Steve Mann literally spent decades wearing a computer.
In the early 1980s, he wired a computer into a steel-frame backpack, attached a camera viewfinder to a helmet, and built his own wireless links so the devices could communicate. He called it WearComp and wore versions of it almost every day for 40 years, adding cameras, pendants, and a smartwatch videophone along the way.
Sound familiar? It should.
Gurman recently reported that Apple is developing smart glasses, a camera-equipped pendant, and AirPods with infrared cameras, all worn throughout the day and tied together through the iPhone and powered by Apple Intelligence.
Mann's vision of the future was hardware you had to wear. Apple's is a system you're already wearing.
Nobody in the 90s was going to strap on a steel-frame backpack. Mann's setup was heavy, custom-built, and made you look like an astronaut. The technology wasn't ready and neither was the world.
That changed.
Apple doesn't have to convince hundreds of millions of people to start wearing something on their wrist or in their ears. They already do. Meta's partnership with Ray-Ban suggests people will even buy smart glasses that look like regular glasses.
The closest competitors to what Apple is reportedly building are Android XR, a collaboration between Google and Samsung, and Meta. In both cases the approach depends on different companies building different pieces and trying to make them work together. Both are starting with AR and VR and could evolve into a broader wearable platform, but they're not there yet. Apple is the only one building the system end to end, designing the hardware, writing the software, and selling directly to the people who already use its products every day. Even the Apple Glasses frames are rumored to be designed in-house — a clear contrast to Meta's partnership with Ray-Ban and Google's with Warby Parker.
The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.
Mark Weiser, Xerox PARC, 1991
Mann carried the future on his back for forty years. Apple is trying to make you forget it's there.