‘Apple Glass’

By now it’s not news that Apple has been working on an augmented reality wearable for some time; we’ve been hearing rumours of it for years, and these actually solidified when a leaked report surfaced from inside an Apple meeting last fall, suggesting a 2022 release for an Oculus-style headset, following by a more ambitious set of traditional glasses by 2023.

However, leaker Jon Prosser recently turned all of that on its head when he claimed to have news that Apple was planning to debut ‘Apple Glass’ — the normal spectacles — as early as this fall’s iPhone launch event. In fact, Prosser says, the only reason that Apple might be pushing it off to next year would be because of the ongoing pandemic limiting the number of media who would actually be able to be there in person.

It flies in the face of everything else we’ve heard, but Prosser claims to have reliable information, and he’s even seen prototypes. To be clear, he doesn’t say that Apple plans to release Apple Glass before late 2021 at the soonest, but that’s still a full year before the timeline that other leakers and analysts had been hearing.

Our take: It’s not surprising that Apple might already have prototypes in the works, but whether its figured out all of the bugs is another story. Apple definitely doesn’t want another AirPower debacle on its hands, and the timeline that it’s laid out suggests to us that it’s going to take whatever time it needs to do this right. While Prosser’s predictions aren’t impossible, it feels like he may be jumping the gun a bit here.