Apple reportedly ends its Mac-connected Augmented Reality glasses project

A report from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg claims that Apple is shuttering one of its more advanced projects: a set of Augmented Reality glasses that connect to other Apple devices.

It’s an inside-baseball look at some of the product decisions that happen at Apple, but while often rumored, these AR glasses have never been officially announced.

The glasses were seen within Apple as a natural evolution beyond Vision Pro. Vision Pro was always going to be a niche device, not only because of its sky-high price ($3,500 U.S.) but its cumbersome nature. Even among VR headsets it is heavy and requires a tether to a battery pack.

The AR glasses would resemble normal glasses and let users look through lenses in the real world, but contain integrated displays that superimpose rendered graphics on them. Code-named N107, Apple wanted this device to be lighter and more affordable by having them tethered to your iPhone, which would do the bulk of the processing work.

That didn’t really work out, apparently. The iPhones were limited in their processing capability, and using the AR glasses drained the iPhone’s battery too rapidly. So, Apple reportedly switched gears to making them tethered to a Mac, which has beefier processors and bigger batteries.

Recent prototypes were not received well, according to Gurman, and it’s easy to see why. If a Vision Pro is cumbersome with a wire going to a battery pack in your pocket, how could you ever expect users to remain tethered to a MacBook? The Vision Pro needs more portability, not less.

Gurman says the Vision Products Group is still working on a successor to the Vision Pro, including updated versions that resemble the original model. But it’s not clear if there is another true “AR Glasses” project within Apple or if that road is now closed. Apple earlier canceled a project code-named N421, Gurman reports, which were to be AR glasses brought to market about a year after Vision Pro. The team is also still working on several of the underlying technology technologies that would have been used in the glasses.