Apple’s augmented reality glasses project is reportedly on hold - The Verge

Another Apple rumor from Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman focuses connected the company’s efforts to make game-changing augmented world glasses that could marque picking up your iPhone obsolete — if they’re ever built.

The contention to make consumer-friendly AR glasses is successful afloat swing, contempt notable misfires similar Google’s abandoned Glass task and Microsoft’s present enterprise- and military-focused HoloLens.

Meta, Google, and others are moving connected akin projects with names similar Project Iris and Nazare, but present Gurman reports Apple’s program to merchandise a acceptable of glasses pursuing the motorboat of its archetypal mixed world task — a high-end headset acceptable to debut this twelvemonth — had already slipped from 2023 to 2025 and is present connected clasp indefinitely.

Apple’s archetypal sensor and camera-loaded headset could outgo astir $3,000, combining dedicated VR hardware with a desktop-like M2 CPU, akin to the ones wrong the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini computers Apple announced this morning.

Gurman writes that a cheaper mentation utilizing iPhone-like hardware launching successful 2024 oregon 2025 mightiness beryllium capable to person a starting terms person to $1,500, oregon astir wherever Meta’s Quest Pro is now. This besides follows his earlier reporting astir the beingness of Reality Pro / Reality One trademarks, which could assistance delineate the antithetic classes of headsets.

That pricing doesn’t suggest wide adoption and availability of mixed-reality headsets are conscionable astir the corner. Still, Apple’s emblematic high-end hardware strategy aligns amended with that than launching thing akin to Meta’s cheapest Quest VR headsets.

The different atrocious motion is that if creating a acceptable of lightweight, all-day wearable AR glasses is presently retired of scope for Apple for “technical challenges,” it gets harder to ideate that Google’s Project Iris, oregon the Meta glasses that Mark Zuckerberg reportedly hoped to motorboat successful 2024, volition beryllium acceptable to deterioration anytime soon.

However, possibly they’ll find occurrence based connected alternate approaches. Google announced it would statesman investigating prototypes retired successful the satellite past fall. At the aforesaid time, Meta’s three-step Nazare / Artemis / Hypernova plan starts with a acceptable of glasses that volition lone beryllium fixed to developers. The study doesn’t mention Apple’s alteration successful plans arsenic a effect of fund cuts, but with layoffs and cutbacks striking large tech companies, navigating the existent economical concern whitethorn beryllium arsenic overmuch of an contented arsenic figuring retired however to marque waveguide displays enactment amended oregon to plan a artillery that fits connected a instrumentality made for someone’s face.