Limitless Podcast - Behind Apple's AI Smart Glasses: Their Last Chance (and Greatest Hope)

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

Apple's rumored upcoming AI glasses, codenamed N50, are set to redefine wearable tech with a display-less design and enhanced Siri integration. We analyze the competitive landscape, focusing on Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses and emerging rivals from Snap and Google.------🌌 LIMITLESS HQ ⬇️NEWSLETTER:    https://limitlessft.substack.com/FOLLOW ON X:   https://x.com/LimitlessFTSPOTIFY:             https://open.spotify.com/show/5oV29YUL8AzzwXkxEXlRMQAPPLE:                 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/limitless-podcast/id1813210890RSS FEED:           https://limitlessft.substack.com/------TIMESTAMPS0:00 Apple’s AI Glasses3:21 Apple’s Supply Chain6:24 The Foldable iPhone9:02 The Future of AI Glasses11:34 Meta’s Struggles in Hardware16:01 Google’s New Approach19:36 Market Potential and Competition22:58 Closing Thoughts------RESOURCESJosh: https://x.com/JoshKaleEjaaz: https://x.com/cryptopunk7213------Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:https://www.bankless.com/disclosures⁠

Apple's brand new AI glasses just had a huge leak. Now, a decade ago, Apple formed a team to build AR glasses. They've been doing this for a long time. They plan to ship three different headworn devices by 2022. Now, as a lot of us know, only one of these has been shipped. It's the Apple Vision Pro, and by all intents and purposes, it flopped. The device is incredible, but people didn't care. Meanwhile, Meta quietly partnered with Rayban and sold over 10 million smart glasses. So Apple is now scrambling to catch up, and they're not alone. We have Google, Snapchat, at Samsung and a slew of Chinese companies that are all converging on the same thesis at the same time. The next great compute platform is going to be on your face. It's glasses. Everyone's building

glasses. This is the biggest land grab for hardware since the iPhone, and it all revolves around this new AI platform that everyone's building. So there's a lot to unpack here, starting with Apple and the brand new leak that just came out yesterday on their entirely new strategy when it comes to glasses. Out of all the AI gosses that are coming out, this is the one that I'm most excited about this leak from this week basically reveals that Apple is building a new pair of AI glasses and they're codenamed N50. Here are some of the top takeaways for these glasses. They're going to be displayless, which means that, in contrary to Meta's reband displays, you're not going to be able to see some kind of AR projection on the lens. It's going to be completely

displayless, which also means that the glasses are going to be slimmer and sleeker. It's going to come with maybe one to maybe two cameras, which is going to capture your entire surrounding. And the idea here is it's kind of a voice-based device where it links to your iPhone. It captures photos for you. It can capture video as well. And it feeds it into your core device, which is your iPhone. What I'm most excited about, though, is its integration with Siri, which is not something that a lot of Apple users typically say.

You're going to have to unpack that. Okay, okay. Like, I am one of those people. I have Siri turned off on my phone. It is absolutely terrible. But what I'm most excited about is Siri 2.0, which they're also going to reveal and release around the same time as these glasses at the end of this year, which is an integration with Siri AI. Now, for those of you who haven't been keeping on track, Apple is releasing an AI-powered version of

Siri, which is going to plug into Google's new Gemini model, and that's going to make it a hell of a lot smarter, but it's also going to make your phone and devices way more smarter because it plugs into the Apple ecosystem. So you can imagine asking Siri to do something, and it actually does it instead of getting the temperature wrong, Siri. So I'm most excited about that, and this is of course, part of their three-pronged strategy where Apple is really leaning into AI-powered devices. The rumors are that they have three of them on the line here, these new AI-powered glasses, but also a pair of airports which have cameras that sit in your ears, as well as a new pendant slash puck-like device, which sounds very similar to Open AI.

