Ever since the Google Glass, there have been plenty of attempts to make and sell smart glasses. This also includes Samsung, even if it’s a product that seemingly won’t be making its way to our shores, at least for now. Apple has been rumoured to be taking a crack at it for a while now, but the earliest that’s happening looks to be next year, around WWDC season. A release is scheduled for the tail end of 2027 instead, so potentially half a year apart, between unveiling and availability.
This comes via Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, as part of the Power On newsletter. He has previously reported that it is known internally as the N50. At the time, the claim was that Apple had planned to announce this display-less smart glasses at the end of this year, with availability starting early 2027 instead. The reason for everything being pushed to next year is noted to be further refining both the product, and “the company’s privacy message”.
Part of this is emphasising things like on-device processing, and the lack of features like facial recognition. Gurman says that this also means avoiding things like the “super-sensing” feature that Meta is working on, which periodically records audio and photos throughout the day. In fact, Apple may be going towards the other extreme, as executives consider including a “full camera system but not allowing it to record photos or video at all”. This would still allow it to see the world around the user, and feed that data to AI tools which, as mentioned earlier, are hopefully processed on-device.
All in all, Apple looks to be trying very hard to avoid all of the privacy pitfalls of its rivals, particularly the Meta-made ones. That being said, Gurman notes that the bitten fruit brand “knows it won’t eliminate abuse entirely”. But with that in mind, in focusing entirely on privacy, the company may be neutering what makes smart glasses a compelling product in the first place, like easy first-person video of family or sporting events.
