Apple Reportedly Accelerates Smart Glasses Development Amid Wider Push for AI Hardware

By
Scott Hayden
-
16

Apple is reportedly accelerating the development of smart glasses, as the company is ostensibly making a shift toward AI-centric hardware.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple is ramping up development of its forthcoming smart glasses, which are slated to head into production as early as December 2026, with public release expected sometime in 2027.

Apple’s smart glasses are being positioned to compete with Meta and EssilorLuxottica’s most recent smart glasses, the report maintains.

While this mostly echoes previous reports from last October, Apple appears to be accelerating development, having recently distributed a broader set of glasses prototypes within its hardware engineering division.

According to an all-hands meeting with employees earlier this month, CEO Tim Cook supposedly also hinted that Apple would be pushing hard into AI devices, noting that the company was working on new “categories of products” centered around AI.

“We’re extremely excited about that,” Cook said in the internal meeting, saying “[t]he world is changing fast.”

Citing people familiar with Apple’s plans, the smart glasses (allegedly codenamed ‘N50’) are said to include two cameras: a high-resolution camera for photos and video, and another dedicated to computer vision tasks. The high quality onboard cameras and overall build quality are expected to set it apart from competing products, the report maintains.

Array of Meta smart glasses | Image courtesy Brad Lynch

Similar to Meta’s audio-only smart glasses though, Apple’s N50 hardware isn’t expected to include a display of any kind, instead relying on cameras, speakers and microphones for things such as phone calls, AI queries, listening to music, and capturing images.

Apple allegedly floated the idea of partnering with eyewear brands—similar to Meta’s partnership with EssilorLuxottica or Google’s partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster—the company seems to have more recently decided on developing in-house designs, which are said to arrive in a variety of sizes and colors.

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“Early prototypes of the glasses connect via a cable to a standalone battery pack and an iPhone, but newer versions have the components embedded in the frame,” Bloomberg reports. “The design uses high-end materials, including acrylic elements intended to give the glasses a premium feel. Apple is already discussing launching the device in additional styles over time.”

This comes as Apple is investing more heavily in AI in effort to better compete with Google and OpenAI, which comes part and parcel with a critical redesign of Siri. The report also maintains Apple is working on an AI-powered pendant and AirPods with expanded AI capabilities—all three of which will rely on visual input.

Notably, the report maintains that all three will rely on connection to iPhone. Apple did not respond to Bloomberg’s request for comment.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Duane Aakre

    I'm 68 years old. I need a strong distance correction (around -6) and I also need correction for close up reading, so I wear progressive lenses. To date, Meta doesn't meet my prescription needs with ANY of their plethora of smart glasses.

    I think whichever company (Meta, Apple, or Google) is the first to offer lenses I need, will get my business. Simple as that.

    • sfmike

      Same here I have a -7 correction that Meta refuses to address. Get help for the Chinese with this as their tech is better and more Chinese are myopic.

    • Christian Schildwaechter

      This should be pretty trivial to solve for the regular Meta Ray-Bans, or any other audio-only smartglasses, as you could simply take the glasses to your optometrist and have the lenses replaced with custom prescription lenses, incl. progressive ones, as they don't influence the smart functions of the glasses.

      It will be a lot more complicated for glasses with integrated displays though, as these need special etching in certain parts to reflect some projected light, which only the manufacturer itself will be able to offer.

  • Nevets

    No display? Then nothing to see here.

    Xreal's Project Aura is much interesting, though it's disappointing to hear that the lenses are still like wearing sunglasses at 0% dimming.

    • kalqlate

      When you're walking down the street and having a discussion with a friend or colleague, rarely do either of you stop, pull out a phone to show the other something. I think the N50s are meant to be viewed similarly as having an AI companion (Siri) on your ears, conveniently sharing your visual context and able to discuss and answer questions about it or anything else with you, just as it would be with a friend or colleague.

      Note the article focused on the N50, noting that other AI-centric devices were in the works.

      While non-visual dialog is fine for the great majority of in-the-moment queries, people, especially younger people, prefer a richer visual context to come along with the information. I'd say it's a certainty, perhaps even at the launch of the N50, Apple will introduce an AR/XR version. They're not going to leave that market completely to others.

      I've heard noise about these or some other variation coming with a built in projector.

      • Christian Schildwaechter

        TL;DR: the iPhone required as a companion to Apple's smartglasses will work as both an external compute puck as well as a fallback display, so Apple at least initially will probably focus more on low weight and long battery life instead of adding displays.

        I'd also expect Apple to introduce smartglasses with displays, though for a number of reasons not quite as soon. For one they are playing catch-up, and already had to draw resources/engineers from the Vision project to speed up the glasses development. Trying to create display glasses at the same time would probably delay it further. They didn't start from scratch, and already had an AR glasses project they postponed indefinitely in early 2023 due to technical difficulties, focusing on AVP instead. They probably resurrected that project now, also hinting that there will be a larger focus on environmental/object recognition.