So I'm excited about Apple's push into this. I think they have the best shot at building the best AI hardware or whatever the form factor eventually looks like, and I think they're going to cook matter. Yeah, the three types of devices is really exciting to me, because I would love some AirPods with cameras on them, something that gives me a little bit more of the visual AI context. Now, in terms of timelines, we have some interesting information on this. WWDC, which is the developer conference annually that's held by Apple. That's where they originally released Apple Intelligence that flopped. And that's where they're likely to release the new version of Apple Intelligence.

That is in the first and second week of June. I believe it starts June 8th, which is when we'll get the keynote. That's what we'll kind of understand what the new series is going to look like. what the new AI software stack is going to look like. And then in terms of the hardware, when we can expect to get these glasses codenamed N50, with a consumer launch sometime next year. And the way it's going to act is that there's four frame frames currently in testing.

These are four different glasses frames. A lot of them that we're familiar with, like the Wayfair style, rectangular, the oval kind. And what's interesting is, I believe they're the first company that isn't partnering with an actual glasses distributor. So Luxottica is the biggest in the world. They basically make everyone's glasses. and they just white-laced them to whatever brand they're selling to,

Apple's planning to make their own using acetate, which is more durable and luxurious than standard plastic. So as always, we can expect Apple to do it better than everyone else, make them much more durable, make them look beautiful, hopefully. And the idea is that you're just going to be able to take some of the sensors from your iPhone, strap them to your face and go on your way. And this is the first iteration of these glasses, right? It's like we're getting the augmented sensor suite first,

where you're just strapping cameras and microphones and speakers to your head. Then eventually later on, a few years later, we'll get the actual displays where it can augment reality over your eyes. So I suspect it's going to blow some people's minds when they just suddenly see this new form factor released by Apple because not a lot of people know this is coming. Yeah, I just want to spend a quick moment on the integrated build that Apple is doing here because as you mentioned, a lot of the other major companies, including meta themselves, which is like trillions of dollars, they still rely on external partners. Now, Apple's main advantage, and they've done that with the iPhone and a bunch of other devices that they've built, is they build it in-house. And it is incredibly expensive and very hard to pull off. There's a reason why companies go with third-party vendors, because spinning up the supply chain is incredibly hard. But the fact that Apple has been able to pull that off previously and currently is their moat.

I saw an article or a headline this morning, Josh. Remember, we covered the MacBook Neo, which is like their cheapest new, most powerful laptop. They revealed over the weekend that they were running out of a particular component to build that laptop. Come Monday morning, they've secured the capacity and they're spinning out an additional 10 million units. So no one has that weight to swing around, but Apple. They still dominate the majority of TSMC supply when it comes to like AI hardware as well. So although no one talks about Apple being an AI frontrunner, they very much have the supply chain mode. And they're going to play that into these hardware glasses, which I'm really excited to see.

The second thing is, I don't want anyone to forget that Apple has the distribution mode right now when it comes to hardware. And that is a very strong levered pull that they can play on any AI software product that they launch. Imagine if tomorrow they turn on Siri AI Assistant 2.0, 3 billion devices then get access to that. And overnight they become like the biggest AI company in the world. So I'm pumped about these devices. I hope they actually deliver this time. Siri has been delayed for like well over a year. at this point, but I'm going to remain optimistic for this one.

Well, this is their last chance. If they can't figure it out this time, then they're in serious trouble. I think to the point of the supply chain and Apple just kind of being the one to move the rate around, we have another example that I don't think a lot of people are aware of, which is the new foldable phone that's on the market for later this year. Now, what we're seeing on screen here is a dummy rendering, or I guess it's a real product, but it's a dummy unboxing of what the iPhone folds will look like. And it is pretty cool.

Now, Apple's always late, but when they do it, they do it when they do it when they technology is right. And this looks pretty interesting and exciting. Chances are we're going to get this announced in September with the new iPhone 18 Pro, I believe that's what's coming this year. And it's just a nod to a new frontier of hardware that's coming, that even though a lot of people have released, I mean, really good intelligence, really good foldable devices, Apple is the one who is going to be the kind of late entrant, but the one who has all of the leverage in the world to make it great. They make displays now that have no bend in the middle, so you don't see a seam anymore. It just seems like it's finally ready for mass market and they're going to do it.

