Source: Stratechery by Ben Thompson
Ben Thompson's firsthand experience with Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses suggests the long-stalled AR category may finally have a form factor that doesn't require a dedicated headset—a constraint smartphone AR never solved. The shift isn't that AR "works now," but that optical and compute constraints have compressed enough that useful AR overlays fit into something people already wear. That changes the competitive terrain from specialized device makers to whoever controls the glasses (Meta, Apple, or traditional eyewear companies) and the software ecosystem. The move directly threatens both the standalone VR headset market that Meta built and the AR glasses startups still burning through capital on clunky prototypes.