In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman writes that Apple is exploring various form factors for future wearable products.
That includes smart glasses similar to the Amazon Echo Frames or the Meta Ray-Bans, which offer some smart audio and AI features (able to ship much earlier in than the goal of full augmented reality glasses that can supplant the Vision Pro). Apple is also investigating how to add cameras to the AirPods earbuds, potentially obviating the need for a separate smart glasses product altogether.
Apple has also floated the idea of making a smart ring, a finger-worn device that can perform integrated health sensing duties for customers that don’t want to wear a more bulky Apple Watch. While the glasses and ring in the tentative “early discussions” stages, it sounds like the AirPods with cameras project is slightly more concrete.
Gurman writes that the project has the codename B798 and was kickstarted last year. The idea is to find a way to fit low-resolution camera sensors into AirPods earbuds.
The idea of both the smart glasses and the camera-enabled AirPods is to bring AI and health features to users in a low-friction way. The cameras inside the glasses or earbuds can take photos of the outside world, and help users seamlessly in their daily life with a multi-modal voice-and-image AI system.
The AI could then answer questions about objects that the user is looking at, for example. A rudimentary implementation of this functionality was rolled out to the Meta Ray-Ban glasses a few months ago.
Whereas earbuds are smaller and discreet, and Apple already has consumers comfortable with truly wireless earbuds as a form factor, the glasses would be more risky but could incorporate better quality cameras, and longer battery life.
Don’t expect anything to hit the market anytime soon though. These are all clearly early stage internal Apple initiatives, but give some insight into the possible future roadmap of the Wearables division.
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