Apple is finally stepping into the smart glasses arena, and it’s doing so with one eye firmly on the reputational minefield Meta walked into. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the device — internally code-named N50 — is set for an unveiling at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2027, with the glasses expected to reach buyers by the end of that year.
The pricing is where things get interesting. Apple is reportedly aiming to compete in the US$200 to US$500 range, a bracket designed to go toe-to-toe with Meta’s wildly successful Ray-Ban collaboration. And this is where Apple’s problem starts.
Meta’s glasses became a hit largely because of the camera. Hands-free filming isn’t just the domain of so-called “glassholes” — plenty of ordinary people use it to grab candid shots of their kids or record a concert without holding up a phone. But that same camera has dragged the category into scandal. Reports of contractors in Kenya reviewing intimate footage for AI training, and creeps clandestinely recording women to trade clips online, have earned the devices the unflattering nickname “pervert glasses.”
For a company that has built its brand on privacy, that’s a serious liability. Apple is said to be weighing a few options. One is to ship glasses without a camera at all, leaving users with hands-free calls and audio playback. Another is a camera that never records photos or video — it would simply feed what it sees to on-device AI tools to help the wearer navigate their surroundings, an approach echoed by the camera-equipped AirPods rumored to be in the pipeline.
Here’s what we know about the hardware itself: the N50 will have no display. It’s expected to pack speakers for audio, microphones for calls and video capture, and a camera for images and AI data. Gurman describes oval-shaped cameras, unique colors, and multiple frame styles — suggesting Apple wants these to read as eyewear first and gadget second.
Crucially, Apple is reportedly steering clear of the features that got Meta into trouble. Gurman writes that the company will avoid facial recognition and lean on on-device processing. It’s also expected to skip anything resembling Meta’s proposed “super-sensing” mode, which continuously analyzes a wearer’s environment, and to avoid using customer recordings to train its AI models.
Meta, for its part, has begun damage control — pushing an update that disables the camera if a user tries to conceal the recording indicator light, and banning Instagram videos filmed on smart glasses that harass strangers in public.
The gamble for Apple is clear. Privacy-first restraint could be its differentiator, but it might also strip out the very feature that made the category take off. Whether shoppers want a camera they can’t film with remains the open question.
