Apple won't sell smart glasses for a few more years

The ideal smart glasses should be thin, lightweight, and minimalist in design

3 Facebook x.com Reddit Rumor Score 🤔 Maybe

Apple's ultimate goal of producing Apple Glass smart glasses is still far from reality, as the challenges of making lightweight and usable glasses are a challenge.

The release of the Apple Vision Pro was Apple's first step in creating a new product category for itself. Apple's ultimate goal is to create smart glasses that squeeze all of this technology into a thin pair of glasses, but that will still be a dream for quite some time.

A question in Bloomberg's “Power On” newsletter explains that Apple is working on an augmented reality version. However, “nothing is coming in the near future.”

The article points out that Apple must “solve a complex formula” before launching. This includes creating a lightweight design, much smaller than the one used for the Apple Vision Pro.

It also needs to have adequate battery life and “compelling displays” while staying within a budget that won't be too expensive for consumers.

Apple is expected to need another three to five years to perfect the concept. Despite the existing progress from Meta, Google, Xreal, and other augmented reality firms, Apple will want to take its time solving the design conundrum.

A Difficult Problem

Apple's work in head-mounted displays and augmented reality is expected to culminate in Apple Glass, the current expected name for the smart glasses.

They have been in development for a long time, and there have been many rumors and reports surrounding the topic over the years. At one point, the concept involved a glasses-like accessory that could accept an iPhone, placing the display directly in front of the user's eyes.

Current speculation is for something more like glasses rather than a device like the Apple Vision Pro. The processing is said to be offloaded to the iPhone or similar hardware.

Apple will have a lot of problems to solve to get the glasses off the ground. Some of them, like weight and bulk, can be solved by miniaturizing the components, which is a common trend in the tech space that has been happening over time.

Batteries are harder to miniaturize, so Apple needs to figure out how much physical battery to include and how to use it more efficiently.

Probably the hardest part is having some form of augmented reality display system. While it has come up with a version in the Apple Vision Pro, it needs to figure out how to use AR without adding a bulky display to thin, lightweight glasses.

It also needs to be careful about adding unusual elements that might attract other people's attention, like the display element of Google Glass.

Despite this, all signs still point to Apple working on the concept for a possible future release. In October, it launched an internal study called “Project Atlas” to gather employee feedback on existing smart glasses already on the market.

More internal focus groups on the topic are planned.

As for when the glasses might arrive, there are predictions for a launch in 2026 and 2027, depending on Apple's progress.