Wait, does this mean that the Apple Glasses are back on the table?!

Guess what? 2023 is almost over, which means that New Years is over the horizon and that means that 2024 is just over the corner, which means that the Vision Pro is getting closer to launch and I can’t wait to see how it will become one of the best VR headsets around!

That being said, I must be honest: I’m hoping for Apple to say something about its smart glasses project. And in a way, what we’ve seen of the Vision Pro is making me hopeful that Apple has the right frame of mind to make a proper pair of AR glasses too.

And while I was super-bummed to see that insiders such as Mark Gurman think that the Apple Glasses project has been canned, I haven’t given up on the idea yet. Why? Because I believe in the concept and I believe in the Big A.

And patent submissions like this certainly help keep my faith alive.



Now, before we enter the world of my crazy conspiracy theories, I need to take a moment to remind you all to take this with a grain of salt. Big tech companies submit patents all the time and very few of those ever translate into product releases.

But while I certainly can’t go ahead and claim that this means that Apple is reviving its smart glasses project, I can certainly say that I really, really, really want that to be the case. But what’s my basis of hope here anyway?

Well, Apple was recently granted 85 patents — as you do, you know, #TypicalTuesday — and among them was one for “Head-mounted Device With Tension Adjustment”. Don’t you just love how patents work?

The patent includes an insane amount of descriptors that can easily give you both a headset or smart-specs vibe. So how can we possibly tell which one of the two is it about, given that Apple is rumored to also be working on a cheaper Vision Pro model?

Well, here’s my logic: some of the new patents are directly related to the Vision Pro and are outlined as such. And by the sound of the one I’m talking about here, this is a lightweight device and I don’t imagine even a Vision Lite to be this… Well, lite.

Oh! And also there’s the image that you can see above and that looks a whole lot like glasses and not like a bulky headset. Right? Right?

So! Is this enough to say that Apple is once again up to shenanigans regarding my favorite product type that doesn’t exist yet? Maybe! Time will tell, and if I had to guess: it will do so either around the release of the Vision Pro or after it.

In either case, 2024 is looking to be a good year for XR.