Apple has been stuck in an innovation rut for the past few years. Aside from the Vision Pro headset — which expectedly didn’t gain a mass reception — the company hasn’t made any notable hardware strides apart from its bread-and-butter mobility and computing portfolio. That could change in the next few years.
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s Vision Pro team is working on smart glasses to tackle the challenge presented by a resurgent Meta. The social media giant has already scored an early lead with the well-received Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses, which have steadily received meaningful social and AI upgrades.
Even more impressive was the showcase of Orion, the company’s first true Augmented Reality (AR) glasses, a few weeks ago. These glasses rely on Micro LED projectors and optical-grade silicon carbide for their wide-view display unit, custom silicon, and multilayer sensory tracking — all overlaid atop an AI-first software experience.
It’s arguably the “mainstream” XR tech that Apple should’ve made. Now, it seems Apple is eyeing just that in the long run, while treating the Vision Pro as the launch platform for its broader XR tech stack. “Into 2027, the team is considering launching smart glasses on par with the Meta Ray-Bans,” reports Bloomberg.
Notably, it seems Apple is chasing the same kind of world-understanding capabilities that are currently possible courtesy of generative AI tools like GPT-4o and Google Gemini. Meta’s own work with AI has been nothing short of impressive, and it was on full showcase during its futuristic Orion presentation.
For Apple, the inspiration would come from its pricey headset.“The plan is to bring the Vision Pro’s ability to understand its surroundings to more products,” adds the report. But it’s going to be a long wait until we see Apple’s take on the smart glass category.
The XR wearables industry is at somewhat of a pivotal point. On one hand, we have products like the Meta Quest 3s headset that are bringing premium features like color passthrough to a price point that is nearly one-tenth of what Apple commands for the Vision Pro.
Then we have players like Xreal, Rokid, and RayNeo trying to make smart glasses that don’t look like nerdy gizmos. Yet, at the same time, we have giants like Microsoft shutting the doors on ambitious XR products like the HoloLens despite being at the forefront of the AI race.
It would be interesting to see just how Apple approaches its vision of smart glasses. But when it eventually pushes them to the market, it won’t be alone. To its credit, if there’s a hardware player that already has a solid software foundation to make such bold devices, it’s Apple, which also makes it the prime bet for mainstream success.
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