Leaving a medical appointment recently, I was suddenly horrified to see that the receptionist I was talking to was wearing a pair of Meta x Ray Ban smart glasses.
“They don’t draw, right,” I said, mentally prefiling my HIPAA violation claim. Surprised that he was even getting such a question, I timed the clock for a moment so that I meant the recording device on his face. involved in controversy. No, he assured me that the camera didn’t burn out when it clicked once. He only used them to listen to music. Resisting the urge to suggest that the AirPods lying on his desk might serve this purpose better, I opted to leave the convoy there, further resigning myself to the idea that I was part of a dying breed of existentialists. invasions of privacy presented by the public who pay to visit the panopticons.
Despite the women’s complaints, it was recorded without their knowledge and consent reptiles sport them– then who? they snatched them by force in exchange for money when asking for a posted video to be taken down – wearing smart glasses in public is not (yet) seen as a violation of the social contract in doctors’ offices or beyond. In fact, the number of units sold continues to increase. A Q4 earnings reportt from EssilorLuxottica, the parent company of Ray-Ban, showed that sales of wearable devices will triple in 2025 compared to the previous year. It will come as no surprise that one of the biggest names in consumer technology is planning to carve out a large portion of this market for themselves.
End report by Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman confirms what we all know is coming — Apple has its own smart glasses and is hoping to disrupt the wearables market as it does with smartwatches, which now generate about $17 billion for the company annually.
The tech giant’s imminent foray into the smartglasses space has been rumored for years, with the latest of their first-generation feature offerings set to be revealed to customers by the internal codename “N50.” It is sold at the end of 2026 and the beginning of next year. But development delays, a perennial obstacle for Apple, have officially pushed back the planned release date to late 2027, likely in time for the holiday gift-giving season.
Sources told Gurman that the current CEO Tim Apple (aka Tim Cook) is making the development of these wearable devices his “top priority” before handing the company over to his successor, John Ternus, on September 1st. Accordingly, Ternus has been leading Apple’s Vision Products Group (VPG) for the past two years, where they have been developing the product. However, this is the same group working on the upcoming one AirPods Pros with built-in infrared camerasannouncement was created fear Even if segments of the Internet wonder why such an upgrade is necessary will not allow complete despicable behavior.
The glasses on offer, on the other hand, are clearly trying to compete with Meta’s wearables and everything else they use. Priced between $200 and $500, Apple’s glasses will come in a range of popular styles and feature built-in cameras, speakers and microphones for taking video, photos and calls, or playing music, podcasts and Siri announcements. The main aesthetic difference between these and Meta’s current lineup of glasses is that Apple’s cameras are egg-shaped rather than circles. Gurman also believes there won’t be in-screen AR rendering capabilities like Apple’s glasses the latest Ray-Bans at least for a few years.
It remains to be seen if these products are on track to be the next AirPods hits or if they will be priced too high. Vision Pro. But if these price points and society’s growing indifference to the surveillance state are any indication, it might be prudent to start polishing. Computer Vision Dazzle makeup skills anyway.
