Apple Glasses Rumors Resurface as iPhone Supplier Tapped to Make Parts for Augmented Reality Product

[AppleScruff1]

It's not that Apple forgets or takes pokes. It's to keep competitors in the dark with disinformation.

You mean to keep their loyal fan base in the dark.
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Apple will likely take it a step much further and come out with a Borg like implant embedded in our skulls...

Or some other body orifice.

 

[satchmo]

Apple always sees things through 'rose gold' coloured glasses.

 

[loveandhavefun]

Here they are!

 

[trusso]

Apple Computer was no more in 2007, has been Apple Inc ever since.

Thanks. I've been aware of that since I saw Steve's 2007 Macworld keynote. (Remember those?)

I just pulled that out to emphasize what they used to be.

 

[Nunyabinez]

Apple definitely needs to be working with legislators on getting laws passed in regards to this. As well as working to convince people that their privacy is not being invaded. As was posted earlier, when the Google glasses were being piloted, stores started posting signs banning them from being worn.

Imagine going into a store with your phone held up in an obvious recording/picture taking pose. How many places do you think would ask you to stop?

Wearing Apple Glasses would do a similar thing. I think people are rightly concerned about what info people are gathering/accessing while they are interacting with someone wearing these.

The biggest hurdles are not going to be technical, they will be social.

 

[austinmcguire]

Didn’t Tim Cook make a statement on this? That Apple has no interest in this market.

His statement was that the tech did not exist to do it right. That doesn’t mean that there are not parts of the tech that work or that Apple is not working on it. It just means don’t expect it this year or next.

 

[MyopiaRocks]

This won't be a commercial product for a while. Apple wants this for their factories and stores. Employees and workers will wear it and (eg, during iphone assembly) the glasses will have AR step-by-step with the camera also observing for QC. In the stores the stockrooms can use it for rapid inventorying (visual confirmation). Google's discovered that their glasses are super useful for this, and are now selling a version to industry, with noted (objectively measurable) productivity gains. Apple likes this, but isn't going to put google spyware in their factories, so Apple needs to develop their own AR glasses/goggles. And here we are.

Just wait: there will be an OSHA-compliant pair that gets leaked and everyone will scream how ugly they look ("ew, those look like goggles")

 

[centauratlas]

Now if they can automatically adjust the lens so that it works for reading or distance with the augmented reality, they'll have an even bigger winner.

 

[scrapesleon]

The future looks bright so much for me buying spectacles

 

[erinsarah]

Maybe they see something you don't.

Look, people...you have to have a certain amount of vision here. just because the failure of Google Glass caused a stigmatism on the whole field doesn't mean they should just put blinders on.

Okay I'm done with the puns...in reality I could totally see Apple going this route if they can work out the tech. I foresee a wall of eyeglass options right near the table of watches, where you and your assigned concierge can try out different shapes, sizes, and finishes, and they custom order the glasses for you just like an optician would. The difference here is the tech built into the lenses. If the product can be developed successfully it would continue to move Apple Retail into becoming a focus (hey, another pun!) of style and personal appearance, not just tech.

 

[Mac 128]

I'm surprised it took so long to get to privacy, this should be a huge concern. At least when someone has their phone out I know they're potentially recording or up to something.

I can just imagine teaching a class while 20 students sit there and take them send pictures of each other all over the place in the glasses they're allowed to wear because "they need them to see" and then getting five angry parents the next day demanding to know how their children's photos ended up on some cyber bully group on Facebook during school hours without them using their phones. The fed and state governments need to get to work on regulating this before it becomes a thing.

They can already do this with phones without you knowing about it. That's why phones are banned in some places already. And no, this is an easily managed situation where parents are told their kids are not allowed to wear such eyewear in school as soon as the products hit the streets. So if their parents buy their kids such glasses, and pics taken during school end up on websites, the parents will have no cause to be angry. And no, the fed and state governments don't need to regulate this. There are already privacy laws on the books, which have been applied to photos taken secretly on iPhones and uploaded to the web without the subjects permission. As usual this boils down to personal responsibility ...

Apple definitely needs to be working with legislators on getting laws passed in regards to this. As well as working to convince people that their privacy is not being invaded. As was posted earlier, when the Google glasses were being piloted, stores started posting signs banning them from being worn.

