Apple explores fitness rings, AirPods with cameras, and smart glasses

Apple patent application illustration published in 2015 depicts smart ring device
Apple has explored the idea of developing new wearable devices — including a fitness ring, smart glasses and even AirPods with cameras — to broaden its Wearables, Home & Accessories category – one of its most important business areas.
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
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A few years ago, the Apple Inc. industrial design group presented an idea to executives on the company’s health team: a smart ring that would take health-tracking features from the Apple Watch and put them on your finger.
More recently, engineers at the company’s labs in Cupertino, California, have discussed the possibility of developing smart glasses… The glasses could provide audio (so users don’t have to wear AirPods) and take advantage of AI and cameras to identify things in the surrounding world…
For now, the ring idea is just that — an idea. The company isn’t actively developing such a device, but there are certainly people within the walls of Apple’s campus promoting the concept. The glasses, meanwhile, are in an exploratory phase known as “technology investigation” within Apple’s hardware engineering division. The company also is looking into other ideas, such as equipping AirPods with cameras… [which] involves company engineers figuring out how to fit low-resolution camera sensors into earbuds about the size of today’s AirPods. Such cameras could theoretically be used to capture data that would be processed via AI and assist people in their daily routines.

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MacDailyNews Take: Many times we’ve been on a run and wished we had a camera in our Apple Watch to snap a quick shot. We’d rather have that than cameras in our AirPods.
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