Apple Augmented Reality Glasses Scrapped Before Announcement

Apple was reportedly developing augmented reality (AR) glasses powered by its Mac computers, but the project was canceled before the company could even announce it. According to Bloomberg, Apple scrapped the program this week due to the product’s poor performance when executives tested it and the company’s frequent changes to the device’s features.

The AR glasses, which were still powered by visionOS, were not intended to be the direct successor to Apple’s Vision Pro headset. Instead, they were designed to be a pair of normal-looking glasses, rather than a headset. The glasses reportedly had built-in displays that could project information, images, and video into the user’s field of view. They were lighter than the Vision Pro and did not display the wearer’s eyes like the headset can, but they had lenses that could change their tint to indicate whether the user was working on a task or not.

The scrapped AR glasses were originally intended to be powered by the iPhone, but the smartphone’s processing capacity was not sufficient to support the device’s features. The iPhone’s battery was also drained by the device’s power requirements. Bloomberg compared the canceled product to XReal’s One glasses and Meta’s Orion prototype, noting that the Orion does not require a computer or phone connection to function.

One of the challenges Apple faced with the AR glasses was that people who already owned the Vision Pro were not using it as much as the company expected. However, employees in Apple’s vision products group reportedly believed that the project lacked focus and clear direction. Despite the cancellation of the AR glasses, Apple is still working on a successor to the Vision Pro and continues to develop AR glasses in the future. The company is also exploring the use of microLED-type screens, which were used in the scrapped AR glasses, for future projects.


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