The Case for AirPods with Cameras

The more I think about it, the more AirPods with cameras in the stems make sense to me. Long-term readers of this blog know that I’m bullish on AR as the future of interfaces, and until recently I considered glasses, or later on contact lenses, to be the primary interface to an augmented future. But contact lenses are quite a way off, and we haven’t even managed to put high-quality screens in glasses that don’t make you look like a dork. Now imagine wearing an Apple Watch, having an iPhone in your pocket, and using AirPods with cameras that somehow have a 360-degree view of everything around you. That could enable so many incredible use cases, all without you having to strap something new to your face. Wearing AirPods is incredibly easy. I do it for hours each day. If they could see the road I’m walking on and tell me to “turn right just after that blue Toyota,” that would augment my reality quite a lot. They could also do all the vaporware Google announced a year ago. The cameras…