After seeing Google jump headfirst into smart glasses at the tail end of its I/O keynote, a lot of us have been wondering if Apple is working in the space.
A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggests the Cupertino company is aiming to have its smart glasses ready for the tail end of 2026. They’ll have cameras, speakers and a microphone, so at launch, they may be more like Meta’s smart glasses as opposed to Google’s model, which has a small display in one eye.
If there’s no display, the glasses will likely rely on Siri voice controls, and as we move deeper into the world of AI, it seems very likely that there will be some kind of AI component. However, as we’ve seen in the news recently, Apple is not exactly where it wants to be when it comes to AI.
That being said, Apple detailed a huge slate of new accessibility features that are coming to its products in 2025, and the Vision Pro headset is getting a new tool that will describe the world to the user. Apple says this is powered by machine learning on the headset itself, but we’ve seen them build out accessibility features into widespread tools for all users before, so I wouldn’t be surprised if a version of this tech came to Apple’s smart glasses in the future.
No matter what, the end of 2026 is pretty far away and Apple is likely going to have strong competition from Google, Meta and maybe even OpenAI as that company gets into the hardware game with help from ex-Apple designer Johnny Ive.
Gurman says Apple is still working on AirPods with built-in cameras as well, but if I had to guess, Apple is likely trying to release both types of smart wearables in the future. The AirPods will be an upgrade to the existing AirPods Pro line, and the glasses will be a new product category altogether.
Source: Bloomberg
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