Apple Developing AI Wearable Pin (9to5mac.com)
- Reference: 0180634606
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/26/01/21/211226/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin
- Source link: https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/21/apple-is-working-on-an-ai-powered-wearable-pin-report/
"Apple's pin, which is a thin, flat, circular disc with an aluminum-and-glass shell, features two cameras -- a standard lens and a wide-angle lens -- on its front face, designed to capture photos and videos of the user's surroundings," reports The Information, citing people familiar with the device. "It also includes three microphones to pick up sounds in the area surrounding the person wearing it. It has a speaker, a physical button along one of its edges and a magnetic inductive charging interface on its back, similar to the one used on the Apple Watch..." 9to5Mac reports:
> The Information also notes that Apple is attempting to speed up development in hopes of competing with OpenAI's first wearable (slated to debut in 2026), and that it is not immediately clear whether this wearable would work in conjunction with other products, such as AirPods or Apple's reported upcoming smart glasses. Today's report also notes that this has been a challenging market for new companies, citing the [3]recent failure of [4]Humane's AI Pin as an example.
[1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/apple-developing-ai-wearable-pin
[2] https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/21/apple-is-working-on-an-ai-powered-wearable-pin-report/
[3] https://slashdot.org/story/24/06/06/1817211/humane-said-to-be-seeking-a-1-billion-buyout-after-only-10000-orders-of-its-ai-pin
[4] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/04/11/2113258/humane-ai-pin-review-roundup
I think I saw this Orville Episode (Score:2)
Will it also feature Like and Dislike keys to inform viewers of whether what they are watching is worth watching?
Re: (Score:2)
Yep, don't you dare try to dry hump a statue!
AI in a PIN (Score:2)
Thats incredible.
How many numbers is it
(PINs used to be 4 numbers, but I see that Apple now use 6 )
Lest you think Big Tech aren't psychopaths (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the purpose here? The smart glasses craze (among Big Tech, thankfully not among normal people) at least had the notionally positive idea that a HUD would be useful under certain circumstances.
This appears to exist purely for the purpose of getting people to get angry at one another and to destroy privacy. Why the fuck wear this? The only possible use is to film other people without consent, and do so constantly, not because you want to film some Karen having a meltdown or an ICE Officer... uh, having a meltdown, but because you want to piss everyone off.
This is absurd. Big Tech seems to just want to destroy society at this point. Why? Because we didn't want Bitcoin? Because we thought VR headsets that aren't immersive are impractical? Because we don't want AI in everything? Is this some kind of revenge for that or something else?
Re: (Score:2)
Never attribute to malice what can easily be explained by incompetence.
"Big Tech" doesn't want to destroy society, even if doing so would be just fine for a dollar. The reality is that Apple is creatively bankrupt and fears that others will lock them out of the "next big thing". No one else has any ideas either, but that's another issue. The industry has sold itself on AI even though they don't know what it is, what it does or how to deliver it. What they do know is that their customers are not demandin
They think they're creating Star Trek comm badges (Score:2)
And they think LLMs are the library computer.
They're all fucking morons.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't understand iFans. This is just an AI training tool meant to feed training data to Apple, but the user foots the bill. As long as it has a half-eaten apple logo on it, ArchieBunker will buy it. Tim Cook could shit in a box, stamp an apple logo on it, and you bet your ass ArchieBunker would buy it and use it in any way you can imagine, even holding it the way Apple says he's supposed to hold it.
Re: (Score:2)
They just want to figure out what the next killer product is. Smartphones succeeded like nothing ever has. Watches did okay. Glasses turned out to be too hard, at least for now. Pins are easy, but kind of useless.
I would be very surprised if Apple actually released one. "Working on" or "developing" means somebody thought they should check out the idea just in case there was something to it.
flop (Score:2)
I'm calling this out as a flop out of the gate. It's a product in search of a market that I think would be even more niche than the Apple Vision Pro.
Re: (Score:2)
You would think that they would have learned some lessons from Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 failures back in 2024. Hell, even the Apple Vision Pro release from around that time serves as a warning that not every wearable device with an Apple logo on it will be wildly successful.
But, I guess that we need a really epic flop to to help kick off the bursting of the great AI bubble of the mid 2020's?
Just... why? (Score:2)
Someone, somewhere, must be convinced there's a market for this sort of thing - but I sure can't figure out what it possibly could be.
Re: (Score:2)
My first thought was these rumors are often off. It could be more appealing if it was audio-only and if they used the voice from star trek's computer it might have a chance for a while. Perhaps the camera rumor is about the watch.... which also doesn't benefit from having a camera.
If you are adding voice and a camera wearable it only makes sense for glasses.... which they may be working on as well. Not that the glasses make too much sense yet...when their VR can evolve into glasses then it would be somet
Re: (Score:2)
It could be a success if they just used it for short messaging between people and teams. though just a good headset for a phone can do that... so add 1 more button and charge a ton ? A pin doesn't seem that useful. A pin camera means we don't have to hold up our phones. I suppose this could take off for those who don't experience life directly anymore but instead thru their phone's camera?
I didn't get why people wanted the watch. So they don't have to pull out their huge phone! ? You can tell the time
Re: (Score:2)
> So are we moving to a brick wireless hub in our pocket ("phone") that connects to parts of our body so we never have to worry about taking it out or sitting on the screen?
It's not a bad idea. Wireless lets you put the computing brick somewhere convenient and put lighter sensors and displays where they need to be. The watches are probably useful for certain people. My mother puts her phone in her purse where she can't hear or feel it. A watch solves that problem. I think the real reason lots of people get th
Instead of glassholes (Score:5, Funny)
We're gonna get pinheads
Pinholes! (Score:2)
I really hope this doesn't take off. I HATE the creep of AI enabled cameras into public.
Re: (Score:3)
Spy-wear.
Other than send audio and video into the cloud for data miners to pick over, what does it actually do for the wearer?
Personally, as someone who has real trouble remembering names and faces, I loved the idea of "virtual nametags"; once I met a person and linked their name to their likeness, an overlay projected onto my glasses would display their name over their head. Awesome. Until I realized the absolute privacy nightmare that such a device would represent.
I still want one... if it could wo
Re: Pinholes! (Score:2)
Ok I could totally see the case for a locally done name retrieval. I wouldn't recognise myself if I didn't brush my teeth twice a day in front of the mirror. Would certainly help reduce the awkward interactions of not remembering someone.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure you could make something like that. Do you trust that the other guy's also doesn't store images?
You could also learn to say "hi, I'm sorry I'm terrible with names."
Re: (Score:2)
I predict if it ever sees the light of day it will die a horrible death by being overpriced and underwhelming.
128gb, at 5k, 60fps using the Apple Watch battery . The battery will last all day long (18 hrs or so) if you don't do much more than ask for the time. Use the camera it could last 30-45 minutes but you'll run out of storage after about 7 minutes. Dare to stream and your battery will probably last 15 minutes.
Just one more thing.. for only $400 more you can get 256gb of storage (what a deal)