Apple will reportedly enter the smart glasses market in 2027, but the company is apparently worried the wearable will tarnish its reputation for protecting privacy. The cameras built into rival devices face criticism, and a new report describes Apple’s efforts to avoid the controversy.
Unfortunately, many of its options would block the feature that makes smart glasses most interesting to me.
Smart glasses revive old privacy criticism
Way back in 2012, Google Glass was an ambitious attempt to bring augmented reality to everyday life through a lightweight pair of smart glasses. The device featured a tiny display positioned above the wearer’s eye, voice controls, internet connectivity and a built-in camera.
While more a proof of concept than a mainstream product, the always-available camera quickly sparked a privacy backlash. Critics worried that people easily could be recorded without their knowledge, leading some businesses, restaurants, bars and even theaters to ban smart glasses.
Google Glass ultimately failed but both Google and Meta recently revived the smart glasses category with models taking advantage of the tremendous advances in AI. They can identify objects, translate languages, answer questions about what the wearer is seeing and even livestream video directly to social media.
Like their 2012 predecessor, the latest smart glasses have also drawn criticism from privacy advocates, who warn that their discreet cameras and sophisticated AI capabilities could make it easy to record or analyze people without their knowledge, raising concerns about consent and surveillance.
Apple smart glasses face familiar privacy concerns
For months, leaks and rumors have pointed to Apple actively working to get into this category, too.
“Apple is currently aiming to unveil its first smart glasses at next June’s Worldwide Developers Conference, ahead of a consumer release by the end of 2027,” Bloomberg‘s Marc Gurman reported on Sunday in his Power On newsletter.
Just like Google and Meta, Apple’s offering will inevitably need to answer many questions about privacy, given that the company describes privacy as a “fundamental human right”. That’s why the development process includes more than just building hardware and software.
“Apple’s engineering and marketing teams have been working to refine not only the product, but also the company’s privacy message,” said Gurman on Sunday.
Some of the options the company is exploring include blocking the smart glasses from taking pictures or recording video.
But the wearable also might not include facial recognition capabilities, or even completely lack cameras. And that’s a problem for me — I don’t know how interested I’d be in Apple Smart glasses without them.
Facial recognition is why I want Apple Smart glasses
Photo: ChatGPT/Cult of Mac
I understand the people who want cameras in their smart glasses so they are always ready to snap a photo of their children, pets, etc., but that’s not me. I have an iPhone for that. I want facial recognition.
Why? So I can walk down the street and bump into my neighbor and have a little pop-up appear in the corner of my eye that says “This is Allison.” I need this because I’ve known my neighbor for 5 years and can never remember her name. (It’s not Allison, BTW.)
I don’t want anything creepy. I don’t expect to meet a new person and have my Apple smart glasses search social media to discover their name. I’m happy if the device can simply tell me of the name of someone that I run into at a business event if I’ve previously told the device that’s what it is. Or remind me that my brother-in-law’s birthday is coming up when I see him.
If Apple smart glasses can’t do this, I’m going to be very disappointed.
Apple can’t ignore a potential iPhone replacement
To be clear, I’m absolutely convinced that smart glasses are the Next. Big. Thing. In ten years or so, they are going to start by replacing our iPhones and Apple Watches, and eventually become the only screen any of us need.
Obviously, Apple can’t ignore the product category. It’ll simply have to work through the privacy problems. I’m confident it will — it just might take some time and a few hardware versions.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 26 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh SE/30 (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer.
That’s because he’s a “tablet first” type of guy. Rather than use a Macbook, he connects a keyboard case to the iPad. And instead of a desktop Mac, he connects his tablet to a 27-inch display and full-size keyboard. (So don’t try to tell him that everyone has to use a Mac to be productive.)
Before coming to Cult of Mac, Ed wrote for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
