The Future of Apple Augmented Reality Wearables Through the Lens of Steve Jobs & His Legacy

Today is the 10-year anniversary of the death of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs. To commemorate the occasion, Apple has posted a message and a mini-documentary on its website. But beyond Jobs' visionary accomplishments, this anniversary is also an opportunity to peer into the possible future of what Apple has in store in the first decade...

Oct 2021

Facebook Outage Takes Down the Metaverse, Oculus Quest & Ray-Ban Smartglasses Users Impacted

On Monday, the social media giant Facebook suffered a massive outage that, as of this writing, is still in effect. The company's flagship services, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are all currently inaccessible. But one unexpected development is that this outage is also hurting Facebook's "metaverse" products, including Oculus Quest users...

Oct 2021

Market Reality: NASA AR Launches, Smartglasses Showdown, Vuzix Secret Lab, Magic Leap Turns the Corner

The beginning of autumn has delivered a number of new augmented reality developments, and we're on top of it. This week, NASA launched several major new initiatives that involve AR as an essential piece of the puzzle. Also, Magic Leap's history turned a major new corner, while one mainstream retailer move could hint at an early advantage in the growing...

Oct 2021

Microsoft HoloLens 2 & Unity Used to Highlight the Threat to Endangered Whales at the Smithsonian

Although the enterprise use cases for the Microsoft HoloLens 2 continue to impress, the arts community just can't stay away from the best augmented reality headset on the market. The latest example comes from a new exhibit that highlights one of Earth's most powerful but vulnerable sea creatures: orca whales. • Don't Miss: Microsoft's HoloLens...

Oct 2021

What Is the Difference Between Facebook Ray-Ban Stories, Snap Spectacles, & Amazon Echo Frames Smartglasses?

The emergence of Facebook's collaboration with Ray-Ban to launch Stories smartglasses has finally put an exclamation point on a new category of smartglasses: the pre-augmented reality wearable segment. And while the Facebook device isn't particularly groundbreaking in terms of features already explored by other wearables, it does distinguish itself...

Oct 2021

NASA Launches First Woman to Moon via AR App, & Delivers Interactive Visit to New Space Telescope

The team at NASA is in full mission preparation mode as they prepare to send a new team to the moon for the first time in decades via the Artemis program in 2024. But one of the key points of interest in that upcoming mission is the fact that NASA will also be sending the first woman to the moon. In conjunction with that mission, the space agency...

Sep 2021

BlueJeans Video Conferencing Giant to Launch Native Google Glass App for Remote Assistance

If you're a normal, non-corporate video conferencing user, you may not have heard of BlueJeans, but in the corporate world, the software has long been a major staple when it comes to remote meetings. Now the company is finally catching up with the rapidly unfolding wearable augmented reality device segment by adding Google Glass to the mix. •...

Sep 2021

Vuzix Smartglasses Factory Reveal Gives Another Glimpse of Next-Gen AR Wearable

Away from the hype around Facebook's smartglasses, the high-end fascination with the Microsoft HoloLens, and the unending rumors about Apple's AR wearable is the small but powerful darling of the enterprise AR world—Vuzix. Well, now we're getting an inside look at where the wearable magic happens at the Vuzix factory based in unlikely confines upstate...

Sep 2021

NASA Integrates Microsoft HoloLens into Regular Maintenance Operations on International Space Station

As NASA nears the launch of another mission to the Moon in 2024, and a subsequent mission to Mars in the 2030s, augmented reality is increasingly being woven into the normal space operations to test various capabilities. The latest example comes via the current International Space Station (ISS) crew, several of whom are using the Microsoft HoloLens...

Sep 2021

Market Reality: Instagram Smartglasses, Oculus AR Gaming, Google AR Search, & Facebook Exec Shuffle

As we move toward the end of the year, the wheels of the augmented reality space continue to shift in major ways. Facebook is currently facing yet another round of public and governmental scrutiny over its smartglasses product, but we propose a different scenario that might have helped the social media giant avoid its current marketing issues. Also,...

Sep 2021