Imagine going into a store with your phone held up in an obvious recording/picture taking pose. How many places do you think would ask you to stop?

Wearing Apple Glasses would do a similar thing. I think people are rightly concerned about what info people are gathering/accessing while they are interacting with someone wearing these.

The biggest hurdles are not going to be technical, they will be social.

There are already laws protecting an individuals privacy. The model is already there thanks to Google. Private businesses, and institutions can ban the devices, just as they ban phones now in some places. Phones can already be used to surreptitiously recording things without someone else knowing. And for someone who really wants to engage in such activity, there are other more discrete devices. The issue is not so much who is recording what, as what they are doing with it, and there are already laws which deal with the irresponsible distribution of private images and audio gained without the subject's permission. This issue can easily be handled on an individual basis by the private sector, as there is no guarantee of privacy in public.

 

[840quadra]

Thanks. I've been aware of that since I saw Steve's 2007 Macworld keynote. (Remember those?)

I just pulled that out to emphasize what they used to be.

Just posted for clarification, not to ridicule.

And yes, I watched that full keynote right after the iPhone X keynote. Dang Preamble to this year’s announcement made me nostalgic for some good old Jobs quotes.

 

[JM]

Look, people...you have to have a certain amount of vision here. just because the failure of Google Glass caused a stigmatism on the whole field doesn't mean they should just put blinders on.

Okay I'm done with the puns...in reality I could totally see Apple going this route if they can work out the tech. I foresee a wall of eyeglass options right near the table of watches, where you and your assigned concierge can try out different shapes, sizes, and finishes, and they custom order the glasses for you just like an optician would. The difference here is the tech built into the lenses. If the product can be developed successfully it would continue to move Apple Retail into becoming a focus (hey, another pun!) of style and personal appearance, not just tech.

I see you have clearly dropped the mic on the pun-fun.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Where do you shop for glasses? My titanium ones were only a few hundred. Maybe a Hermès brand could be >$1000 but you’re buying for vanity there. The vast majority of frames are <$300.

Half or more of the cost of buying glasses can be in the lenses. Variable bifocals lens with coatings can run $300 all by themselves.

 

[ckhris1613]

Apple has made it pretty clear in the past that they don't think glasses are the way to go. I'd be surprised to see this happen.

They made it pretty clear in the past that everyone wanted a small smart phone too and we see where that went

 

[s1m]

Where do you shop for glasses? My titanium ones were only a few hundred. Maybe a Hermès brand could be >$1000 but you’re buying for vanity there. The vast majority of frames are <$300.

In Australia the retail price of a pair of Tag Heuer glasses (before lens costs) is north of A$800.
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Thanks. I've been aware of that since I saw Steve's 2007 Macworld keynote. (Remember those?)

I just pulled that out to emphasize what they used to be.

I currently have an Apple computer on my wrist on my desk in front of me (my iPhone X) and small computer that fits in my satchel that can do more than most of the computers I have owned can ever do. Simply because they don't only make boxes that are stuck on your desk doesn't mean that they don't make computers.

Personally I can't wait for proper AR enabled glasses - I love having tech around and on me they make incremental changes to my day to day life. As a football (Australian rules) coach - having glasses that could record during a match (I am on field during the game) would be great both to improve play and record dubious activity. Go to a foreign city and look at a building and get info on the history of a building in front of my eyes rather than looking down at the phone or a book - meaning I can focus on the building not the information source. Recipes flashing up as I am cooking meaning I am looking at what I am cooking rather than wandering over to look at the recipe.

One of the wonderful things about AR glasses would be that when I am throwing a baseball with my son in the garden - I can take them off - much like I put down my phone.

 

[Abazigal]

I miss the days when Apple Computer made... well, computers.

Don't get me wrong; glasses or no glasses, the technology Apple and their peers continue to develop is stunning by any objective standard. No one alive 100 years ago could have imagined how fast the world would change in the coming century.

