#156: The Meta Saga Continues

Welcome to Blind Guy's Chat, where Oren O'Neill—

Hello!

Jan Bloem—

Hello!

And Mohammed Lashir—

Hi there!

Talk about the A to Z of life.

Well, hello, ladies and gentlemen, and you're very welcome to episode 156 of Blind Guys Chat. And thank you very much for joining us. You join us at a very important moment. No, because my dear friend and our dear friend from Scotland is on the line. Mr. Blind Gordon Anthony. I am starstruck. I am starstruck as well.

We love you, Gordon.

Welcome.

Welcome, Gordon. Welcome.

Thank you very much.

Nice to speak to you all again. A man who is always willing willing to welcome the King of England to Scotland.

Yeah, I think so too.

You finished dying there, Gordon. No, you are very welcome to the show, and thank you very much for joining us on such short notice, because I'll tell you why Gordon is on, because you've heard me whinge and moan and basically have about everything. Yes. But in particular, over the last, I would say, four to five weeks now, I've been having a problem with Meta where the Meta Ray-Bans can't—you cannot get it—and I tried so many times—cannot get Meta Ray-Bans to send a WhatsApp message or call anybody on WhatsApp or call anybody via the phone. So if you say. called Clodagh Mobile, which usually diverts it through the phone rather than do a WhatsApp call. It won't even do that. And I do know other people have been experiencing the problem, but Gordon and I have been talking about this for several weeks. And just so somebody can make it clearer about what's going on, I've asked Gordon to come on. Now, he is full of beer because he's just been watching football for most of the day.

Don't be telling his secrets. Yeah,

well, in fairness to him, like, he's right. He has a right to be on the beer because Dundee United have now just dropped to 6th in the Championship, which is, which is not great. Well, it's not— well, 6th, 6th. Yeah, 6th.

Yeah, we were 11th a few weeks ago, so I'm not complaining. And that's how we are.

Yeah, it's a dream for Ado even, you know. That is really true.

I was watching— I wasn't watching, I was listening to Man City v Liverpool earlier on today, and I was not impressed. So it's not been a good day for football. Oh. All together. But Gordon, you are very welcome. You haven't been on the show for a while. So how are things in Scotland for a start?

Um, well, where I am, it's been pretty cold recently and, uh, just quite often damp. Um, one or two days of heavy rain, but it's just, just kind of cold, cloudy, and the occasional drizzle.

Oh dear.

So not great, but it's autumn. So

autumn has truly begun.

Yes. Yeah.

It's finally at your place. Yeah. Here in, in Den Haag, we have still a nice, uh, Indian summer, to be honest. Yeah. We had some rain a little bit, but, uh, well, today again, the elite

lives in Den Haag. We normal people suffer under showers and wind.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But Gordon, tell us. So I have been experiencing this problem that I've explained with Meta Glasses and so have you. And we've been going back and forth.

May I, may I also play this card? Because I used my Meta glasses in South Africa last week, and I was surprised it was working like normal. And I could even use it also using the camera via WhatsApp to have my family help me in the room. You know, that was always nice. Yeah. To look for stuff, et cetera. So, and I guess—

So you're not experiencing any issues with Meta?

No, no, not yet. But yeah, you know, Okay, it can come, of course, you know. Yeah, yeah, it can.

So Gordon, take take take us through when this started for you and what is happening or not happening, rather.

Well, there's lots of things happening on. I had the the first instance of what you experienced two three months ago now. Yeah, I just your call so and so, and then you get the the little. chime plays several times while it thinks about it, and then it says open the Meta AI app to reconnect.

Oh yeah.

If it's all— if it's already open, try restarting it. Well, of course that makes no difference at all. I went to the extent of uninstalling, reinstalling, reconnecting my glasses— made absolutely no difference at all. What seems to be happening with that particular glitch is that Meta are in such a rush to shove out updates to Meta AI app to WhatsApp, or they'll send out a firmware update, and every time they send it out, it breaks something. I mean, they just— I mean, I'm sure they're all very intelligent people, but they have no concept of— well, okay, they have no concept of—

You are a diplomat, Gordon.

Customer service doesn't seem to bother them at all. Well, if it's broken, we'll fix it, but I don't think they realize just how important these things are for for some people that are using their product.

Yeah.

