Apple’s eyes on the future
In his latest newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman writes that Apple is refocusing its efforts on a brand-new category that’s all based on Visual Intelligence. This is a type of AI that’s able to take a look at your surroundings and get a feel for the context of what’s going on. While we’ve already seen a glimpse of this technology in the iPhone 16 Pro, where you can take a picture of something and ask questions about it, the real goal here is to make this technology the center of a brand-new line of wearables.Apple is looking at several different ways of bringing this into your life, from more advanced AirPods that use technology to help you navigate your surroundings, to smart glasses that can read signs and show them to you in your line of vision, to a pendant that’s a small device that’s worn around your neck that uses cameras and other technology to serve as a literal second set of eyes.
According to Gurman, the idea behind it all is to go beyond simply searching photos and into a more real-time level of assistance. So, instead of saying “walk 500 feet,” the future device could say “turn left after the Starbucks.” It could even recognize the ingredients of a meal on your plate of food or remind you to get your mail when it recognizes that you are walking up to your front door.
Why this shift matters for you
It’s interesting because it appears that Apple’s direction is to make us want to stop staring at our screens all day long. By making the cameras and AI technology available on things like glasses or pendants, it becomes much more invasive in our lives.
When looking at the bigger picture, it’s obvious that Apple wishes to catch up to the competition by making their AI (courtesy of Google’s Gemini, of course) more aware of the world around it. While other companies have tried similar products in the form of a wearable AI device, they have yet to succeed, mainly because they attempted to replace the phone that users already have.
Seeing things in a new light
While the idea of a pendant that has a camera attached to it sounds a little gimmicky at first, I can see how Apple would be going in this direction. By making it into a piece of jewelry that doesn’t resemble a tech gadget at all, I think it could take off. I remember a time when many thought the Apple Watch seemed silly, but look where it is now!
Personally, the product that I’m most interested in would be the smart glasses. If Apple can get the design right and the glasses look and feel like regular glasses, being able to see directions and getting “who is this person?” reminders in my line of sight would be really useful. While I wouldn’t wear a pendant instead of a phone, to have it as an extra phone accessory? Absolutely.
