I work in the AR space and it is incredible how much Apple is preparing their entire platform for a massive push into AR. For years they have been laying a very robust groundwork with their APIs (ARKit, RealityKit, SceneKit), the inclusion of LIDAR on their iPhone 12 Pro / iPad Pro, and likely the entire iPhone 13 line. These are all things that are effectively gimmicky and seem like failures with little uptake, but all of it is just prepping for the inevitable headset in the very near future.

They are going to absolutely dominate the market so completely.

That baffles me sometimes. A lot of people see some features that they think of as gimmicky on their own. But then all of the sudden Apple releases something new that utilizes all those little features and combines them to something groundbreaking.

The addition of UWB to phones was another prime example of this. It makes airdrop moderately easier now, big deal, but locating objects accurately in space with high resolution is a huge problem for AR, and with airtags Apple will have way more experience with this technology in real world situations than anyone.

You make an extremely good point. One could guess that a first version of AR glasses would be not unlike the functionality of the watch - a few Complications, some Notifications, simple apps for stuff like navigation/music.

They have all of that, powered by a tiny system-in-package and a little battery.

They can't even make a pair of headphones under 300 grams.

AirPods must outsell AirPod Pros by what, 100 to 1?

Each AirPod weighs only 4g.

260g https://www.apple.com/uk/shop/product/MXJA2ZM/A/beats-studio...

Fair enough but they would have to change out the Apple design language. I find it odd that we seem to assume Apple would do this for a headset and not headphones though.