- According to reports, airpods with cameras are an active Apple project
- Do not wait for them soon, this will be in the early stages
- There are potential problems with hair, bells, hats and more
We have been listening for a while now that Apple is working on Airpods equipped with the camera, and a new report says they are in “active development.”
Bloomberg’s report does not go into more details. But it is linked to previous reports of the same source that say that Apple sees the headphones equipped with camera as an interim step until smart glasses are practical and affordable.
I am not so sure, because like Vision Pro there are some very significant obstacles to come. And some of these obstacles are literal obstacles instead of metaphoricals.
Opinion: Airpods with eyes could be even more niche than Vision Pro
Suppose Apple can make the technological equivalent of putting a gallon room in a paint pot, with some of the technologies that currently occupy a lot of space in the goal glasses of Ray-Ban intelligence of Ray-Ban small enough to stay in an airpod. That in itself is a great question, it is a reason why Vision Pro is so large and Apple’s smart glasses are still years in the future, if they arrive, but if Apple solves it, there are still significant obstacles to overcome.
What happens with internal cameras is that they need to be able to see beyond their ears. And if you are not a short hair in California, that means that there are potential obstacles: long hair is the most obvious, of course, but for reasons of warmth, religion or fashion, there are also hoods, hats and other fabrics to think too.
There is also the same question that, at least for me, applies to Vision Pro. Yes, it is magical, intelligent and surprising and all the other superlatives. But what really for? What will you really do to improve your life and justify the price?
The answer, inevitably, seems to be AI. But at this time, AI is frequently desperate, and Apple Intelligence is desperate, so much that the only reason I have not turned it off on my iPhone is because doing so makes Siri in my homelessness to be completely unusable.
And I’m not alone. In December 2024, about 73% of iPhone owners and 87% of Samsung phone owners said AI added “little or no value” to their devices. Perhaps that is why Apple has delayed the launch of the complete Siri with infusion of AI for a time, while developing it even more.
Apple has a long tradition of launching devices without completely understanding its most shocking purpose: it did it with the iPad and again with the Apple Watch; Both products took time to find their niches, and I am concerned that, unless they are designed to improve another product, such as Apple’s smart glasses, then Airpods listeners can have a similar trajectory.
Chambers in smart glasses, apart from privacy problems, make sense. But cameras in their ears can be a very limited perspective to really live.
