Apple may be turning to Ray-Ban style for Apple Glasses – image credit AppleInsider
Apple has been rumored to be working on smart glasses for a long time, and a new report has narrowed down the debut of the platform to be as soon as the end of 2026.
The “Apple Glass” project has rumors dating back to 2015, and patent work before then. Obviously, what popped out initially was the Apple Vision Pro.
What’s been nebulous until fairly recently is a release timeline for glasses built by Apple. A new report by Bloomberg, discussing Apple’s chip efforts for the product, amongst other things, nails the product down to a specific window.
According to the report on Thursday, Apple’s smart glasses should ship in late 2026, or early 2027. This is earlier than most reports, which suggest that the product won’t see the light of day until around 2030.
It’s believed that Apple is not yet certain what approach to take with these glasses. It has already delved into the full augmented reality space with Apple Vision Pro, and the other approach is rumored to be a data overlay over the visible environment without a screen projection of what’s outside the user.
There haven’t been leaked photos of the actual design, but it is rumored that Apple wants these glasses to look fashionable and approachable. Apple Watch is a good place to look for how Apple handles wearable design — subtle, but still obviously a piece of tech.
Much of what has been shown in patents look like safety glasses, though these are prototype drawings meant to illustrate the patent and not the product. Ultimately “Apple Glass” could look like an average pair of glasses, but there is no way of knowing until something more official leaks out.
The new product, previously under the N50 name, is now said to be under code name N401.
Reportedly, the product has become a top priority for Tim Cook, and as such, Apple’s engineers, all to try and outpace Meta in creating a category-leading device. Meta already leads in terms of headsets, but it’s also taken first blood when it comes to smart glasses as well.
Meta already has a hit with its RayBan smart glasses, which are used for taking pictures and for AI purposes, but it’s not the kind of smart glasses that Cook is keen on making. That would involve making something that can display AR images to the user, much like the Apple Vision Pro but in a much slimmer form.
Products like Apple glasses requires some considerable miniaturization, careful designing, and offloading of elements to a host device if necessary. For example, using a nearby iPhone to handle processing and rendering duties has reportedly been considered.
Thursday’s report also discusses that there is a custom silicon effort underway to power the glasses.