But computing used to be (and still can be, if you choose wisely) about empowering the individual and bringing down the barriers to creation and communication. As it stands now, "empowerment" is only a word used in lip-service, if that – a hollow shell scraped of its former meaning. Big business (of which Apple is certainly a part) has discovered that enough glitz and glamour will compel most of us to trade in real freedom for the illusion of it; and those of us who speak out against it are liable to be held as luddites, sophists, et cetera.

"Our civilization is wonderful, in certain spectacular and meretricious ways; wonderful in scientific marvels and inventive miracles; wonderful in material inflation, which it calls advancement, progress, and other pet names; wonderful in its spying-out of the deep secrets of Nature and its vanquishment of her stubborn laws; wonderful in its extraordinary financial and commerical achievements; wonderful in its hunger for money, and in its indifference as to how it is acquired; wonderful in the hitherto undreamed-of magnitude of its private fortunes and the prodigal fashion in which they are given away to institutions devoted to the public culture; wonderful in its exhibitions of poverty; wonderful in the surprises which it gets out of that great new birth, Organization, the latest and most potent creation and miracle-worker of the commercialized intellect, as applied in transportation systems, in manufactures, in systems of communication, in news-gathering, book-publishing, journalism; in protecting labor; in oppressing labor; in herding the national parties and keeping the sheep docile and usable; in closing the public service against brains and character; in electing purchasable legislatures, blatherskite Congresses, and city governments which rob the town and sell municipal protection to gamblers, thieves, prostitutes, and professional seducers for cash. It is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry, its soft romance-dreams and visions with the money-fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep which does not refresh; it has invented a thousand useless luxuries, and turned them into necessities; it has created a thousand vicious appetites and satisfies none of them; it has dethroned God and set up a shekel in His place."​

-Mark Twain
​

But I digress. I don't wish to hijack this topic, merely offer my three cents.

A pocket computer isn’t empowering enough?
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Apple will never do it

Apple glasses is really inevitable at this point. A pair of glasses revolving around AR and controlled by gestures and glances? The move to Face ID suddenly makes perfect sense now.

 

[nwcs]

Half or more of the cost of buying glasses can be in the lenses. Variable bifocals lens with coatings can run $300 all by themselves.

Yes, the lenses are expensive but the frames aren’t as bad. I use the highest 0.74 index lenses with a not-too-simple prescription and it’s still not >$1000.

 

[calzon65]

I have to admit, a cool pair of classes with a tiny camera that streamed to my iPhone would be really cool. I would buy that.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Yes, the lenses are expensive but the frames aren’t as bad. I use the highest 0.74 index lenses with a not-too-simple prescription and it’s still not >$1000.

I'm not spending a grand for my glasses either. I try to keep my frames under $200, though finding decent ones at this price level is becoming more difficult as even lower-end frames cost that much now. Varilux progressive lens with coatings are $300, plus. So I can see if someone was buying a high-end frame they might push a grand for the total. If was going to pay that much for glasses, they'd bloody well better allow me to see through walls!

 

[AppleScruff1]

I still think there will be a Magic Apple Ring in the future. Google has done glasses, no one has done a ring.

 

[s1m]

I still think there will be a Magic Apple Ring in the future. Google has done glasses, no one has done a ring.

I have a Kerv payment ring that can be used to make PayWave/PayPass/NFC style payments. It was designed to be able to access buildings by replacing your building access cards as well.

 

[Tech198]

but.... but.... if you have AR glassed, then u will start having distracted users in real life.. That is always a good reason... Why bring something to the table that introduces further issues, just because of convenience...

That's what mobile phones already do today... "distract users"

 

[AppleScruff1]

but.... but.... if you have AR glassed, then u will start having distracted users in real life.. That is always a good reason... Why bring something to the table that introduces further issues, just because of convenience...

That's what mobile phones already do today... "distract users"

That’s an understatement. People are like zombies staring into their phones all day.

 

[s1m]

but.... but.... if you have AR glassed, then u will start having distracted users in real life.. That is always a good reason... Why bring something to the table that introduces further issues, just because of convenience...

That's what mobile phones already do today... "distract users"

That’s an understatement. People are like zombies staring into their phones all day.

I actually think this will do the reverse - instead of looking down into the phone screen they will be looking up at what they are engaged with. The whole topic is about augmentation of reality rather than replacing reality.