Adam Birney / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Apple was reportedly working on AR glasses powered by a Mac computer.
- The company wanted the glasses to work with an iPhone, but the smartphone lacked the necessary processing power.
- The project was scrapped last week after it failed to meet executives’ expectations.
Back in October, it was reported that Apple’s Vision Products Group was working on “at least” four new products. One of these products was said to be a Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses competitor, and another was reportedly AirPods with a camera built in. A new report says that Mac-powered augmented reality (AR) glasses were also among those projects, but it has now been canceled.
According to Bloomberg, Apple was developing AR glasses that would rely on a Mac computer for its processing. To no one’s surprise, it’s said the tech giant originally wanted the glasses to work with the iPhone, but the smartphone didn’t have the necessary processing power for the device’s features. It also proved to be a massive drain on the iPhone’s battery.
These glasses were powered by vision OS and used built-in displays capable of projecting information, images, and video into the user’s field of view. It did not have the ability to project a user’s eyes like the Vision Pro, but the tint of the lenses could change to show if they’re available or busy. This product was not meant to be a successor to the Vision Pro as it’s not a headset. Instead, it has been compared to XReal’s One glasses and Meta’s Orion prototype, which we saw during Meta Connect last year.
It appears these AR glasses will never see the light of day as they have been canceled. The outlet reports that company executives weren’t impressed by the device’s performance during tests, which led to them making the decision to can the project last week. Members of the Vision Products Group reportedly claim that a “lack of focus and clear direction within the team” is to blame for the project being scrapped.
Despite this setback, it looks like the Cupertino-based firm still wants to create AR glasses. On top of that, it is also still working on successors to the Vision Pro.
On the smart glasses side of things, Google is also in the middle of developing Android XR-powered glasses. We recently got more information on its prototype in December. It’s known that these glasses are built off the back of Project Astra and most of the processing will be handled by a smartphone.