        And while the Meta Ray-Ban display glasses definitely cover more use cases, they are also more than twice as expensive as the regular Meta Ray-Bans that are available below the magic USD 300 impulse buy threshold. We have heard that Meta sold about 8M smartglasses last year, but have no idea how many of these were the "basic" audio models, and how many people were willing to pay a much higher price for the heavier Display version. So the customer draw of advanced smartglasses is pretty much unknown.

        The Display glasses are also heavier and more bulky, looking less like regular sun glasses, simply because Meta had to squeeze more technology inside. This may run counter to Apple's emphasis on design. I'd expect them to release something that looks a lot more glasses like than even Meta's regular Ray-Bans, so more like the Even Realities G2. As their glasses will apparently only work with a companion iPhone, and Apple already has ultra-low power SoCs from the Apple Watch, they could probably get them very small with long battery life, which currently wouldn't work as well with integrated displays.

        The much higher performance available on the iPhone already running Apple's ARKit will allow to do things locally that the Meta glasses have to relay to a remote data center, and the always present iPhone itself can serve as a display for situations where audio feedback simply isn't enough. All that should give Apple some leeway to compete against Meta even if they don't offer smartglasses with displays right from the start.

        • kalqlate

          Agreed, to all of the above. Thanks!

      • Zod Zod

        This purpose is literally already served with $20 bluetooth headphones. None of the "AI" or compute is in the glasses. Just cheap headphones and camera. It's all ran on the phone.

        If people so desperately need to have a camera at the ready because they're too lazy to pull out their phone that they'll spend $500+? Then maybe they deserve to get screwed over by huge evil corporations.

        This is long before you take into account not knowing if the cameras are actually turned off and most likely collecting face tracking on every person you pass in public that didn't sign up for it. Just because it's technically legal doesn't in any way make it ethical.

  • XRC

    "This comes as Apple is investing more heavily in AI in effort to better compete with Google and OpenAI, which comes part and parcel with a critical redesign of Siri."

    As recently reported by fortune, Apple recently signed a business deal with Google:-

    "Apple has entered a multi-year partnership with Google to enhance its AI capabilities, particularly for its virtual assistant, Siri. This collaboration will utilize Google's Gemini AI models and cloud technology."

    • Mandub

      Could you clarify your point?

      • XRC

        Apple isn't competing with Google's ai they are adopting it to improve Siri

        • Christian Schildwaechter

          Apple is also buying RAM and displays from Samsung, which doesn't stop them from competing with Samsung's Galaxy phones. Similarly Apple has now licensed Gemini from Google, and made special deals for being able to either run Gemini locally on Apple devices, or in private clouds separate from Google's regular Gemini cloud services.

          So they are again buying/licensing core technology from a competitor to then integrate into their products, not just using the same Gemini integration as seen on Samsung's Galaxy XR and other, future Android XR HMDs. Apple Intelligence so far allowed integrating OpenAI's ChatGPT, they were in talks with Anthropic about integrating Claude, but went with Google because Gemini allowed the most isolation for privacy reasons.

          They no doubt also have internal teams working on their own LLMs. These so far just cannot compete with the other models, but Apple could still switch to these or a Google competitor later on. This is pretty much business as usual, though clearly a PR win for Google. But Apple is still competing with Google for consumers when it comes to AI, smartglasses or other AI driven devices.

          • Zod Zod

            So….? What you're saying is Apple is still Apple that doesn't actually "invent" anything but takes everyone else's inventions and try to market them as their own?

            As much as things change they still stay the same.

      • Zod Zod

        TLDR: Apple's AI sucks. Apple knows their AI sucks. Investors desperately want to hear about AI.

        Google is too big to outright buy, and too big to bully into submission with lawyers, so Apple's normal gameplan can't be used when Google is just as big and evil.

        Apple's only option is to <UGH> wallow in the slop with the lowly peasants because they have vastly superior AI.

        I guarantee elitist Apple was NOT happy having to do that.

  • Foreign Devil

    I prefer no screen display. I just want the best AI that can see what I'm seeing and answer my questions expertly. . when I'm fixing or renovating things at home. Should be like having a real expert assistant standing next to me. Waiting for Googles products since I'm a Gemini user.

  • Zod Zod

    TLDR:
    Tim Cook: Meta is making way too much profit off glorified bluetooth headphones with cameras shoved into sunglass frames. That sh*t is cheap as hell and they're all profit! Gather the engineers and copy that like we copy everything else! We'll sell at least 10 million to the Fruit cultists! I bet they'd even pay a thousand dollars for them!!! Now get out of my office, I have money to count.