In a note to clients — as noted by MacRumors — analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says the rumored “Apple Glasses” — an augmented reality/virtual reality/mixed reality head-mounted display — will have an advanced eye tracking system and possibly iris recognition that oculd be used for things such as approving payments with Apple Pay.
“Apple’s eye tracking system includes a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitting end provides one or several different wavelengths of invisible light, and the receiving end detects the change of the invisible light reflected by the eyeball, and judges the eyeball movement based on the change,” he says.
The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) thinks Kuo is spot-on about the eye-tracking features. However, as even he admits, iris recognition depends on hardware specifications.
When it comes to Apple Glasses, such a device will arrive this year or 2022, depending on which rumor you believe. I think Apple will at least preview it before the end of the year.
It will be a head-mounted display. Or may have a design like “normal” glasses. Or it may be eventually be available in both. The Apple Glasses may or may not have to be tethered to an iPhone to work. Other rumors say that Apple Glasses could have a custom-build Apple chip and a dedicated operating system dubbed “rOS” for “reality operating system.”