But of course, they're not the first ones. Everyone other than Apple has already made a foldable phone. Yeah, hang on a second. I was going to say, like, the tech is already here, Josh. Like, we already have a frontier phone. Why would you buy this foldable phone? When you have Huawei purer X-Max, dude, like look at this thing. Yeah, look familiar.

This thing is kind of badass. So Huawei Chinese company, some of the best engineers in the world in terms of manufacturing mobile devices. They basically took what I imagine were the Apple renderings and said, we're just going to front run you and make this ourselves. And they pumped out something that looks gorgeous. You'll notice that the front facing screen is a little fatter than you're used to. A lot of the foldables that exist on the market today have that kind of vertical orientation for the aspect ratio. The reason is because if you unfold this chunky thing into two, it creates a aspect ratio that's more relatable for video and widescreen applications. You'll notice that

it kind of looks like an iPad mini. And that makes it much more better for video content, that's 16 by 9, kind of wider. I think it's going to have a lot of useful applications. I'm going to be a buyer of this one. I'm excited for a folding phone. I think it's cool.

I think the technology is exciting. We'll see how it plays out, but Apple getting to foldable is pretty cool. Going back to the glasses, it is tying into a larger trend around people believing that the future form factor for AI and just any frontier technology

or consumer technology within hardware is going to sit. on your face, whether it's going to be a pair of mystery earbuds that Open Air is reportedly working on that have cameras and ingest all the information around the world, or if it's a pair of glasses that either have a display or don't that sit on your nose and can pick up everything that you see and hear. We're kind of like working towards that kind of thing. We had Apple Vision Pro, which was like this thick, very expensive device that had to sit on your face. They're kind of winding that down and spinning up a smaller, sleeker, thinner version of that, which is going

to be glasses. So we're trending in that way. And I believe in the first half, of 2025, the market share or the market for AI glasses kind of doubled, and we're seeing similar accelerations at the start of this year as well. Now, of course, we can't mention AI glasses without mentioning meta, and that sounds like a positive reinforcement. It isn't necessarily that. But meta has, for better or worse, taken the lead in AI glasses for now. Their rayband displays have been pumping out millions of units. I think they're on track to deliver about 30 to 40 million units by the end of the year, which I have no idea how they're doing that because their launch demos, I think two out of three failed. Apple is going head to head

with meta and they think that they can win primarily because they're building everything in house. They have the supply chain to be able to pull off a sneaker design and they have the ecosystem to support it. Yeah, this is going to sound ridiculous, but I really, I believe that the Applevision Pro is like the most impressive consumer hardware device ever made in terms of technology that's baked into a single product. It's just expensive. And they're There's no developer support, and there's not many good use cases, but the technology is incredible. So it's really just a ticking time bomb until they're able to compress that into something that's wearable on your face, that doesn't weigh 10 pounds, that doesn't give you marks on your face,

the whole thing. And it's kind of weird that right now meta is the leader. I mean, like you mentioned, the glasses market is up, or wearables at least, is up 110% year over year. AI power glasses specifically are up a two and a half times multiple. And meta is the leader. So what we're seeing on screen now is the ray band displays that, like you remember, leave a lot to be desired. They're this like kind of augmented interface that sits on top of the glasses that sits on the real world. It doesn't have tracking. It's static imagery.

It's not great. I think one of the more interesting things that meta has been doing is the peripherals to this device. Like they're the neural band, which was that EMG wristband that reads your electromagnetic signals from your muscle pulses as you move your hand around. So they're working on this unique way of interfacing. with these classes, I think is interesting. But still, it's so early and they're so bad that the fact that this is the market leader really is reflective of the fact that the form factor isn't there yet, but it's coming soon. And powering these devices with the next generations of AI that we're

going to have is going to be that next iPhone level hardware. This is certainly what the next form factor is going to look like, along with many others, but this is one of the more important ones that I certainly think we're going to see. I'm hoping it doesn't all look. like this demo that I'm showing on screen here, where you have the CEO of trillions of dollars worth of a company, you know, messing up on stage where like he tries to call his friend and it fails. And this was like one of like three demos where it just didn't work.

