The line from Google Glass to Apple Vision Pro

Abner Li | Feb 2 2024 - 1:45 pm PT

In a few hours, I’ll get to use Apple Vision Pro for the first time. It’s frankly a moment I’ve been waiting for since April 4, 2012.

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On that day, Google released a short video called “Project Glass: One day…” on YouTube. This “early concept video that was made when Project Glass was just getting started” profoundly shaped my vision of the future. It made a compelling case of what to expect from augmented reality and how it can be used in your day-to-day life. I think it’s still the best “demo” of AR to have ever been released.

It ingrained the idea that augmented reality is what comes after the smartphone, and that the next stage of technology involves relevant information being overlaid in your line of sight exactly when you need it. Meanwhile, I made the jump to how unlimited high-resolution floating screens that are so much bigger than a phone’s display could replace laptops and desktops for productivity, as well as TVs and game consoles on the entertainment front. In many ways, glasses (which might eventually include contact lenses) might be the last form factor before we get into the wild world of brain–computer interfaces and implants.

Given the pace of mobile technology and miniaturization at the time, as well as youth-based naiveté, I thought the post-smartphone era was not too far away. I additionally believed Google would be at the forefront of that future given the mixture of Glass, Google Now, and Android Wear. What Google released between 2012-2015 was truly a whirlwind of technological progress (that has since been killed).

Of course, the last 11 years, 9 months, and 29 days has thoroughly disabused me of that notion. From display to battery – but maybe not processing and camera – technology, we are nowhere near AR glasses that look like a regular pair of frames. Meanwhile, all that work Google did in the first half of the 2010s on AR, and later Daydream, has more or less been scrapped.

Rather, the smartphone is more entrenched than ever and the primary computing device for most of the planet. Smartwatches are pretty good right now, but wearables like headsets/head-mounted displays are still pretty nascent. Meta has led that charge, while Apple’s device is here and should be joined by a Google-Samsung device by year’s end.

Headsets are very different from glasses, but what makes me absolutely giddy about Vision Pro is how it’s the closest thing to actually realize Google’s vision from software and hardware to the user experience.

While concept videos are easy, execution is not. It sure seems that Apple has made science fiction into a reality that is ready to hit store shelves.

I’m happy that I can finally experience parts of that concept and future in a shipping consumer product almost 12 years later. It’s truly a shame that Google isn’t at the forefront of AR and that its upcoming effort is in no way a continuation of the vision it offered in 2012.