The long-rumored Apple Glass may eventually become Apple’s wearable future, with development of the smart glasses hitting hurdles that even Apple’s rivals are having to deal with.
The Apple Vision Pro is Apple’s first attempt at a head-mounted display, as a project that sucked a considerable amount of resources to produce. That device is far from the end goal for Apple, with the ultimate aim being the introduction of smart glasses.
It’s been a long road so far, but there’s still a lot more distance for Apple to travel in order to get to that goal.
Apple is still keen to get there, despite seeing its competitors face difficult hurdles and the prospect of spending even more on a project that’s still years away from realization.
A continued push
In Sunday’s newsletter, Bloombergwrites that Apple is still working on the technologies behind the concept, but knowing full well it’s years away from release.
Within Apple’s offices, it is reportedly conducting user studies to determine the appeal of various features and interfaces that the glasses could use. This also reportedly included creating a version of visionOS meant for use with the glasses.
Apple’s use of in-house testing for head-mounted technologies has been going on for quite some time already, though it has taken extraordinary circumstances for that secretive work to come to light.
In 2017, it was revealed in a leaked report from an Apple Environment Health and Safety contractor that a person required “medical treatment beyond first aid” after testing a prototype. Eye discomfort was reported, after they saw a laser flash multiple times.
That work continues to be handled today by a secretive facility in Santa Clara, down the road from Cupertino. Those offices are handling the development of the AR screens, among other important technologies.
The location has fewer staff than usual, as there were layoffs at the facility in 2024. The decision to kill off in-house smartwatch display development may have impacted Apple’s research into smart glasses displays as a byproduct of the layoffs.
While smart glasses are the obvious thing for Apple to be working on, it’s still looking into other items in the wearables space. There’s talk of a rival to the Meta Ray-Ban spectacles and possibly camera-equipped AirPods.
Off-road vision
Apple’s development of its wearable augmented reality (AR) technology was born from its self-driving car work. Originally meant as a display embedded into the windshield, the concept was considered too expensive to implement in a normal vehicle.
The idea was scaled down a lot more, despite coming up with a working prototype. Instead, it was envisioned that everyone would wear headsets, which could provide all of the data but in a smaller and more manageable package.
While this was a non-starter, the vehicle group still worked on AR technology. It also used VR headsets to demonstrate the capabilities of the in-development car project.
At the time CEO Tim Cook believed that AR was the way forward, superimposing images on a real-world view, not in an isolating way as with VR goggles.
Executive Mike Rockwell pulled the AR and VR work out of the car project and into what is now the Apple Vision Pro division. That team then spent two years making a headset prototype that used a pass-through system with external cameras, which Apple uses today in the Vision Pro.
Despite spending billions on the VR headset, Apple continued to work on producing the technology to create the proper AR smart glasses that it wanted as a follow-up.
A shared challenge
Like the creation of its headset, producing smart glasses with AR features is a technical nightmare. It’s a hard set of problems to solve, ranging from creating the image in front of the user’s eyes to producing something light enough to be like regular spectacles.
All while dealing with other long-term issues like handling processing and communications, and somehow hiding a battery on the frame.
However, Apple is far from the only company to be working on smart glasses.
Meta Orion
Meta’s Orion AR glasses prototype is expected to arrive as a product in 2027, making it a very early release in the field.
Then there is Google, which is producing the Android XR operating system intended for next-gen headsets and smart glasses. Gurman writes that Google demonstrated the operating system to him in December using various glasses, including some with displays.
Those prototypes were considered to be quite polished, but unlikely to reach the open market until the harder challenges like battery life are solved.
Batteries are a massive problem for VR headsets now, let alone lightweight spectacles. It’s a weight that must be minimized and carefully placed so the glasses don’t feel heavy to wear, which is extremely hard for a purposefully lightweight item like spectacles.
Apple certainly has to come up with a better answer than the current tethered battery on the Apple Vision Pro. But, short of magically making batteries as light as air, it’s a difficult problem to solve.
That said, tethering to an iPhone or another device could help further, by handling processing for the glasses. This offloads another set of components and reduces the power draw, but it still means it’ll be connected to another piece of kit.
Apple’s rivals are also coming up with more immediate product releases too, which Apple has to consider. Meta’s making not only the Quest 4 VR headset, but a follow-up to the Quest Pro. Samsung also demonstrated its own “Moohan” mixed reality headset during the January Unpacked event.
Both Google and Samsung have made noises that their efforts will be cheaper than the Apple Vision Pro, with release dates later in 2025.
These are immediate issues that could cause problems for the Apple Vision Pro, but then again, the headset has struggled to gain much traction since launch.
The competitors benefit from getting more time sharing newer products with consumers, with a shorter iteration time from the immediate consumer feedback, rather than seriously damaging Apple.
The ultimate test will be within a few years, when Apple is ready to come to market with smart glasses, with an intention to replace the smartphone. By then, its rivals could’ve released multiple headset and glasses iterations and gleaned that all-important feedback, making it very hard for Apple to make a splash in the right way.
