Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional Would possibly Have Simply Misplaced to Meta’s Ray-Bans

Keep in mind the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional?

Keep in mind? It was a giant, formidable swing from Tim Cook dinner and Co. — a $3,500 headset that allows you to expertise “augmented actuality” — or, if you happen to observe Apple’s calls for for branding — “spatial computing.”

Apple first confirmed off the Imaginative and prescient Professional within the spring of 2023, after which began promoting the machine in February 2024, and since then … you actually have not heard a lot about it.

Except you have seen periodic articles about how the machine hasn’t taken off, so builders aren’t constructing for it, which makes it more durable to promote, which makes builders even much less prone to construct for it, and…

Anyway. Apple will not come out and say it, but it surely appears like Apple has kind of forgotten concerning the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional, too.

The corporate has stopped engaged on a less expensive, lighter model of the headset, Bloomberg studies, so it will possibly deal with a brand new line of light-weight AI sensible glasses — like the sort Meta has already been promoting.

Reporter Mark Gurman, who could be very wired into all issues Apple, says the corporate nonetheless plans to launch a brand new model of the Imaginative and prescient Professional within the close to future, that includes a greater chip. However a greater chip will not meaningfully change the issues individuals appear to have with the Imaginative and prescient Professional: It is costly, cumbersome, and nobody appears to know what you are imagined to do with it.

Or in Gurman’s phrases: “Apple executives have acknowledged the product’s shortcomings in personal, viewing it as an overengineered piece of expertise.”

All of which looks as if a significant defeat for Apple: Not solely are individuals not excited by a really high-profile new product from the corporate — but it surely’s now chasing after Meta, an organization Apple ceaselessly feuds with.

It could be an actual twist if Meta, which has by no means really succeeded with {hardware}, could lastly pull it off by doing essentially the most Apple-like factor: taking a half-baked product class, and doing a greater job of it.

I can definitely think about many extra individuals shopping for Meta’s new $800 (and up) Ray-Ban Show glasses than Apple Imaginative and prescient Professionals within the close to future. (Although I’m seeing social media complaints about Meta’s retail rollout, which kicked off this week.)

And it simply could also be that glasses are certainly the model of face computer systems that lastly take off. Google has additionally introduced plans for glasses that look and function loads like Meta’s Ray-Bans, although it has but to truly begin promoting them.

However! The one factor we actually do know, as of October 2025, is that we now have but to see any signal that a lot of individuals wish to put on computer systems on their faces, it doesn’t matter what dimension, form, or weight they’re. The most important tech firms on the planet have been making an attempt to make this occur for years — and have poured tens of billions of {dollars} into it — and to this point it simply hasn’t occurred.

It is necessary to notice that the older model of Meta’s Ray-Bans — those the corporate has been describing as a shock hit — have solely offered a few million models of their first 12 months and alter. That is basically a non-event for client electronics.

Perhaps that may change because the tech will get higher, and extra sturdy — the massive change on this 12 months’s Ray-Bans is a show on the precise lens, so you may get textual content messages, or maps, or different information out of your telephone, beamed proper into entrance of your face.

And I proceed to suppose there’s apparent enterprise makes use of for this tech — think about the glasses on manufacturing unit staff, or cops, or docs, or anybody else who needs info with out having to swipe on their telephone.

However we have but to see regular individuals carrying this stuff in regular, non-work settings. So till/except we do, it is exhausting to declare that anybody has totally received, or misplaced, this race.