The only thing you can do, Audun, is wait. Now, I waited about 5 or 6 weeks, and then it got fixed. I didn't even know it had been fixed. I just, I'd completely forgotten. I had to phone my wife, and I told the glasses to phone her without thinking, oh, that's not going to work. And it did work. It just, oh, there must have been an update that came through. Recently, I've had other glitches. I know some people are having problems with saying your AI settings have changed and they have to go in and turn the AI off and turn it back on again to fix it. I haven't had that one personally. I have had the one that your location has changed and it seems that Scotland is no longer in the UK according to Meta because— some people

consider

that good news, right?

Yeah,

well, initially I was quite happy. And then I discovered that apparently I'm in the USA because the only voices I can get are the American voices, which is fine, you know, it doesn't bother me. It's interesting, the cultural differences are quite interesting though. The American voices are a lot chattier than the British.

They're kind of friendly.

Yeah, well, chatty. They try to be, they're chatty. The British voices, you ask it a question, it'll tell you the answer and that's it. you know, what am I holding? You're holding a packet of crisps or whatever. If you ask the American voice, you're holding a pack of such and such, enjoy your treat. Okay, fine, thanks. Oh, it's fine, it doesn't, it doesn't really bother me, but it's, it's just interesting the way Meta have programmed the, the devices for that. So I'm stuck on the American voices, which, as I say, it's not an issue as long as it works. I don't really care. Then I had a repeat of that problem. You open the Meta AI app to reconnect, Then there was another update to WhatsApp a few days later, and that fixed it again. Then recently, when I tried to make a phone call— I could send messages, I'd say send a message, yes, it did that— try and make a phone call, and it says calling, and name the person I'm calling, and then silence, absolutely dead, nothing at all. Apparently the person I was calling got the phone call, answered it, couldn't hear me, I couldn't hear them. My glasses jammed, my phone jammed, and you had to basically take the glasses off, turn them off, restart your phone. And that lasted for, I don't know, a couple of weeks. And it got fixed on yesterday, yesterday morning, that fixed. There was an update came through to the Meta AI app this time, I think, rather than the WhatsApp.

And how do you recognize those updates, Gordon? Do you see that, or is it by coincidence what you actually use?

I don't have automatic updates turned on on my iPhone. Ah. So I go into my account updates most mornings and just see, you know, any new updates come through. And if there's one from Meta AI or WhatsApp, if things are working, I know they're going to break it. And if things are not working, I install them in the hope that they'll fix whatever they broke the last time. But it's just a shambles. I mean, they just, Every, every time there's an update, something goes wrong. The latest one, I think you tested this the other day, Ordon, after me mentioning it. I did. If you go into the Isla app and make a call, the Isla agent cannot see through your glasses camera.

Oh wow.

They can see through the phone camera as they used to. So I mean, you could say we're no worse off, you're back to where you were before No, but the handiness of being able not to have to point your phone. Yeah, exactly. Hands-free. And in fact, I had this yesterday. Now, fortunately, I tested it on Friday because I knew there'd been updates to the various things. I thought I'll phone either. I had something to call them about anyway.

May I chime in in this way? Because you know all this app, perhaps Mo knows that, Orion, you know, O-O-Rion.

Orion.

Yeah, the French one. That one I I paired also with the Meta and the sound is coming through, but indeed it is not using the camera of the Meta, but I had to use the camera on the iPhone.

Oh yeah.

Now I would ask, why do you even have the glasses?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, my problem with that, Jan, is that it worked, but the sound didn't even come through my glasses. Everything came through the phone. But I have found with, with Orion that if that happens, close down the app, restart it, and try again, and that tends to fix whatever's gone wrong with Orion. So you have, you have to have a couple of goes at it. Yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit temperamental, you're right. Yeah, but yes, yesterday I was going to the football, and fortunately I knew that the glasses camera wasn't working, and, uh, I, yeah, I got dropped off and I had to walk down the street and across the road and whatnot. So I had to have my phone hanging around my neck on a lanyard and holding it steady with one hand while using the cane with the other. Which is difficult at the best of times. Yeah, it's, it's not easy. I mean, I've done it before, and, you know, we have all done it in the past, but if you've got the hands free through the glasses, it makes such a difference.

Yeah, yeah, such a luxury.

