June 17, 2026
In the U.S., “eating your own dog food,” or dogfooding, is shorthand for company executives testing and using their own products as normal consumers might. But dogfooding isn’t just about testing. On another level, the term evokes the image of an executive demonstrating that the company’s product is so trusted, so beloved by its creator, that even he uses it away from the marketing glare of cameras and commercials. The message: You can trust that this product is good for you because we don’t just make it, we use it.
This trust-via-usage demonstration dynamic has always seemed particularly relevant when it comes to wearable technology. Next to putting a product into your body (food, pharmaceuticals, etc.), paying to put a product on your body is one of the most intimate things a consumer can do. So, in my years of covering wearable tech, the first thing I look for is whether the CEO is actually using the wearable tech outside of the launch event window. I think it’s reasonable to assume that, if a founder has invested millions, or hundreds of millions, into a product he expects the public to wear and use daily, he should do the same. But in the realm of smartglasses, that’s not always how things seem to work out.
At this weekend’s UFC Freedom 250 event, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg made an appearance, but his Meta Ray-Ban smartglasses were nowhere in sight. Likewise, a quick check of his Instagram account reveals that, at least in the last few months, his non-marketing daily activities appear to be smartglasses-free. Zuckerberg isn’t alone, but he is the most high-profile wearable exec example available. Meanwhile, social media clout chasers have taken to using Meta’s glasses to record sometimes troubling interactions with strangers in public who don’t always know they’re being recorded to go viral. Predictably, this has led to some simmering cultural backlash against any kind of camera-enabled smartglasses worn in public.
So when Snap (maker of Snapchat and Spectacles camera glasses) returned to the spotlight this week with its new Specsaugmented reality (AR) smartglasses, I was guardedly excited. The company, most famous for its disappearing social media messages and publicly turning down a $3 billion acquisition offer from Meta’s Zuckerberg years ago, has quietly been pushing the bleeding-edge of AR software and hardware. A few years ago, I was given access to Snap’s Spectacles developer AR smartglasses and, despite its short battery life and occasional glitches, I was impressed. After a long wait, Specs offers a lighter, more commercial version of that initial product.
Instead of a bold Balenciaga-esque look, the frames are now, well, slightly smaller, but still conspicuously thick. And not in a particularly stylish way. Think DMC from the classic rap group Run-DMC and his ‘80s Cazals. Or maybe Mr. Six, the elderly dancing guy from those early 2000s Six Flags commercials. Harsh, but true. But then I thought, maybe they’ll look normal on Snap’s co-founder and CEO, Evan Spiegel, when he puts them on during his presentation. Only that never happened. Spiegel smoothly introduced the new smartglasses, solo on stage with large images of the new product behind him, but he never actually put them on his own face. No dogfooding during the presentation. That wasn’t a good sign.
Later that day, Spiegel finally turned up wearing Specs during his rather intense interview with CNBC from the floor of the AWE event in California. And that’s when the design of the Specs really landed—with an aesthetic thud. As Spiegel defended against a barrage of tough questions from CNBC’s Julia Boorstin, the awkward fit and appearance of the device on Spiegel was apparent, as his ears seemed to buckle under the bulk of Specs’ frame design. Wall Street was not pleased, as Snap’s stock dropped by 5% following the reveal of the device.
Science Fiction vs. Science Facts
And then there’s the price: $2,195. Youchie!
Although this is a fairly unrealistic price tag for a new, non-essential device category, AR insiders know that this is actually a great price for what the device can do. Unlike Meta Ray-Bans, which are essentially just camera glasses with headphones connected to an AI app, Specs are truly AR smartglasses that give the wearer an interactive virtual display and computing functions that could one day rival a personal computer.
