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Apple Considering Expansion Into Wearable Glasses, Says Report (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Apple is weighing an expansion into digital glasses, a risky but potentially lucrative area of wearable computing, according to people familiar with the matter. While still in an exploration phase, the device would connect wirelessly to iPhones, show images and other information in the wearer's field of vision, and may use augmented reality, the people said. They asked not to be identified speaking about a secret project. Apple has talked about its glasses project with potential suppliers, according to people familiar with those discussions. The company has ordered small quantities of near-eye displays from one supplier for testing, the people said. Apple hasn't ordered enough components so far to indicate imminent mass-production, one of the people added. Should Apple ultimately decide to proceed with the device, it would be introduced in 2018 at the earliest, another person said. The glasses may be Apple's first hardware product targeted directly at AR, one of the people said. Apple has AR patents for things like street view in mapping apps. It was also awarded patents for smart glasses that make use of full-fledged virtual reality. Apple is unlikely to leverage VR in a mass-consumer product, Cook suggested in October. Apple's challenge is fitting all the technology needed into a useful pair of internet-connected glasses that are small and sleek enough for regular people to wear.
Those Google Glass were so lame. Now it'll be trendy.
Apple is already too far spread out into things and neglecting their core products.
Let Snapchat waste their money on this instead.
I have a distant relative who is undergoing major medical problems, and if he or one of his med techs texts me while I'm out hiking with my club, there's no time to whip off my sunglasses, forage in my pack for reading glasses, and put those on to see the message. But suppose my sunnies had a VR overlay that brought out one selected iPhone function, as the Apple Watch does. By having it display texts, I could stay informed without breaking stride. So long as Apple avoided the optics, so to speak, of Google Glass, for many people, this could be a more practical wearable than the Watch.
If a company would just make a wearable that looked like the scouters from DBZ, I would throw all my credit cards at the screen!
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
If this product can fix some problems with Google Glass, I'll buy one at twice a reasonable price.
Google Glass never looked comfortable or stylish. The camera made everyone uncomfortable. The battery wasn't great, and the resolution was terrible.
If Apple can come in and make it look reasonable, omit the camera, take advantage of some recent semiconductor technologies like fin fets or fdsoi, and make a 800x600 or 1024x768 screen, they have a blockbuster on their hands. I want to be able to access my digital world (Facebook, games, email, texts), and I want it to evolve into something better than what I've got. Already I barely use my home computer daily, no longer multiple times a day. My cell phone is my current tether to the internet. I'm not particularly enamored with it, but if it becomes a secondary device for my glasses -- cellular modem, hi def screen for necessary tasks, GPS, CPU and whatever chips eat the most power -- that's a great benefit.
For me, visual displays are "complete" when they can use a laser (or whatever) to project onto my retina a fully focused image that's of a "normal" brightness, taking the same arc size of a 24" screen a foot away, with a resolution better than I can detect. Glasses are the next logical step to this panacea.