To your balance and everything as you're walking and finding your way. But that's broken. Now, I actually, I spoke to a couple of Aira agents while I was testing this out because I even disconnected my glasses from Aira, reconnected them, phoned back again. No, I still can't see. Sorry. And one of them suggested I should phone Aira support. So I phoned Aira in the UK, spoke to a very nice gentleman there who said, oh yes, we know about this.

Aha.

We are working on a fix. The latest firmware update to the glasses has knocked that out. My only slight disappointment with either is that they could have perhaps, but maybe they have. I missed it. Maybe I've missed it on social media, but I follow them on RSS feeds and so on. And as far as I know, they haven't put any official announcement out about it.

Yeah, it'd be nice to be notified about that.

Yeah, yeah, it would have been nice to know because it caught me by surprise.

Communication is always, yeah, an issue.

The first time, the first time I tried it, I can't remember what it was. I think I was having a problem with a computer. I was looking at my computer screen and the agent said, "I can't see anything." What do you mean? I'm looking at it. No, it's just all black. Maybe you're looking through your phone camera. Right enough, that's what it was.

And can I ask you, have you heard? Because what I'm hearing more frequently now, rather than the phone or the glasses going beepity beepity beepity, is it does that for a while and then it says, hey, can you re-service the ones? It says, it's saying servers temporarily unavailable. I'll try again shortly.

I've not had that one.

That's the only one I've been getting in the last week.

I didn't know that one.

Yeah, so normally it was beepity beepity and would just go on all for, for like a couple of minutes, and then now it's decided servers are temporarily unavailable.

I, I

have had a new jingle coming up.

Copyright. I, I have had bibbidi bibbidi beep, uh, services not available in, in your area. And I said, well, yes it is, because you did it yesterday. Um, it's just so temperamental. They just— they're in such a rush to fire out updates left, right, and center that I don't think they're doing any testing of their own at all to make sure things are working.

Mr. Lashere, you're being very quiet in the background there. I'm just listening. I have a feeling you're going to bring in the legal element here.

Legal? Oh, Mr. Lawyer. No, no, no, no, I'm not a lawyer, remember.

No, he doesn't.

No, no, no, Mo. It goes, I'm not a lawyer, but—

I do know everything.

And then, and then you tell us what you think.

Yeah.

Well, I, I don't, I don't know. Like, these are, these are horrible bugs. I have no clue what could make this happen. I, I have a couple of things that I, that sort of I thought of when I got the Ally glasses and paired them to my iPhone from Envision. And they showed up in my iPhone as, I believe, headphones or a headset. So I'm wondering if they are trying to do some magic to work around Apple's operating system, because Apple's operating system right now does not really know about smart glasses as a wearable. Oh. It knows about watches and it knows about And it knows about headsets.

Even not in 2017, Mo?

No.

Oh, well, I don't—

so, okay, I say no,

but

I said— I say no, I don't know that. I mean, there might be some hidden code somewhere, but I believe— and I think it really is only going to come when Apple have their own smart glasses. So I wonder if that's part of its temperamental behavior, uh, where it just—

So it's not a Meta, it's an Apple thing?

Well, I'm not— I'm not so sure. I, I think because the link seems to be between the Meta AI app, which your glasses talk to, and the WhatsApp app. Because if one's trying to make a call or send a message, the Meta AI app is not connecting to WhatsApp. Right.

But they're both run by the same company, right?

Exactly, yes. But if you get an update to one or other of them, that will often fix the glitch. So it's not an Apple thing that's causing it.

I wonder if it's a combination of exactly what you're saying, Gordon, is that they are going very fast, but they're also working off an unstable base, and that compounds and it makes it worse.

And yet bizarrely, you can, as I mentioned to Audun, I can if I want to use— if fortunately, fingers crossed, it might break by tomorrow. At the moment, I can make calls and send messages, but if it wasn't working, I could invoke Siri through my voice, through my glasses, wearing my glasses, I could invoke Siri and say, Send a message to Olden O'Neill via WhatsApp.

No, I have had absolutely no success with this.

No,

no, absolutely.

But your Siri, I literally have to, you know, she doesn't like you, obviously.

But she doesn't like me anyway.

She never does what you ask her to do.

No, I have to pick, I have to take the phone out of my pocket and then say, hey Siri, will you do this? But I've never, if I have it in my pocket and I say, hey Siri, it will not respond. Even if you're wearing your

glasses?

Even if I'm wearing— yeah, yeah.