The point that is being made here is you could have all the money in the world, but it's still hard to pull off a really good piece of hardware and then scale it, right? Like we've seen this play so many times where like I think snap, I forgot what the original snap capture. a device that they had where we were talking about this before we started recording, Josh, where you could get this from a vending machine. The spectacles, right?

They were, like, incredibly hard to scale and get into everyone's hand. And so it kind of just kind of, like, hyped up and then, like, just crash because, like, no one could get their hands on these things. And the similar thing is being seen with meta-AI where, like, you know, everyone wants to kind of use this thing, but, like, they're still struggling to scale to even 30 million units. But the demand is still there, and that's great. And like you mentioned, they're working on a suite of different devices.

Meta is not just working on spectacles. they're working on these different types of wristbands, but they are behind when compared to hardware giants, such as Apple, who have spent a lot of time thinking about the design UX of these different things and have the hardware pipeline to back it up. So I, listen, I'm going to remain optimistic somewhat on meta being able to pull this off, but we've said this on previous episodes, and I'll say it again,

hardware alone doesn't win. You need the software mode, and meta is a social media platform. I don't know if anyone, that uses apps outside of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which are huge apps in itself, but doesn't have an operating system or operating suite behind them. And I think meta is going to fail when it comes to that personally. And what's interesting is meta's not the only social media network that is pivoting to glasses. I mean, Snap, you mentioned the spectacles, but they're actually working on a iterative version on top of the old spectacles, which are this, this mammoth

of a pair of glasses that is funny. You asked me if this was real, and I said, I don't think so. And then there's a picture of Evan Spiegel actually wearing these. This is what they actually look like. And this is the current state of hardware. So it's interesting seeing incumbents like Snap or meta focus on this. Clearly they think that owning the hardware stack is going to be important. But again, they're at odds with what their company is actually good at. When you think about a company like Apple, and listen, I respect meta and Snap for doing this in public, for actually sharing their prototypes because that's very much what it feels like they are. Even the meta glasses, they don't feel like they're really refined products versus Apple who's just kind of doing it all behind the scenes, but it's not good. And you could kind of see the current state

of the hardware based on these photos of Evan Spiegel, the CEO using them. They're just big, they're clunky. They don't work well. The technology is not quite there. And I guess the question I have for maybe you or anyone who's listening is, how long does it take for the technology to get good enough and who's actually going to be capable of doing it? Like when Apple releases these classes next year, are they going to be something worthy of people wanting to actually go out of their way and purchase them and put them on their face when all the sensors are currently in the phone sitting in your pocket? I personally think that there are two players in this game that can win it. Apple is the obvious one that you just mentioned. The other one is probably some formation of Google

and their Android investment at least. We have an example here where we're looking at an Android XR display glasses from Google. Now, Google Glasses was famously very, very early, but definitely too early. It was this ugly contraption. Everyone kind of like tried it out. It failed in the consumer world. It kind of got adoption in the enterprise world and then slowly petered out and died. That was back in 2013. But now Demis Sissibis referenced, I think, in Davos recently, that they're working on Google Glass or Google Lens 2.0. So we're going to get another form factor. Now this example that you're seeing on your screen is not exactly that. This is in partnership with Warby Parker, Samsung and Android. So you've got a bunch of different partners kind of feeding into this to build a hardware and software component.

And I have to say it looks sleeker and slimmer and, dare I say sexier than any of the other glasses that I've seen, certainly better than the meta raybans. Now, I don't know how well it is or how good it is functionally. And I am still marred by the experience or the review and feedback that happened from Google Glass 1.0. I'm convinced now is not a coincidence that we have like, what, six companies, six big companies, working on this particular form factor. It also tells me that that's a signal that the hardware components are now good enough to fit into a slimmer device.

