasses
• Why Mark Zuckerberg thinks AR glasses will replace your phone
• Meta’s Ray-Bans will now ‘remember’ things for you
• Meta’s cheaper Quest 3S might just be an upgrade

And in other Meta Connect news:

• Meta’s going to put AI-generated images in your Facebook and Instagram feeds
• Mark Zuckerberg: creators and publishers ‘overestimate the value’ of their work for training AI
• Meta’s AI can now talk to you in the voices of Awkwafina, John Cena, and Judi Dench
• Kristen Bell told Instagram to ‘get rid of AI’ before she became its official voice

And on OpenAI:

• OpenAI CTO Mira Murati is leaving
• OpenAI’s for-profit switch could include equity for Sam Altman

And in the lightning round:

• Alex Heath’s pick: Jony Ive confirms he’s working on a new device with OpenAI
• Alex Cranz’s pick: I played the PS5 Pro, and it’s clearly better
• David Pierce’s pick: Google Pixel Buds Pro 2 review: big upgrade, much smaller earbuds
• Nilay Patel’s pick: Just 5,000 people use the Rabbit R1 every day