Because the microphones are in your glasses and they're really acting as a Bluetooth microphone. Yeah. So that works for me 9 times out of 10. That'll work for me.

Maybe factory resetting your glasses, Oren, will help there.

Um,

multiple

times.

I have, I have, I, I have no experience at all with iOS development. And, but I, it wouldn't surprise me if it, if it's a set of compounding factors. It's Meta moving extremely fast because they feel chased by all the other offerings that are coming on the market. Yeah. It's, and, and this is not just the glasses, but it's all the AI. So Muse as well, the agent and all the other, all the other AI bets that they're making. It's maybe that the APIs that they're using in iOS are just not really meant to do. But then maybe on Android it's better. I don't know that because there are not many blind people on Android using these glasses. So it's, it's guessing at this point what the problem is, but it's definitely mostly meta, I would say.

What I have been doing, and I don't know whether you've done this, Orhan, is when a problem like this arises, you know, I'll, I'll give it, oh, maybe as long as 10 minutes before I'll send in a complaint to Meta. You can go into the Meta AI app and send in a— submit a feedback report if you're having a problem.

May I ask you about that? Because the problem I'm having with that is, and this has to be down to my stupidity more so than Meta app, is they're always asking me to send, you know, you You add in the text of what the issue is, and then you can't— then, well, I, I've never been able to just find a submit button because it's always saying, oh, add a screenshot, or, you know, add this in. And you think, well, this has nothing to do— I don't— I can't take a picture of this. So,

no, no, exactly. But there's a way around that.

Oh, please tell.

You wait, you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and eventually If you go down to the bottom of the screen, there'll be a next button. It takes a while to appear. It has to think about it quite a lot. Um, it's, it's another feature.

A couple of beers later.

Yeah, a feature of the Meta AI, because I, I had exactly that problem, um, when I first did this on, and I got so fed up I actually turned my screen curtain off, turned VoiceOver off, and I gave the phone to my son and said, Tell me what I'm doing wrong. I can't find them. There's an X button there. And right enough, as soon as I touched the screen, it was. So you just have to wait. You can wait. You can wait.

What horrible UX that is.

Yeah, it's pretty awful.

No, it's pretty awful. Do you think from your son, do you think that next button is already there?

No, no, no. I'm sure it's dimmed out.

That is a horrible, horrible UX then. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's it's it's pretty awful. You you have to wait, but but you if you're patient, we should throw Meta

away. Come on.

Lauren isn't

patient. Yeah, me too. I mean, I'm I'm waiting for the the Apple glasses because if if if they if they come out, when are they coming now?

I wonder will they though? Because there's huge backlash against the Meta glasses.

Oh yeah, that's true.

From the mainstream users because um. People are claiming that, you know, I'm not going to say what gender, but some people are using it for dodgy reasons and are using it—

No, no, you can say the gender. There are filthy, dirty men out there.

Yeah,

it's filming women in the women's toilet. That's what's happening.

Yeah, they're just apparently dressing rooms, etc., sports clubs.

Yeah, weirdos will always find a way to use technology to—

They're now being called pervert glasses. And so I'm wondering, will Apple actually go ahead with it, or will they Kind of go look.

I learned also that this Meta, you know who is this big guy again of Meta? Mark Zuckerberg. He introduced recently a new Meta Glass without a camera.

Yeah.

If you search for, I was trying to show my brother, I was trying to show him a photo of Meta Glasses with the little LED on. So when the camera's active. There's a little LED,

yeah,

that lights up. And I was trying to find a photo of this on— so I just Googled, you know, uh, Meta glasses LED on, and I got hundreds and hundreds of listings for sneaky little ways you could cover up the LED. So people are actually buying or making these covers for the LED so it doesn't actually show. That's what I got. I couldn't actually find a photo.

I believe that I believe they've issued either software or firmware that now means that if the camera— if the camera is— sorry, if the LED is interfered with in any way, the camera will not work.

I believe.

Yes. I don't know. I don't even know where the LED is on my glasses, so I wouldn't know.

So where your camera's on, is it the left side and the LED is on the right side? Is that—

Oh, is it right?

It is, yeah.

I think the best thing for these— I mean, some men are going to be creepy. And I think the best thing people need to do is be aware. And if somebody comes up to you and starts acting in an odd or creepy way, whether they're wearing Meta glasses or not, get out your own phone and start filming them. Film them back. Yeah, shame them.

