Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Stops Work on Camera-Equipped Apple Watch Planned for 2027
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I think the camera would have been too complicated to work properly. They may revisit the idea in a few years, though.
Online forum user: *complains about online forum users*
Apple should have another CEO, board members let him walk. It is not just the amount of money loss or invested in a particular project being shut down. The loss of time on another project is the factor. The car blunder tragically illustrates how a time line on another project suffers from lack of attention. The severe loss of R&D in AI has caused a tremendous problems for Apple
they stopped working on something that no one really needs, no big deal...
It seems like it was a dumb idea.
Seriously do you really need to walk down the street and point your phone at a business to see its yelp page? I mean come on there are easy enough ways to do that now.
Maybe Apple could just suck it up and pay the small licensing fee to include it. I agree it would be a nice feature to have if it were actually reliable. During the whole Covid mess it was important for people who were not feeling well to monitor the blood oxygen.
I think the one strategy he has promoted that is a real winner from Apple is the ease of integration. Using different Apple gadgets and an Apple account really makes things very seamless
Is there anything Tim Apple hasent cut during his tenure at Apple? The king of wasting money & resources. 👑
I could imagine it working if the camera was situated "above" the screen, and pointing "up", so that if you held your wrist out in front of you like you were checking the time (with the screen facing the sky), the camera would point out in front of you, and you could look at the screen to ensure it was pointing at the desired thing... the mechanics would work, but I still think it's a dumb idea, doing something that the phone is much better suited for. Give us more sensors for the attached human, instead (the watch is much for suited for the former than the phone is), and maybe for the environment (if the watch is on your wrist and the phone is in a pocket, the watch is better positioned to sample the current air temperature, for example).
Spoken like someone who lives somewhere that isn't properly habitable year round. There's a whole lot of us who live where short sleeves work 300+ days a year.
I agree, they could do some cool stuff with that. LIDAR is pretty power hungry though, from what I understand, and Apple Watch is no friend of battery tech.
Let's not add a camera that would allow for easier communication between people, we need to add more spy devices instead. These devices are not about empowering the user, it's more about gathering data and keeping track of people. They don't want to risk someone using it shed light on what really goes on. So how in the world are they going to make glasses that don't spy on others, they just going to shut that off and focus on surveilling the user more instead?
Wut? A camera is a great spy device. They are making glasses.
What's "really going on"?
Glad of this and I know of no one who wants this. Bad enough with all the other cameras around without adding another one running around. Thank you Apple.
Tell us you didn't read the story without telling us...
What you think not many people pass through passport control zones at airports and border crossing points where no phones and cameras are allowed to be used.
It would be another inconvenience for travellers and security officers alike checking for watches with cameras.
That assumes that the rumor that Gurman started was actually not a rumor but fact. Do you believe that? I don’t.
And I am sure that in Apples R&D efforts this idea was toyed with but it never went to the product team
Apple is no longer planning to release an Apple Watch that includes a camera, reports Bloomberg. Apple was developing Apple Watch and Apple Watch Ultra models that had a camera to view the wearer's surrounding environment, but work on those projects ended this week.
The camera in the Apple Watch would not have been used for features like FaceTime or snapping photos, but instead would have allowed Apple Watch owners to get information about objects and places near them.
An Apple Watch might have been able to do things like provide hours when pointed at a restaurant or store, identify a plant, describe an object, or offer language translations. The wearable camera functionality would have worked much like Visual Intelligence, an AI iPhone feature that lets users point their camera at something to get more information.
Apple planned to release the camera-equipped Apple Watch models in 2027, but the plans are off. It's possible Apple could bring the technology back in the future, and it's not known why development ended.
Though Apple is no longer planning for an Apple Watch with a camera, it's still developing AirPods with tiny cameras inside. The AirPods cameras may be infrared sensors to enable features like enhanced spatial audio, in-air gesture control, and AI capabilities.
Article Link: Apple Stops Work on Camera-Equipped Apple Watch Planned for 2027
Rumor is a previous rumor isn’t happening as rumored.
I don’t blame MacRumors for these (it’s right there in the name) but I do wish they were a little more discerning.