Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. has canceled a project to build advanced augmented reality glasses that would pair with its devices, marking the latest setback in its effort to create a headset that appeals to typical consumers.

The company shuttered the program this week, according to people with knowledge of the move. The now-canceled product would have looked like normal glasses but include built-in displays and require a connection to a Mac, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the work wasn’t public. An Apple representative declined to comment.

The project had been seen as a potential way forward after the weak introduction of the Apple Vision Pro, a $3,499 model that was too cumbersome and pricey to catch on with consumers. The hope was to produce something that everyday users could embrace, but finding the right technology — at the right cost — has proven to be a challenge…

The decision to wind down work on the N107 product followed an attempt to revamp the design, according to the people. The company had initially wanted the glasses to pair with an iPhone, but it ran into problems over how much processing power the handset could provide. It also affected the iPhone’s battery life. So the company shifted to an approach that required linking up with a Mac computer, which has faster processors and bigger batteries.

I was initially puzzled by this report until I read the paragraph about how the device was intended to be connected to an iPhone, similar to how Apple Vision Pro connects to an external battery back. That product has been rumored for years, and I remember briefly touching on it in an article before Apple Vision Pro launched in 2023. Apparently, Apple’s design crew decided to make it Mac-dependent later in the process, which Gurman cites as one of the key reasons the project was canceled. In that April 2023 article, I wrote:

This product feels like a stepping-stone to the future that Apple is actually working on and believes in, which is AR glasses. That product has real potential — potential where it’s the only product you’ll have to carry and potential for ambient computing. Imagine glasses with Apple’s own, in-house LLM built-in that can guide you throughout your day, wherever you are — essentially, an Apple Watch turned up to 11.

Until a few days ago, I was still under the assumption that Apple Vision Pro was a mere stepping stone for an eventual AR product that ran visionOS but was connected to either an iPhone or an external compute puck — and I was correct until Apple decided to can the project. I don’t think Apple will ever discontinue the Apple Vision Pro line of virtual reality headsets because AR glasses inherently can’t be immersive, and Apple has already invested time and money — though perhaps not enough — into creating 3D, 180-degree immersive experiences for visionOS. They won’t disappear, and there will be multiple generations of Apple Vision Pro.

But AR glasses could be what the iPad was to the iPhone. Initially, the iPad ran iOS, just like the iPhone, and the two products largely functioned the same. They were just meant for different circumstances: the iPad is a sit-on-the-couch kind of lounge computer, whereas the iPhone is fundamentally an on-the-go internet communicator. They’re not mutually exclusive purchases. I could see a future where people own both a pair of Apple AR glasses and an Apple Vision Pro for home use — they would serve separate markets but run the same operating system.

If Gurman is to be believed — and I’ve been burned by not trusting his reports before — all of this has gone with the wind. Apple is no longer working on any imminent AR product whatsoever and is instead focusing its extended reality efforts solely on a low-cost Apple Vision product. Gurman, in typical fashion, doesn’t explicitly say that, but it’s understood that the Mac- or iPhone-connected AR glasses are a predecessor to an independent set of eyewear, à la the Meta Ray-Ban specs. Nobody believes Apple Vision Pro will tote the battery pack forever; it’s just a temporary measure to reduce the headset’s weight until Apple can figure out how to bring it into the main computer.

Similarly, I don’t think the AR glasses will forever require being tethered to a Mac. Gurman likens Apple’s now-defunct project to the Xreal One, a set of clunky glasses that mirrors a Windows computer desktop in AR, but I think Apple’s product would’ve just relied on the powerful M-series processors of modern Macs to handle visionOS processing. It’s practically impossible to fit an M2-like chip in the frame of slim glasses, so Apple would have to outsource that computing somewhere to run a full-blown operating system. But while Gurman’s outlined challenges are mostly true — it’s unintuitive, requires the purchase of a separate device, etc. — I think it’s a good first step to ship by 2027.

Last September, Meta demonstrated its AR glasses prototype to select members of the media, called Orion. It, too, offloaded computing to a little compute puck tethered to the glasses and also required users to strap on a highly engineered wristband to detect hand and finger movements even when out of the cameras’ view. I brushed it off as impractical because that’s largely true, but more importantly, I said it didn’t matter what Meta showed in a highly controlled media environment because Apple was already at work on a real product that would ship soon. Now, I can’t make the same point. Apple is, once again, behind, and if it doesn’t ship something by the end of the decade — recall we’re already more than halfway through — its winning streak is over. Apple Vision Pro is undeniably an embarrassing flop, and it needs to catch up quickly.

I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have any plan to make AR glasses ever in its future — as indicated by Sunday’s Gurman report in which he said Apple “explored making smart glasses that would rival the digital Ray-Bans offered by Meta” — but the first stage in that journey has been canceled. It needs to move quickly instead of canceling projects that were already moving. The Mac-connected AR glasses would’ve been a great middle point and something to ship in just a few years. But now, Apple has no plans for real hardware, rather focusing its efforts on conceptual software. That’s a troubling development.


I’m quite frustrated with Apple as of late. Apple Intelligence is an abysmal disaster in the headlines for ridiculous summarizations of simple news stories. Apple Vision Pro, its product of the decade, is too heavy and has zero compelling content for users. The iPad’s software is still lackluster with no rumored improvements. The company has no plans for the future other than a midrange slim version of the next iPhone, and its chief executive is cozying up to fascists while still being faced with the wrath of a 10 percent tariff on all Apple products.

Here’s Apple’s situation as of February 2025: iPhone prices will increase by at least 10 percent in September, the last leg of Apple Intelligence in iOS 18 is still not even in beta, the full-blown large language model is set to come out in spring 2026, iOS users are lambasting Apple Intelligence summaries for being utterly laughable, there’s no plan to update Apple Vision Pro this year or make up for a lack of content, and all of this is happening in a pivotal time for world politics where the president of the United States is starting a trade war with our country’s allies. Who knows what happens to the Chips and Science Act in a few months? What happens to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s Arizona plant?

The only Apple product I truly find myself excited about is Apple TV+. The second seasons of “Shrinking” and “Severance” are incredible and Apple TV+ storytellers and filmmakers are being nominated for Emmy awards left and right. By contrast, every other product category Apple competes in is a disaster with more helplessness on the way. I’m not saying Apple is dying, but it needs to sort out a strategy for the next four years, after which Tim Cook, its chief executive, must retire to hell. Apple products will become more expensive in the coming months and the company is falling behind in an already bad technology market.

Apple’s three main goals for the Trump administration should be artificial intelligence, AR, and geopolitics. Currently, it’s finding itself falling behind in all three.