That's actually really good advice.

Yeah, I think that's, that's the way to— so there's one thing I, I did forget to say earlier on in terms of this camera linkage breaking with Aira. Be My Eyes works fine.

Oh.

Yeah, which is surprising. Like, through all of this, Be My Eyes has been working with no problems.

Be My Eyes works absolutely fine. No problems at all.

That's amazing. Good on them.

But I think that they've had a closer integration with Meta. I think they had a very close collaboration at the start.

But how can you have a closer integration with a company that's actually owned by the same company? I don't understand that. How can they not? Even have a chat in the canteen at lunchtime or something.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't think, I don't think you realize how big Facebook is.

I know, I know.

Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people. And

I know, but like, you think they'd organize some kind of a conversation between the two? No, no, I don't.

Yeah. And then also between Meta and between Facebook and the glasses team and between Instagram and the glasses team, between WhatsApp and Instagram and between WhatsApp and Facebook.

I know we only care about WhatsApp and Instagram.

And then you have like the whole—

I think it very much depends on the culture within any organization. If there's proper leadership and proper direction and proper thought taken towards let's give customers something that they can rely on, then that would work. They will fix it eventually, but it'll be when they get around to it, not Yeah, people

who find— well, not necessarily the people who find these things most useful, but it's always going to be the disability community who are going to find you have to wait and wait and wait for these things to be fixed, which is really right now I'm at the point of saying I'm just throwing these things away because they're useless. But then again, they're still playing Spotify, they're still playing my podcast.

Yeah, exactly.

They still have their use, but they just when you actually need to ring somebody on the telephone.

Do you have another feature? Do you have an app that can stream nicely a radio broadcast?

TuneIn?

Yeah, TuneIn.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, just TuneIn.

Yeah, okay.

Speaking about whether glasses will remain available, I think it's going to be a hard political fight that eventually will end in them staying available. But there's going to be some rules around this, and I think that's right. I mean, yes, they are very useful for us, but I heard Mark Riccobono, the NFB president, say something that I really do agree with, and that is that we as blind people really need to define what these glasses are good for and fight for that so that at least those things don't get lost. Yeah. But it's still the case also that people have a right to their privacy and people have a right to not be filmed and photographed by creepy dudes walking around with covered LED lights and, you know, doing whatever they want. So there's going to be a reckoning and there's going to be rules around this. And as long as we can insist on the rules also taking us into account and not becoming like this medical device that then again costs thousands of dollars— Yeah. That you can get if you're blind and with very strict rules around that, but it's still a mainstream product that's reachable. I think there we, we may be able to, we may be able to, to get a win there, but it's going to take very careful advocacy, I think.

There is already a quite a significant, uh, yeah, uh, thing happening, you know, with, for example, enhanced or the Envision glasses, you know.

Yeah, Envision has sent a letter to all of their users and everyone subscribed to the Envision newsletter that they intend to sell the company. And if they cannot sell before December 31st, 2026, they will shut the company down. Oh my gosh. They said they will work to preserve most of the functionality and to get that on device. However, they cannot promise that they'll get all the functionality on device. And so right now they are looking for a buyer, but if they don't get a buyer, the company will go under, which is unfortunate, but also, you know, that's, that's how the economy works.

They had some technical issues as well, I believe, with some of the connections and so on. Certainly, I used the Envision app on my phone. I never got the glasses. I found it increasingly got clunky and less accurate. And then the Ally app came out and it was interesting. But when you actually tried to do anything with it, you had to wait ages before it would give you an answer.

Yeah.

I think they made some wrong bets. And also, I think at that point, to be honest, they might have already been struggling and trying to, you know, turn things around with the Ally app, and it just did not happen.

Yeah.

Yeah. And you had the other apps coming up pretty quickly, like the Orion app and the PixieBot app and others that— yeah. And Meta all the time behind this, you know, chucking away and at a fairly, you know, fairly—

Well, they go very fast is what we established. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I think the price range of the Meta glasses probably did for them. Yeah. Because to be honest, even if I have the Ally app on my phone, if I've got a choice between just saying, hey, you know, glasses, look and tell me what's in this packet, or get my phone out, unlock the phone, open the Ally app, point at the thing, start the camera to dictate what's in this package, and then twiddle my thumbs for 20 seconds while it thinks about it, you know, there's only one Yeah, it is.

