Apple making pivot to speed up smart glasses development: report

It seems like the most recent Meta Connect ruffled some feathers at Apple HQ, as the latest from Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman is that the team working on the potential low-cost Vision Pro headset has been reassigned to output smart glasses instead.

The Apple glasses will be like the newest option from Meta, meaning they’ll mostly focus on having a camera and speakers and will not feature a display. Apple is expected to inject some form of AI into them, but it seems unlikely that it would be Siri in its current iteration. That said, the company is also reportedly working on a version with a screen to compete with the Meta Ray-Ban Display.

A report from Gurman earlier this year suggested Apple was aiming to hit the end of 2026 with its smart glasses project, but now, we might see them sooner.

While Meta has partnered with Luxotica to use its stable of brands like Ray-Ban and Oakley, which might give it a nice variety of options, Apple will likely be able to use its powers to make its product work more seamlessly with an iPhone. Right now, on Apple’s platforms, most of the Meta stuff needs to be controlled via an app.

So while Meta might have a few advantages by being out first, it seems very likely that lots of other companies are going to be able to replicate this tech in the next few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if OpenAI’s first hardware slate also included a pair of smart glasses.

Overall, it’s interesting to see Apple spurred like this by Meta, and only time will tell if switching from the development of the lighter VR headset to glasses was the right call. Both seem to be in early stages right now, but truthfully, since glasses are less intrusive in your life, I expect they’ll have a higher chance of popularity. At the very least, the niche for them is larger than the one for big $5,000 mixed reality headsets.

Source: Bloomberg