Apple plans to launch smartglasses by the end of 2026. Company engineers are accelerating development to compete with Meta Platforms’ popular Ray-Ban smart glasses, Bloomberg News reports citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
Apple will start producing large quantities of prototypes at the end of this year with overseas suppliers, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the products haven’t been announced.
Apple’s glasses would have cameras, microphones and speakers, allowing them to analyze the external world and take requests via the Siri voice assistant. They could also handle tasks such as phone calls, music playback, live translations, and turn-by-turn directions. The approach would be similar to that of Meta’s current glasses and upcoming devices running Alphabet Inc.’s Android XR operating system.
One person with knowledge of the glasses said they will be similar to the Meta product but better made.
Perfecting an AI device promises to be a high-stakes competition. Apple has struggled to add compelling AI features to its iPhones, iPads, and Macs, and now it risks missing out on entire new product categories. The Apple Intelligence platform, released last year, has lagged behind competitors’ technology…
People working on Apple’s smart glasses remain concerned that its AI failings may undermine the new product. The Meta Ray-Bans and upcoming glasses running the Android operating system benefit from the strength of Meta’s Llama and Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence platforms.
MacDailyNews Take: The weak link, as it has been for many years, is Siri.
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
The weak link also appears to be Apple CEO Crim Sook
New product announcements used to cause a stir of anticipation. Now, it brings apprehension and questions of delay or cancellation.
AAPL is in preserve mode. The persevering vigor of the entrepreneurial start-up—which it surprisingly maintained decades after that actual stage—are seemingly fossilized.
Apple debuted Casper back in August 1993 (get it? talking to the “friendly ghost” in the computer?). I think they demonstrated it on the newly announced Mac 840AV. It was a relatively accent accommodating voice command interface for the new Macs introduced then, and it has been a part of the Mac interface since then. It was introduced as English only (even if the speaker had a relatively strong, non-U.S. English accent). It was demonstrated on stage as working with native German persons and other nationalities but they were still speaking English that day.
Since that time the term/name “Casper” has been associated with many other things at Apple not related to a voice interface.
Casper was not what Apple has claimed Siri is (or will be), but it gives the initial timeline of Apple working on the very early edges of these paths well over 30 years ago. At that time Apple was clearly ahead of all the rest. Apple has squandered that 30 year lead.