It is. Well, the one thing that's always— I've always liked about the Metas right from the start is they are— it is very, very quick in describing, you know, the content or whatever.

I mean, and they're not cheap, but they're a lot cheaper than the Envision glasses.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the Ally Solos were fairly cheap, and that's the ones that I bought, but they didn't work very well was the problem.

Yeah.

So, so I don't think they ever got them to work well enough. For, for them to be in the race.

Gordon, thank you very much for giving us the, the, the update on what's happening with you, and good to know that— well, I've known it for a while that I'm not the only one, um, experiencing this. But again, if you are experiencing it, uh, the issue, let us know on [email protected]. But as Gordon points out, do try that feedback— I don't know what it's called— report or form or something.

You have to go into Settings into your glasses, Help and Support, and then I think Submit Report or something like that.

Yeah.

And then, as you say, you've got the screen, you've got to fill in what's going wrong, and then—

Wait.

Wait for the next. You wait, and then there's a next button. There's usually a button that says Done, dimmed, and then if you wait long enough, a next button will turn up beside it, and then it'll say, do you want to send in your logs and Whatever with, with this report.

And just, just before you go, uh, Gordon, have you ever got a response directly from Meta after filling out that, uh, feedback

form? No, no. But in fairness, most of the things I have reported have subsequently been fixed.

Ah, okay. That's

not

the answer you want, really.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes you have to wait a long time. But, but they do get fixed. I mean, there was a big issue with the, uh, the Adventurer glasses that I got. They're Meta's own brand ones. The microphones were awful. People could not hear what I was saying when I was on the phone to them, and I tried to do a voice note or whatever. It was just utter garbled nonsense, very, very distorted. Um, but the microphone troubleshooting option was not available in the settings on those glasses. It was there on the Meta Ray-Bans. If I wore a pair of Meta Ray-Bans, I went into settings, there was a microphone troubleshooting button. Put on the Adventure glasses, you go into settings, there's no button. And eventually it appeared, and as soon as I went in and toggled the switch on there, they worked perfectly. They've worked ever since. So yeah, they will eventually get around to fixing it, but I suppose it depends on how many people complain about it, which is why I'm saying send in a report if you've got a problem.

Yeah, absolutely, brilliant idea. Well, Gordon, thanks very much for joining us. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you guys. And

thank you as always.

Yes, please keep the emails coming. We love hearing from you.

Great to talk to you guys, and I love the show. Thank you. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line

and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Drop us a line and come along. Email us on blindguyschat.com. Okay, Clodagh, so you've got something, an email related to this meta issue, is that right?

Yes, indeed. You have been asking listeners to email in, they have, and we got an email from Roisin. It says Roisin from Mayo, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. So I know she was in touch with you, but she hasn't emailed the— yeah, so she's saying, hello lads, lady, and guide dogs. Hope you're all keeping well. I haven't been in touch for a while. I think the last time I was in touch, you still had Stuart with you, with you guys. So welcome to the show, Mohammed.

I think that was 2 episodes ago, isn't it?

How long have you had this now, Mohammed?

You've forgotten that I've joined you this quickly?

Oh, sorry, Mr.

Lawyer. I don't actually know how many episodes I've been on. No,

I mean,

but it must have been like a year and a half ago, I think.

Yeah.

I think it was, I think it was, uh, yeah, 2025. It was around April, May. Yeah. You were on, could be, you were on guesting on a, you were on guesting on several episodes.

Oh, we had guests. We had guest co-hosts for a while.

Yeah.

That was our, yeah. No, that worked. Yeah. So thank you very much, uh, Roisin, for welcoming Mo. It's nice. It's always nice to get that.

Uh, anyway, Roisin goes on to say, welcome.

Thank you, Jan. Thank you.

Roshan goes on to say, I was listening to your last episode and I heard you talking about the Meta glasses. Oren, you are not alone, as myself and a friend of mine are having the exact same problems as you with our Meta glasses, i.e., myself and my friend. Uh, it won't let us send a— send or receive WhatsApp messages or the normal messages, and it will not let us make a normal phone call or a WhatsApp call. Just wondering, what type of iPhone do you have? Myself and my friend both have an iPhone SE.

