As per rumors, Apple Glasses is a form of wearable AR device that will usher in a new era of augmented reality for the company. While the recently announced Vision Pro focuses on augmented as well as virtual reality, Apple Glasses will reportedly focus only on the former. Shutting down of the Google Iris project is a bit of a breather for Apple as Google Iris was shaping out to be an AR product that could disrupt the wearable AR segment if rumors are to be believed.
Google to follow the ‘Android Plan’
For the unaware, Google was the first company to bring and popularise AR Glasses in the form of Google Glass in 2013. However, the $1,500 device failed to garner attention from users and Google had to finally shut down the sale of the devices. Business Insider reports that Google has realigned its AR strategy and the tech giant will focus on developing operating systems for AR products instead of developing hardware itself. The company is working on “microXR” platform that would be licensed to other AR hardware manufacturer companies. This is similar to what it did with Android, except there will be no Pixel devices in this scenario. Google would like to develop an operating system and platform for companies that make AR/VR hardware. The Google Iris project had been in progress at Google for several years. The tech giant even made several acquisitions and hired prominent AR engineers for the Iris project. The project saw several iterations before it was scrapped by the company earlier this year, as per Insider. Frequent changes in the strategy for the product frustrated several Google employees and it is cited as one of the reasons why Clay Bavor left the company. He headed the AR/VR efforts at Google for 18 years. Layoffs also had a role to play in the shutting down of the Google Iris project. If you remember, Google even demoed its AR glasses at the I/O event last year when the glasses were used to translate languages. Despite the news that the project Iris has been shut down, several Google employees are still hopeful that the company will bring AR hardware in the future. While it is not known when Apple will announce its AR Glasses, but with Vision Pro launching next year, we are not far off the wearable AR glasses from Apple.
