Development of Apple's smart glasses continues despite massive hurdles
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.

Renders of what Apple Glass could look like
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.
Rumor Score: Possible
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Comments
See-through AR, the putative eyeglass product that everyone is trying to get to, will have its positives and negatives. There are features and functionality that won’t be as good as the existing Vision Pro, let alone what a Vision Pro could be in 2030.
But out here in the technosphere echo chamber, the incredible growth that Apple has achieved under Tim, a level of success that was unimaginable while Steve reigned. doesn't count because Tim has failed to deliver some undefined, unnamed, imaginary new piece of hardware that the technosphere demands as proof of his "vision," even though they can't articulate what the product might be. His vision doesn't count because it doesn't suit their perception of vision. Most successful watch in the 200 year history of watches? Doesn't count. Most successful audio product in the history audio products? Doesn't count. A game-changing transition to Apple's blazingly fast processors that occurred with barely a hiccup? Doesn't count. It doesn't count because Tim didn't fulfill some hidden desire you have for some product you can't even describe. But Tim should have made it by now! Fortunately, Tim isn't distracted by all this ridiculousness coming from the tech peanut gallery and he continues his 13 year streak and counting of making Apple more and more successful. As someone who puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to Apple by investing in the company, Tim's strong and visionary leadership has been incredibly rewarding: it was a $14 stock when Steve died. It just closed on Friday at $223.
My guess is that Apple had been prototyping a variety of AR devices in their labs and the Vision Pro googles were the first that management deemed as "commercially viable" which is a stretch with the $3500 price tag. My guess is that see-through AR products will eventually come but it's nearly impossible to say when it will happen. My guess is that some AR-related API will show hints of a product before Apple actually announces it.
Let's remember that this is not a SoC upgrade to an existing product like iPhones or Macs. This would be a new product line and they have consider software work to do to get something like this off the ground.
One thing that is clear is that AR glasses will need to do 1, 2, maybe 3 things way better than an iPhone by itself. This was the case with Apple Watch which ends up being even better as A.) a health monitor, B.) an activity tracker, and C.) as an NFC contactless payment device (think public transit fare gates, not the POS terminal at McDonalds).
It's up to Apple to figure out 2-3 killer features that make AR glasses a better experience than raising your phone to your face.
Note that weight, fit, and comfort (and for some fashion) are all critically important for eyewear. I have several pairs of eyeglasses that weigh between 25-30 grams and I still take them off periodically for a break. I know a lot of people ignore the comfort factor but it's actually important to many people.
Trust me, I am a longtime owner of an Oculus Rift S (weight 500 g or 1.1 lbs.) and I find it unbearable to wear for more than 45 minutes. If AR glasses are going have any widespread consumer uptake, they need to come in below 100 g, the less the better. They also need to be washable and survive a modest drop, stuff that the AR pundits always seem to avoid mentioning.
https://us.shop.xreal.com/products/xreal-one-pro
This product offloads processing to a tethered device and only handles the display + motion tracking so no battery needed in the frames.
The power usage is said to be around 2W. Airpods Max has a 5Wh battery, iPhone 15 has a 13Wh battery.
Assuming a new product isn't offloading compute, it would use an iPhone chip for half the power of M-series chips around 5W (max, not average). The displays would be around 2W. The battery would have to be around double the Airpods Max at around 10Wh, increase the cushion on top to distribute the extra weight more, possibly have a thin strap at the back to stop it tipping forward and have lightweight displays that sit in front.
I don't think glasses are necessarily the end goal because even normal glasses are uncomfortable to wear for a while and they can still look unattractive to wear:
One thing that sets Apple products apart is they all look good. Almost every product they design is the best design in its class. Best looking laptops, phones, tablets, displays, headphones.
The end product can look something like this:
The display would wrap around with optional light blockers, mainly for above and below the eyes. The blockers are only needed for immersive content, AR content shows the surrounding environment so it doesn't need to block the light unless the environment light is too bright.
The connection point for the display would have to be the headband if the cups still have to swivel and they should be easy to push up to the headband out of the way. There would be no weight on the face or ears like glasses, the displays would be suspended in front of the eyes.
Retail cost should aim to be under $2000. If they can only manage 2K resolution at this price point, so be it. HDR and black levels are more important than sharpness for media content. It's not going to be great for text but usable and they can sell 4K ones at a higher price in a Pro model.
People are already walking around in public with this form factor and it looks perfectly normal.
No matter how much the current AVP form factor iterates, the bulk of the device is in the wrong place and needs too many cushions. The product itself is just the black/silver part at the front, which would be even smaller without EyeSight components and the compute parts:
I don't think it needs to take as long as 2027 to deliver something like this. They have all the parts this year to make a revision 2 with a more compact form factor.
This form factor would sell fairly well for 5 years while they iterate on getting things more compact and power efficient. It may end up that having compute on the wearable never needs to be the end goal if visuals can stream fast enough wirelessly to a nearby device but at a minimum they need to power the displays so a battery needs to go somewhere to get rid of the wire. If it goes on the front or back of the head, it's back to a helmet form factor again with weight on the face.
I'm not sure how anyone with any knowledge of Apple history can be so quick to write off Vision Pro, when the very cornerstone product on which the company was built--the Mac--took 14 YEARS to truly find mainstream success and had to be rescued from death's door by the return of Steve. Prior to the iMac, it was widely seen as a "completely niche" computer that was way too expensive for what it offered. It took Apple 17 months to sell its first 500,000 Macs. It took Apple 12 months to sell 500,000 Vision Pros. But yeah, VP may seem like a failure if you're ignorant of those facts.
Similarly, I don't know how anyone can look at the bloodbath in the EV business and not see the killing of the Apple Car project as the smartest decision possible. Pretty much every company except Tesla is losing tens of thousands of dollars on every car sold. And it's not because the cars aren't great. Rivian, often mentioned as the company Apple should have bought, lost $39,000 per car in Q3 last year. Fiskar, which also made a really nice EV, is already out of business. And when Trump kills the $7500 EV tax credit, losses will go even higher. We'll never know for sure, but I don't think the problem was a "failure" in being able to design and build a great Apple car. I think the problem, at the end of the day, was that there was no profitable path forward for Apple in the EV car business, no matter how great the car they brought to market.
This allows people to comfortably wear them all day. They are a lot less bulky without the large cushions. In some setups like this, the device can be moved closer to the face for increased field of view.
Some of the bulk and weight comes from the front-facing display, which produces a distorted image (3:58) so isn't worth having. In the teardown, there are lots of parts that could be moved away from the face, there's even a large cooling fan in there:
https://www.ifixit.com/News/90137/vision-pro-teardown-why-those-fake-eyes-look-so-weird
To get all this down to lightweight glasses would take a long time if they just iterate on the same design.
They'd be better rethinking the product design and try to work from the bottom up. They started with a product that couldn't even be carried and shrunk it down until it was wearable and shipped this. If they start from just the displays and only add what's needed, the end product will be much more compact.
The AR glasses that are shipping today are lower quality but much more accessible for people and people are forgiving of the quality issues because they allow for the main use case, which is watching content on a huge virtual OLED screen.
If they can even get close to the concept designs that have been made, this would be much more appealing:
It's nice to be able to wear them without the light blockers because then it blends the real environment at the sides and the rear headband design will always restrict this.