My hot take on this is you need some form of display on the lenses, Josh. And I don't know whether you disagree with me here, but if you're feeding all this data into your eyes, you kind of want to be able to do things. And in order to do things, you can't just speak to Siri. You want to be able to see your screen.

I don't want to be pulling out my phone every now and then I'm like staring at a screen. You might as well put the screen on the lens. Now, I don't know if that hardware component is good enough yet. It still leads to chunkier glasses like we saw with Snap. So that's where I'm at odds right now. It will need a screen, but I really like the suite of devices angle because it allows you to like kind of choose your own adventure when the core of it really is that AI. Now, Google's glasses, these look the best by far.

These are certainly the best performing glasses. They're not publicly available yet. But I believe that the suite of devices that Apple is going with, like the AirPods, the Perpods, the Perkins, the perhaps pendant and the glasses is the right one because you are going to want that interface, right? Like you're going to want some sort of visual component to engage with the outputs of this AI. But we have to ask the question is like, why is everybody building this? Why is there the sudden race for glasses? And it seems like everyone just wants to own the platform in which the AI is interfacing with the end user, where there is a clear world in which there's going to be this

resistance away from being hooked on your cell phone, maybe 12 hours a day like a lot of people are. and owning the stack in which you can, I mean, get the answers from the AI that you want and ask questions and have it to understand things about you. And it's not only unbelievably valuable as a customer who you can monetize, but also just in understanding the preference stack. And when you think about meta and Snap and what they're selling, a lot of it, I mean, we talked about meta last week in the episode on the new model. A lot of it is just understanding the preferences of its users. And if it has something strapped your face 24-7, that is collecting information about you, they can just sell much more interesting and novel things. That's kind of why I

imagine a lot of these companies are really shifting focus to it. And we have the same thing that's happening with Open AI too, where they're working on the suite of mystery devices as well. Yeah, I mean, we've seen several leaked clips, but I don't know if it's real. Josh had an experience over the weekend where he thought he spotted a bunch of people wearing the Open AI earbuds. But I mean, you've got to retell the story. I was walked. All right, so I'm walking down the street. And there's this group of people who are speaking what I believe is Chinese. They didn't speak a look of English. And I'm just kind of like passing by them because the street was kind of crowded. And this woman and her friend had the cuffs,

like the ear cuffs that we saw from the open AI teaser. And I was like, no way. And I should have stopped to ask them. I was a little intimidated by the fact that they did not sound like they spoke English. But it was interesting and it put me down a rabbit hole that led me to find the Xiaomi free clips, sorry, the Huawei free clips, which are these earbuds that, that they're that look exactly like the leaked earbuds from the Scansguard Super Bowl commercial. There he is. Alexander Scalzgard for those of you who don't know. Scars.

Yeah. I always get these names wrong. So it's funny because we still don't really know the origin or what Open AI is working on. It could be a troll campaign. It could be a real leak. We don't know. We do know that they're working with Johnny AI. We do know that they're working on these hardware products that are going to be offered soon.

And I just cannot wait until we get those answers. Because in terms of software, OpenAI is the best software AI suite by far. And when it comes to building an AI first operating system, they have the advantage. I hope they can deliver with hardware. And we'll just have to wait and see on that one. Yeah. So in terms of how all of this plays out, Josh, here's my take. And I want to hear yours.

I think we're getting close to these hardware AI glasses becoming a reality, being sleek and slim, not being embarrassed enough to put one of these things on your face, basically. I think that we're probably going to see the first versions of these, or the sexy versions of these. I'm excluding meta from this debate. By the end of the year, or maybe early, 2027, I think the best leaders are going to come from Apple to start off with. But I think a similar number of different startups are going to compete with Apple.

