 Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Apple signs up employees to help evaluate the current smart glasses market. When Apple is looking to expand into a new area, it often holds on-campus focus groups to understand consumers' feelings about the current market. It held studies while it was developing the Vision Pro, AirPods and HomePod — and it's now doing it again with smart glasses. At the end of last month, it started conducting such research on this market, which includes models from Snap Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc. These smart glasses aren't augmented reality goggles, but they do let consumers shoot video, make phone calls and listen to music. It's a category where Apple is suddenly playing catch-up, despite all the work it put into the bulkier and pricier Vision Pro. The company typically limits these focus groups to employees to help keep its plans secret. With smart glasses, the company could approach the category from a number of directions. That includes essentially creating a version of its AirPods in glasses form. It also could push to finally make true AR glasses — taking the Vision Pro experience and squeezing it into a pair of spectacles that people could wear all day. But we're probably at least five years away from an AR experience that would meet Apple's quality requirements. Meta and Snap have prototypes of such a product, and they too are still rough. I've tried them both, and they're not as far along as some reviewers would lead you to believe. In other words, you'll need to wait awhile before there's something worth buying.  The ultrawide display mode in visionOS 2.2. Source: Apple The Vision Pro's first killer app has arrived. Apple markets the Vision Pro as a standalone device (complete with powerful chips and a $3,500 price tag), but one of its best features is the ability to serve as a Mac external monitor. In June, Apple announced plans to make that feature even better, bringing a virtual curved monitor mode to the default size, as well as offering new wide and ultrawide monitor options. The company released a beta version of these capabilities this past week, and they are a game changer. In my view, the features represent the first true killer app for the Vision Pro. They provide a high-resolution Mac external monitor with what feels like an infinite amount of screen real estate. Before these new modes arrived, I was only using my Vision Pro occasionally to watch movies. Now, I'm back to at least trying to use it every workday. Apple should be marketing the new ultrawide display modes in a major way. It's that good. And if you've read my prior coverage of the Vision Pro, you know I haven't always been easy on the product. The wide and ultrawide options will be available for all Vision Pro users as part of visionOS 2.2, which I expect to arrive in early December.  Belkin's new head strap accessory for the Vision Pro. Source: Apple A hands-on test of the new Vision Pro strap from Apple (I mean Belkin). When Apple released its first promotional video for the Vision Pro back in June 2023, a quick scene showed a thick strap on the back of a user's head as well as a thinner piece of material that went over the top. That combination appeared to be a great solution to the device's weight problem, but Apple never released it. The Vision Pro shipped with two other options: the back strap alone and a dual band (two thin strips of material that go across the back and top of head). But now Apple's favorite accessory maker, Belkin, has released a version of the original top strap. You can buy this for $50 from Apple's website and use it with your existing back strap, which Apple calls the Solo Knit Band. The combination looks just like the prototype solution from 2023, and you can bet that Apple asked Belkin to make it. So why wasn't this released by Apple at the start? It could be the company didn't want its name on an accessory that confirmed a painful truth: The Vision Pro's default band is essentially unusable. So it turned to Belkin, which is owned by Foxconn Technology Co., Apple's manufacturing partner. I've been testing the new strap for the past few days, and I find it to be a significant improvement over both options included in the Vision Pro packaging. I already can use the Vision Pro for longer periods of time than before: It's comfortable for a few hours, rather than about 30 minutes. Apple should absolutely start including this type of accessory in the box and ditch the dual band. As I mentioned on X last week, Apple also is changing the way it displays the Vision Pro in stores. Right now, many locations have two Vision Pro-related tables. One has display models, as well as iPads offering more information on the device. The other is used for the actual Vision Pro demos. Now, Apple is combining those tables into one. This change was driven by two factors: Demand for the Vision Pro has dwindled since its launch nine months ago, and Apple wants to make room for new Macs that went on sale Friday.
 Apple's iPhone 16. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Apple names a new vice president of industrial design, more than a year after the last one left. When legendary Apple design chief Jony Ive departed in 2019, he handed the reins to a pair of deputies: Evans Hankey became vice president of industrial design, and Alan Dye continued his role overseeing human interface work. But then Hankey left Apple in the beginning of 2023 and recently joined Ive at his design firm, LoveFrom. Apple struggled to find a suitable replacement for Hankey — in part because of a talent drain in recent years. The company lost nearly every designer who worked under Ive, either to LoveFrom or retirement. Apple also worried that promoting one designer over others could bring further turmoil. So, in an unusual arrangement, Apple's designers reported directly to Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams. Things began changing again earlier this year when Apple named team veteran Molly Anderson as the new head of industrial design, with staff now reporting to her. At the time, I noted that Anderson was a senior director, leaving her below Dye's rank. But I'm now told that Anderson was promoted to the VP level a few weeks ago. That makes her Apple's first VP of industrial design since Hankey left. Even so, uncertainty remains. People on the team are bracing for more departures, and there are concerns about the group's reduced ownership of the product development process. Engineering and operations employees now have more clout in determining product direction than they did during the Ive days. | 
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