Apple’s ‘Atlas’: What is it and what does it mean for Vision Pro?

Just a few days ago, we heard rumors that Apple is cautiously looking into launching its own version of smart glasses sometime in the (distant) future.

Now, it appears that the company is getting a bit more serious about the product.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple has launched a new initiative, codenamed “Atlas,” with the aim to see where the competition, as well as Apple’s own employees, stand on the topic of smart glasses.

It’s unclear whether the company has started building a product yet. For now, the Atlas initiative reportedly consists of “gathering feedback from Apple employees,” with additional focus groups planned for the future. Bloomberg’s report claims the actual product could be “years away.”

This is fairly typical for Apple, which often tests the waters of a new product category with internal focus groups, to get a better understanding of how they use existing products. Keeping it all in-house allows Apple to officially stay silent about the products it plans to develop.

The report has no other details on what Apple’s smart glasses might look like, other than the (hypothetical) assumption that the company might combine a simpler form of smart glasses — à la Meta’s Ray Bans — with AirPods-like audio capabilities.

But it’s probable that Apple will be taking a good, long look at Orion, Meta’s recently unveiled smart glasses which look almost like regular glasses, while allowing the wearer to see and interact with virtual objects overlaid on the real world. Snap also recently introduced a new version of its augmented reality glasses Spectacles, but don’t expect to see either model on the market for at least a few more years.

Apple, of course, is not without experience when it comes to mixed reality. Its own Vision Pro has been lauded as the best you can buy, though the high price and lack of truly compelling use cases has kept the user base small. Rumors swirl about the follow-up to the Vision Pro; right now, it appears that we’ll get an upgraded version next year, while the rumored cheaper variant has been internally delayed.

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Despite the Atlas initiative, there’s no indication that Apple’s smart glasses will hit the market any time soon, so it’s likely that the Vision Pro — or perhaps an upgraded version with a new chip — will remain the company’s only headset for the next couple of years.