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Welcome back! 🍎
Here’s the latest with Apple.
Apple Smart Glasses are coming
OpenAI’s huge acquisition is a threat to Apple
& more!
📊 Poll
Last week, we asked: Do you think Apple will raise iPhone prices?
Here were my favorite replies:
Yes - “I don't see Tim ever taking a margin hit on their iPhones in order to absorb the higher material costs due to tariffs and as a result, I do believe they will raise their pricing to offset them. And in an effort to avoid upsetting the political apple cart (pun intended), they will likely disguise the price increases and attribute them to new features or enhanced design elements.”
No - “Wishful thinking, nervous laughter 👀”
This week: Would you buy Apple smart glasses? Why or why not? More on this later.
Would you buy Apple Smart Glasses? |
🗞️ The Latest
🕶️ Apple Smart Glasses
MacRumors
This week, we heard that Apple plans to release their Meta Ray Bans competitor next year. Here’s the latest.
Apple is expected to launch a set of smart glasses by the end of 2026.
These smart glasses would have cameras, microphones and speakers, allowing them to analyze the external world and take requests via Siri.
They could also handle phone calls, music playback, live translations, and turn-by-turn directions.
However, these are not expected to have AR capabilities. So don’t expect a display inside the spectacles.
These will also feature a proprietary chip designed to manage the multiple cameras integrated into the glasses.
Apple will start producing large quantities of prototypes at the end of 2025, so expect some further details around that time.
The AR glasses with built-in displays are still years away.
My take: I use the Meta Ray Bans nearly every day, so I am excited for these. Even if they just match what the Meta glasses do, but with better build quality & deeper integration into the ecosystem, I’ll be happy.
If you’re wondering what I use the Meta glasses for so often: they’re sunglasses, so I wear them anytime I leave the house. While wearing them I take phone calls, listen to music/podcasts, ask Meta AI random questions, and record videos without my phone.
With that being said, I am most excited for Apple’s future AR glasses
📲 Should Apple Be Worried?
OpenAI
Former Apple design chief Jony Ive will be working with Sam Altman and OpenAI to develop new consumer hardware products. Here’s the latest.
OpenAI is acquiring io, the hardware-based AI startup co-founded by Jony Ive, in a deal valued at nearly $6.5 billion.
Ive and his design firm, LoveFrom, will continue to be independent, but they will “take over design for all of OpenAI, including its software.”
About 55 hardware engineers, software developers, and manufacturing experts will join OpenAI as part of this acquisition.
WSJ reports that Altman and LoveFrom have been collaborating on a secret project for the past 2 years.
The first device, set to launch in 2026, will allegedly be pocket-sized, contextually aware, and screen-free. And no, it isn’t a pair of smart glasses.
The product will be capable of being fully aware of a user's surroundings and life, will be unobtrusive, able to rest in one's pocket or on one's desk, and would be a third core device a person would put on their desk after a MacBook Pro and an iPhone.
In the same way that the smartphone didn’t make the laptop go away, I don’t think our first thing is going to make the smartphone go away. It is a totally new kind of thing.
Jony recently gave me one of the prototypes of the device for the first time to take home, and I’ve been able to live with it, and I think it is the coolest piece of technology that the world will have ever seen.
My take: Jony Ive is one of the greatest product designers in history, so this is a big deal.
While OpenAI is still a long way from competing with Apple in consumer hardware, this is one of the first truly credible threats to Apple’s future we’ve seen in a very long time.
Keep in mind, Ive led design for the original iPhone, AirPods, MacBook Air/Pro, iPad, Apple Watch, and more. So, I’d expect these OpenAI products to have that Apple-like design that we all know and love.
But since this secret product is expected to be a ‘first of its kind,’ I don’t expect it to gain mass popularity right out of the gate.
Some seem to think that Ive is too old and past his prime, but I disagree. A legendary product designer like Ive will always have an eye for great design and innovation, especially with a talented team around him.
In the interview with Bloomberg, Ive called the Humane Pin and Rabbit R1 “very poor products,” so I’m hopeful that the first round of products will not flop like those two.
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