Apple is reportedly still working on smart glasses of some kind

Apple’s augmented reality glasses may be dead (or at least on hold), but it sounds like the company is still working on a different kind of smart glasses.

Mark Gurman’s latest Power On newsletter at Bloomberg (via 9to5Mac) reported that Apple is continuing work on a pair of smart glasses, just a couple of months after a different Bloomberg report indicated Apple’s AR glasses were not happening anymore. According to Gurman, the glasses that are currently being worked on are more akin to Meta’s Ray-Ban collaboration, in that they will be filled with tech, but will stop short of offering real augmented reality displays.

Gurman stated that they would be powered by Apple Intelligence and could “analyze the surrounding environment and feed information to the wearer,” though to what degree it can do that is still unknown. The Meta version of this concept is largely influencer-focused and allows for glasses-based photography and Instagram live-streaming, though apparently Apple is not entirely committed to allowing photography on its glasses yet for privacy reasons.

At any rate, it’ll probably be at least a couple of years before we see the fruits of all this labor, if we see it at all. Maybe the smart glasses dream will live on.