Apple will make privacy its priority in the face of the stigma attached to Meta’s smart glasses

The biggest challenge for Apple’s smart glasses will be getting rid of the privacy stigma that Meta and that have already been banned in public places such as courts, children’s areas and bathrooms.

Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman in his newsletter ‘Power On’ has given the details about one of the biggest challenges facing Apple with its smart glasses (codename N50), which it plans to present at WWDC in June 2027 for a launch scheduled for the end of that same year.

The delay in the arrival of Apple’s smart glasses has been due to concerns generated by the invasion of the privacy of the general public, who distrust Meta’s glasses, and who has led to bans in courtssuch as in the courts of New York, or in the casinos, bathrooms and children’s areas of Royal Caribbean Cruises.

For this reason, Apple’s Vision hardware teams that are in charge of developing the glasses they see privacy as the number one priority because of the animosity that these types of ‘gadgets’ are causing in people.

Gurman notes that some consumers feel uncomfortable when they are around people who carry this type of ‘gadgets’ with cameras, especially because They don’t really know if they are recording or not..

This is due to the misuse that Meta’s glasses have been given by users, as some have manipulated them so that the device does not show the LED that indicates that a video is being recorded.

Even though Meta has added protections to disable recording if the indicator light has been tampered with, the alarm voice is still active when a category of products that Apple is going to bet on in a big way next year. A crucial year as it is part of one of the most important product cycles in its history, as it will be the year of the iPhone’s twentieth anniversary.

With all this panorama, as Gurman has learned, Apple’s proposals for its smart glasses are going to go from prioritizing local processing on the device itself to eliminating facial recognition functionsor the possibility of developing new privacy features, both hardware and software, that are not available in any of Apple’s current products.

In fact, they are already working on a prototype in which the camera has been completely removed and which offers the aforementioned experiences. There is another model, according to Gurman, in which the entire camera system only It would serve to see the world around the user to make queries to the AI ​​and the option to take photos and record videos would be denied. In some ways, it is similar to the new AirPods that Apple is already working on and which come equipped with a camera, aimed at the visual intelligence functions of the iPhone.

The technology company already knows that it will need several years to update the software, perfect the guidelines and collaborate with regulators to optimize the experience that its glasses will provide, although this will not prevent some users from continuing to misuse them.

Likewise, if the company makes its gadget a success, The benefits of wearing Apple glasses will be multiplesince users will be able to access a hands-free experience with Siri, music playback and calls, and with autonomy that will allow them to use them throughout the day.