During Spiegel’s initial reveal of the device, he framed the price by referencing the then-expensive price of the first Apple Macintosh computer, released in 1984 for $2,495, which, adjusted for inflation, would be about $8,000 today. A logical but strained comparison given the radical interface shift AR computing presents. He then referenced the price of Apple’s Vision Pro, which sells for about $3,500. Another reasonable yet strained comparison given the global platform dedication Apple enjoys from billions of hardware customers.
Framing Specs alongside the first Apple computer is conceptually apt, but realistically unfair to Snap, so I’ll focus on the wearable products Spiegel obliquely referenced in his presentation. When I talk to people about these kinds of wearable products, because I know that detailing tech review specifications won’t sell to the average buyer, I focus on the killer app the device offers. For Meta Ray-Bans, the killer app is hands-free video/photo capture and headphones (the smartphone-tethered AI app is interesting, but I seldom use it). For Vision Pro, hands down, the killer app is the IMAX-style personal theater experience that beats anything I’ve seen in AR or VR (the device does much more, but this is my primary use case). When it comes to AR smartglasses, something I’ve desperately wanted for years, I struggle to come up with a mainstream 2026 killer app use case that would justify paying the price of a full-fledged laptop.
“But what if Specs were $300, like Meta’s non-AR Ray-Bans?” Even then, I’m not sure what, beyond Specs’ virtual displays connected to a PC (which would make it an accessory, not really a full computing device), would excite the average consumer. Specs is a product many will eventually want and need, just with a different design, and probably from a company with a more established software ecosystem, like Apple (which has its own smartglasses in development).
But in this case, Snap’s dedication to waveguide technology instead of passthrough cameras for AR seems like a fight from either 10 years ago, or 20 years in the future, but not the technology hill to fight on right now. The oft-quoted “sunk cost fallacy” seems to be in play here. Snap has invested so much time, money, and brilliant innovation into its AR hardware project that it seems to be unaware that Specs are misaligned with the moment. Misaligned on price, on design, and on feature set.
And about that design. I understand that packing all that tech into a set of frames is insanely difficult, and they’ve achieved a true marvel. But even if the price doesn’t deter buyers, and the relatively niche software platform doesn’t dissuade adopters, you can’t get past design. Among Meta’s stumbles in the hardware realm, its best decision was to pair with Ray-Ban parent EssilorLuxottica for smartglasses frame design. When it comes to wearables, hardware design is the primary user interface, not just for usability, but for style. It doesn’t matter if Specs gives wearers mobile computing superpowers if people don’t want to wear them. Recruiting celebrities like NBA player Jimmy Butler, Imogen Heap, Hoyeon, Jack Harlow, and Kaia Gerber was smart. But only a few celebrities have the power to transform something that is at best unflattering into something that is truly cool. I’m not sure these are the celebrities with those unique pop culture powers.
Getting Ahead of the Future
When Magic Leap came out with its $2,300 augmented reality headset, many of us who bought in knew that it was a grand experiment on the way to a potential new computing paradigm. Now, eight years later, it’s even more apparent that the device was indeed an experiment, not destined for near-term mainstream adoption. Mainstreaming the next computing interface is very, very difficult. This was acknowledged again this week by Magic Leap founder Rony Abovitz, who responded to the release of Snap’s Specs with sobering words.
“XR/Spatial computing is an incredibly cool and amazing field, but needs billions to tens of billions to really move the field forward. Very odd, it looks to be a harder problem than space flight and most AI,” said Abovitz via Twitter/X. “Why? Because XR/Spatial computing is a brain-computer interface that needs a satellite plus self-driving cars’ worth of computing/tech and optics and batteries jammed into a thing that is comfy and weighs no more than 30-50g.”
Writing this is painful. I’ll admit that I’ve been rooting for Snap for years now. Many things about Snap remind me of early Apple and its holistic and human-focused approach to products and users. Because of that, I sincerely hope everything I’m writing here is wildly off the mark. If you have $2,200 to experiment with, maybe you can let me know just how wrong I was. ✍︎
Cover image: Snap CEO Evan Spiegel during an interview with CNBC via YouTube
