The Apple Vision Pro “has largely been a flop, hurt by its cumbersome design and $3,500 price tag,” Mark Gurman writes for Bloomberg News. But, the company continues to plug away at making real AR glasses for the masses.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Work on the AR screens remains ongoing at a secretive facility in Santa Clara, California, one town over from the company’s home base in Cupertino.
Tepid demand for the Vision Pro has only made Apple more certain that AR glasses are a superior format. But the executives involved in the effort don’t think a product will be ready for three years or more. In the meantime, Apple expects to release other devices in the style of Vision Pro that it hopes will be cheaper and more enticing to consumers.
While it develops the AR technology for future devices, the company is conducting user studies at its offices to gauge the appeal of features and interfaces. Apple is already working on a version of visionOS — the Vision Pro’s software — that will run on glasses. It’s also exploring other types of wearable products, including a rival to Meta’s Ray-Ban spectacles and even camera-equipped AirPods.
MacDailyNews Take: It’ll be quite a few years from now, but once Apple’s AR smart glasses are released, people are going to want to wear them during every waking hour and they’ll eventually largely replace iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks.
What supplants it will quite likely be something less obtrusive or, in the case of eyewear + personal assistant (AI glasses), something regarded as less obtrusive (easier and quicker to use regardless of the drawbacks of wearing glasses).
Removing obstacles between the human brain and the Internet is the goal. – MacDailyNews, January 14, 2017
Someday, hopefully sooner than later, we’ll look back at holding up slabs of metal and glass to access AR as unbelievably quaint. — MacDailyNews, July 28, 2017
The impact of augmented reality cannot be overstated. It will be a paradigm shift larger than the iPhone and the half-assed clones it begat. — MacDailyNews, August 4, 2017
Augmented Reality is going to change everything. — MacDailyNews, July 21, 2017
Imagine what could be done with AirPods coupled with a pair of Apple Specs. The sky’s the limit! — MacDailyNews, November 17, 2016
The Apple Glasses will be the key as holding up slabs of glass as “windows” is suboptimal. When we’re running in a race, for example, we don’t want to have to hold an iPhone or even glance at an Apple Watch, but with a pair of Apple Glasses constantly overlaying time, pace, splits, etc. it’ll be ideal! — MacDailyNews, September 6, 2019
Information instantly accessible right in front of your eyes will enhance virtually (pun intended) everything. The next step after that, of course, will be chips implanted into our brains, as humans become cyborgs. It’s inevitable. – MacDailyNews, November 30, 2021
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How do you have a pair of glasses with the computing power AND battery life of a recent model iPhone–yet weighs as much as a NORMAL pair of glasses?
When the glasses are tethered to a battery pack you keep in your pocket.
I have the Meta Ray Bans, which are great (they have no display, just a camera, speakers and AI), but you need to charge every 3-4 hours with moderate use. If Apple comes up with smart glasses with some kind of notification/HUD display it will serve as another accessory to iPhone, not a replacement. Nothing will surpass touch/mouse/trackpad/keyboard/buttons as the primary computing input method in our lifetimes. The precision is not even close with voice or eye tracking, its impractical in most scenarios and people simply don’t want a crappier experience.
Enjoy the iPhone 15 or 16, its the pinnacle of the mobile computing experience. Aside from slightly thinner, slightly faster, slightly better camera and maybe a foldable, this is it for the next 5-10 years.