GoKawiilA decade ago, I wore AirPods in my ears and people wondered what the heck I was doing. Nobody asks that question anymore: AirPods have become one of the greatest product success stories of the Tim Cook years at Apple, iconic white buds that I see people wear practically nonstop.
The Vision Pro was another story.
No everyday person was ever going to spend $3,499 on a mixed reality computer, but Cook's pitch for the Vision Pro definitely tried to overcome a public discomfort with VR headsets, even to the point of projecting the wearer's eyes onto the Vision Pro's glass front. Having the user be present while wearing the Vision Pro was considered a serious priority. But for a number of reasons, the Vision Pro, even in its latest M5 iteration, just hasn't crossed that acceptance threshold. It's big, it's unusual, it's rarely seen in public (for good reason), and it's expensive. It certainly never turned into AirPods.
But I think a lot about faces and tech. Apple has figured out a way to make AirPods work, and it even broke through an acceptance barrier of having our own faces be scanned as biometric authentication to unlock our phones. Face ID was no small hurdle when it debuted in 2017. When I reviewed the iPhone X, I had to explain this strange new world of face-focused logins. I shaved my beard to test its recognition.
The Vision Pro is impressive, but it never overcame social acceptance limits. Josh Goldman/CNET
Now that Tim Cook is stepping down in September and handing CEO duties to Apple's hardware chief, John Ternus, there will be plenty of expectations and opportunities for Apple. AI is a huge part of the challenges that still need to be solved. But also, among all of Apple's ongoing personal tech explorations -- our pockets, our wrists, our ears -- Apple is still trying to figure out faces. Will it be under Ternus that Apple finally cracks the code?
I'm used to putting my face in the forefront of testing tech, because my own awkward journey is everyone's. What I feel, good or bad, wearing earbuds or a VR headset or smart glasses, might be an echo of what someone else feels. And when it comes to smart glasses -- a whole emerging landscape of AI-powered devices being sold by seemingly everyone except Apple (so far) -- tech companies are pushing people's acceptance threshold. Including my own.
Smart glasses are increasingly being seen as a privacy threat or a socially unacceptable device, since a number of Meta-focused reports of data privacy leaks and incidents of public recording in inappropriate places. The concerns are coming from two directions: Are camera-connected glasses covertly recording others without their consent? Also, are AI glasses safely handling the things we do record and share in ways that won't expose that information to others?
Meta's Ray-Ban Displays, released last year, push the boundaries of tech. But acceptance and function are still missing pieces. Tharon Green/CNET
What Apple could bring to smart glasses
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