I'm on an iPhone 11, which is fairly old. I would love to, you know, Christmas is

coming.

Hint, hint. Christmas is coming.

Hint, hint.

Well, the last present I got you for Christmas, you've been whinging about ever since, and that's the Meta glasses. I don't know.

Ow, ow. I

don't know about that. We should have asked Gordon what his Yeah, I

suspect Gordon is more up to date than, certainly than me, about Mo and Jan, but I'm on an 11. So I don't think it's an iPhone, and I don't think it's a software issue with— now Mo could be. Maybe there is something going on with everything, with all the software that's— it's just not happy with it. But I don't think it's an iPhone issue.

Okay.

Well, one of the things that is currently happening in software development is that everything is speeding up.

Yes.

Because of AI and everything has to speed up because of AI because everyone else is speeding up. So it's kind of a, it's this chase, everyone chases each other. And really the discourse right now in the industry, both in the AI but also the software engineering industries, that everyone and anyone can really build an app, which is very true. And so therefore, just building an app is not enough anymore. You have to have world-class support and world-class updates, and you have to continuously maintain. And so that puts pressure on teams too. So that, that is definitely happening, and it's definitely happening at Meta.

Yeah, that's interesting. I wonder how it'll all pan out.

I don't know, watch and see. Uh, Roisin says, we both went to see someone in VI Labs who absolutely— who tried absolutely everything and was very thorough with us. We did try the factory reset and that didn't do anything for us. Let me know if there's anything I can do to try and help, even if it's just to recommend who to talk to, to say that you're also having the same issue with glasses. Well, I suppose what Gordon was saying is report it on the Meta Glasses app itself is probably a good option.

Yeah.

So maybe try that, Roisin.

Also, something that I would recommend people do is update. I very often see people running around with bugs and then they, they have not updated for quite a long time. Now you don't need to go to iOS 27, which has just come out, if you are worried about that because that's quite a large update. But at least make sure that you're on the latest iOS 26. Make sure that you update regularly. Because, and this also goes for the glasses, because you know one thing for sure, if you do not update, like, functionality decays. That definitely happens. That's the thing.

And I'm using, Mo gave a lovely tip a few months ago, and it's very easy to do. So if you don't even know if you're on automatic updates or not, just go to the App Store and go right up to the top. And I think you'll hear account. Or accounts. And if you double-click there, you will go down to updates. You go into updates, and then you will see all the updates that are about to happen to you, come onto your phone, or have come onto your phone in the last few days or whatever. And you can just decide if you see it. Like, the other day, I did see a Meta update available. It hadn't done the update, so I decided to do the update, just say update, and it did it. there and then, but it is fairly easy in the App Store to do it, to update all your apps very easy. So it's a good thing to check that.

Good tips.

Great. Yeah. So

thank you. And for your iOS updates, you can go to the Settings app and go to General, Software Updates. Yeah. General, Software Updates.

By the way, are you both already on 27 or I think 11 don't host it?

No, 11 gets it.

No,

I'm not on it yet. I know I'm not on it yet. I haven't gone on to it, but I, I'll wait until you guys, uh,

well, I am on

it.

I'm on it without any issue. I, I like the Describe Scene, uh, feature quite, uh, you know.

Does that work well?

You, um, yeah, yeah, quite, quite well. Yeah.

I'm not sure that Oren will get it though with the iPhone 11. Um,

no, I don't know.

I don't know. But it— I, I'm not yet on there, but I will probably bite the bullet this week and go.

Oh,

very good.

Okay, what, what phones are you guys on, just as a matter of interest?

I'm a 17.

I'm also on a 17.

17.

Fancy boys.

Very fancy boys.

Well, I, I update my iPhone every 4 years.

Okay.

Jingle all the way. Subtle, Matt.

Subtle.

Well done.

Now, Clodagh, if you want to now really make a good joke, just buy him an iPhone 12 refurbished.

It's an improvement.

It is.

It is an improvement. Not much of an improvement, but a little improvement.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, okay, okay.

