APPLE

AirPods Cameras Make So Much More Sense Than a Watch Camera

I still don’t see the point of an Apple Watch camera

I guess they’d have to look a bit different. Photo by and of author.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has told us that Apple is working on AirPods with cameras, though not cameras for taking pictures. He says these will be infrared sensors intended to know what you are looking at. The primary use seems to be for AR in Vision Pro, noticing hand gestures, giving you Visual Intelligence identification without using your phone, or for enhancing spatial audio experiences.

None of that sounds very exciting to me, but I could be wrong. It is less confusing than a camera in my watch, though.

What would be exciting would be if these were higher-end stereo cameras. That’s unlikely for now, but it’s not too hard to imagine a future version. Or real cameras could be in the smart glasses Gurman has also mentioned. Meta already has said it plans stereo cameras in its smart glasses this year or next; it seems unlikely that Apple isn’t thinking the same thing.

Oh, the possibilities

I’m not sure how Meta would handle the power and processing needs in its glasses, but I think it’s a safe bet that Apple would just shoot compressed video over to your phone for processing.