- AirPods with cameras are reportedly an active Apple project
- Don’t expect them soon – this will be in the early stages
- There are potential issues with hair, hoods, hats and more
We’ve been hearing for a while now that Apple is working on camera-equipped AirPods, and a new report says that they’re in “active development”.
The report, from Bloomberg, doesn’t go into any more detail. But it ties in with previous reports from the same source that say Apple sees camera-equipped earbuds as an interim step until AI-packing smart glasses are practical and affordable.
I’m not so sure, because just like Vision Pro there are some very significant obstacles to come. And some of those obstacles are literal obstacles rather than metaphorical ones.
Opinion: AirPods with eyes could be even more niche than Vision Pro
Let’s assume that Apple can do the tech equivalent of putting a quart into a pint pot, with some of the tech that currently takes up so much room in Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses made small enough to stick in an AirPod. That in itself is a big ask – it’s one reason why Vision Pro is so big and Apple’s own smart glasses are still years in the future, if they arrive at all – but if Apple does solve it there are still significant obstacles to overcome.
The thing about in-ear cameras is that they need to be able to see beyond your ears. And if you’re not a short-haired man in California, that means there are potential obstacles: long hair is the most obvious one, of course, but for reasons of warmth, religion or fashion there are also hoods, hats and other fabrics to think about too.
There’s also the same question that, for me at least, applies to the Vision Pro. Yes, it’s magical and clever and amazing and all the other superlatives. But what is it actually for? What will it actually do to make your life better and to justify the price tag?
The answer, inevitably, appears to be AI. But right now AI is frequently hopeless, and Apple Intelligence is hopeless-er – so much so that the only reason I haven’t turned it off on my iPhone is because doing so makes Siri on my HomePods become completely unusable.
And I’m not alone. In December 2024, some 73% of iPhone owners and 87% of Samsung phone owners said that AI added “little to no value” to their devices. Perhaps this is why Apple has delayed the launch of the full AI-infused Siri for a while longer, while it develops it further.
Apple has a long tradition of launching devices without full understanding their most impactful purpose – it did it with the iPad, and again with the Apple Watch; both products took a while to find their niches – and I worry that unless they’re designed to enhance another product such as Apple’s smart glasses, then eyeballing AirPods may have a similar trajectory.
Cameras in smart glasses – privacy issues aside – make sense. But cameras in your ears may be too limited a prospect to ever really live.
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