The more I think about it, the more AirPods with cameras in the stems make sense to me. Long-term readers of this blog know that I’m bullish on AR as the future of interfaces, and until recently I considered glasses, or later on contact lenses, to be the primary interface to an augmented future.
But contact lenses are quite a way off, and we haven’t even managed to put high-quality screens in glasses that don’t make you look like a dork.
Now imagine wearing an Apple Watch, having an iPhone in your pocket, and using AirPods with cameras that somehow have a 360-degree view of everything around you. That could enable so many incredible use cases, all without you having to strap something new to your face.
Wearing AirPods is incredibly easy. I do it for hours each day. If they could see the road I’m walking on and tell me to “turn right just after that blue Toyota,” that would augment my reality quite a lot.
They could also do all the vaporware Google announced a year ago. The cameras could remember where I put my wallet, and I could ask Siri for its last location. A buzz on my wrist could show me a photo of the street corner and my wallet’s location on my Apple Watch or iPhone. There’s not much benefit in overlaying that information on top of what I’m actually looking at right now.
Other examples:
- Warnings when someone is overtaking you on a bike: “On your left.”
- Asking what that bookstore was called that you went into yesterday
- Finding the shampoo from your shopping list on a crowded shelf
The cameras obviously wouldn’t work well for people with long hair unless it’s tied back, and I doubt the photos or videos would be worth much anyway. But tying your hair into a ponytail and not taking creepy shots is a lot easier than wearing a weird-looking pair of glasses on your face all day, especially if you don’t normally wear glasses. And keep in mind that plenty of people already wear AirPods for hours every day.
I’m a bit surprised by this, but this could actually be a cool product.