Thank you very much. So anyway, Roshan goes on and says, to finish off, Clodagh, because I love— she's aiming this at me. I hope you're doing okay. I am, thank you very much, I'm in great form. I mean, you're blessed there among men on the podcast, and that's including the guide dogs Larry and Chef. I had never thought about that. I'm the only female being on the whole thing. I hadn't realized that. Doesn't bother me, Roisin, I'm quite happy with it. Looking forward to hearing back from you soon. Well, hopefully this will count, or I will reply also. Apologies for all the mistakes in this email. I'm sure you know yourself, dictation on the phone isn't doesn't always put in what you're trying to say. I get that completely, Roisin. Listen, mind yourself. Thank you for getting in touch, really appreciate it. And yeah, try those tips and see how you get on.

Before we go, I've got one slight— not an email, but a voice message from Mr. Stuart Lawlor. Hey! And he thought the last show was very good about the air travel, and he has some comments to make about that.

Hello, Blind Guys and listeners. This is Stuart, your former colleague and co-host. And thoroughly enjoyed the latest episode of the show talking about air travel and assistance on air travel, and I had a couple of comments. I think like all of you guys on the show, I've traveled a lot and I do a fair amount of air travel for work, and in general I've had very good experience with assistance throughout Ireland and the UK, which is where I'm mostly traveling. Had pretty good experiences in the US as well last year, but I just wanted to make, I suppose, a few points. I'm like Mohammed, if I'm traveling with a colleague, I don't I don't feel I need it, but everybody, of course, is entitled to do their own thing, and that's what the assistance is there for, to be used. I have thought in certain situations, for example, I was in Edinburgh Airport a couple of months ago, and in fact, I've been loath to go through Edinburgh ever since because I was left waiting for so long at the assistance desk, and I really wanted to get something to eat before I flew, that I just decided to go it alone because I just— there was— they were so, so slow. I can imagine. slow, and they had some shortage of staff or something. And I just, like, I don't know how I did it, but I went along and fumbled my way, I suppose is the best way, asked different people for help. When I got to security, I asked the security people just to kind of point me in the direction of the duty-free area. Then I asked a random passenger to point me towards Witherspoons, and I kind of knew the area from Witherspoons to the, what they call the blue seated area where you can get your assistance on the airside area. I wouldn't like to do that all the time, but I did do it, and it made me think about using services like Aira or We Assist as an alternative. My biggest issue with air travel in general with assistance is it's very good, and this is in particular relating to Dublin, it's very good on the going out. Generally it works very well, they bring you through, they drop you at your gate, and they come back to help you board the plane. But it is a little bit more hit and miss when the plane lands and you're left sitting there and sitting and sitting and sitting and you're talking to the crew, and especially if it's the last flight of the, of the leg or of the night, and they want to get off and there's no assistance coming. And it's particularly difficult out on the remote stands. So the flights from Scotland, for example, the small planes don't park in at the airport, they park out on a remote stand that's 5 or 6 minutes' drive away from the terminal. The last thing I wanted to say is that Dublin Airport, and I'm sure others too, have a VIP Platinum service which is, I believe, €199 per go. And I've really thought, and I've really toyed when assistance has been bad and when I've become frustrated, I've really toyed with trying it. I don't really want to pay €199 to do it, and I know my employer would not pay €199 for me to do it. But the idea is you get brought to a private terminal, you get whisked through everything, you get pampered and looked after, and when your flight is ready, you are driven out in a nice car right to the door of your plane. Would you pay €199 for it? I really want to give it a try, but am I willing to pay that much? I don't know. I just don't know. Anyway, I hope that's been of interest. Great show as always. Thoroughly enjoy it, guys, and speak to you soon.

Thanks very much, Stuart. Well, I certainly don't have enough money. You don't have the €199 to pay for the VIP lounge, uh, but best of luck to you if you can.

Well, you also don't live in a penthouse.

Well, that's

true. No, that's true.

Yeah,

with a lot of servants and people around you, you know.

Yeah, it has to be a difference.

I'm very surprised that Stuart up to now hasn't been getting his butler to bring him— to carry him onto the plane rather than just— Oh yeah,

give him a piggyback.

I think he has. I've heard some rumors that he has done that, but the butler filed a complaint for, you know, he did

his

back in.

He's in his 80s, the poor man. He shouldn't have Plus you guys get VIP treatment anyway. You don't need the VIP lounge.

Anyway, that's true.

We have a very big podcast.

Yeah, very famous.

On that note, we will say bye-bye and thank you very much for listening. And don't forget, the email is [email protected] if you want to email us about anything. And we will see you in 2 weeks' time. Thanks very much.

Okay, bye-bye. Take care. Bye.