I know there's a bunch of other startups such as Sesame that is working on this, and I think physical intelligence as well. So the point is, glasses are going to become a popular form factor. And the second thing is, this race in particular is important because Apple showed you that hardware distribution is the actual mode when it comes to any kind of software technology revolution, which might be a hot take, but you need some kind of hardware bridge or component. A lot of the AI nerds think that it's purely going to be humanoid robots. Apple's betting and Meta's betting that it's going to be a suite of devices. So I think those two things are going to play out, and I think we're going to get it by the end of the year. I'm hoping so. Google Glass 2.0, some form of Xiaomi or Huawei's copycat from Apple's product

and then Apple's product itself. And there's also this one last underrated venue here, which is the prescription glasses marketplace. I had no idea that prescription eyewear is a quarter trillion dollar industry annually. Wow. Like $250 billion of the eyewear market is prescription. And that's only 70% of the total eyewear market.

So the eyewear market in general is huge. The amount that is prescription is gigantic. And I really believe that even if you don't deliver on a fully augmented reality experience, just creating a beautiful set of glasses with a novel feature set that actually works is probably pretty powerful and powerful enough to get a lot of people to start buying these things. We've seen that with meta. I think we're going to continue to see that with a lot of other companies. So that is an interesting thing.

But then there is the new platform wars, right? it's like if meta has their glasses, am I going to want to buy them because now I'm constrained to Instagram and WhatsApp and Facebook and I just don't want to use their stuff. So it's like we have the platform we're sitting in one side. We have the hardware distribution where almost everyone depends on these Qualcomm chips. Apple's really the only one that builds their own internal chips and Google perhaps might be doing the same too. But there's a lot of these different factors. Everyone's kind of competing from their own unique advantage angle. And the question is who's going to win and who's going to deliver the best product to market first

that we're actually going to buy. I remember, Ejiz, you were kind of excited about the metaglasses. That excitement faded away quickly. There is no real good hardware that people are excited to buy. And whoever is able to deliver that is going to unlock a huge market opportunity for this new AI-first operating system hardware integration. And I'm really excited to see how it plays out.

Yeah, Open AI team, the hardware team specifically, Johnny I, if you happen to be watching this video randomly. Give me that device. Give me that device. I'm rooting for you. All right. I want to try these glasses out. or earbuds or whatever the hell you're building,

let us play with them. I can't wait to test out some of these new hardware products. But until then, we are going to be sitting here and reporting on it. Josh, we're going to be speculating about it, and I can't wait to get these things on our faces soon. But I believe that is the end of the episode, and that is basically the state of play on all things, AI hardware or glasses to be specific.

I'm excited about Apple's upcoming release. I think meta is doing a good job for now, and I think there's going to be a bunch of startups that eventually catch up. Josh, do you have any parting thoughts? That's it. Other than the fact that I'm just excited for someone to deliver something great. I just want a product that I can use.

I'm kind of sick of my old stuff. I want something new, but it needs to be good. And so far, there is nothing good. So hopefully, if it's not this year, it's certainly going to be next year where we get the first good products you could put on your face and enjoy them. I would love to know which products you are most excited about. Of all of the companies we discussed today, whose glasses product are you going to buy? Or whose peripheral product are you going to buy?

Are you going to get an Apple? pendant, are you going to get the AirPods with the cameras? I'm just kind of curious how everyone's orienting themselves around this new paradigm shift. That would be fun. The second ask is just to share this with your friends, as always. To rate the show five stars if you're listening on a podcast player, wherever you get your podcast. If you like video, we publish video on YouTube and Spotify. You can really find us anywhere. Don't forget to share with your friends. We have a newsletter you could subscribe to. And yeah, just like, thanks for being here on the mission. We have been doing so well. Numbers are going up into the right. We're just having record week after record week. And it's all

thanks to the support from you people listening. So thank you for turning in like every single day. We publish these four times a week. Just appreciate it. And we have another really packed week plan. So I'm excited to keep chugging along, getting this content out the door. And yeah, doing it together. See you guys tomorrow. See you. Yeah. See you guys tomorrow.