Imagine you’re thinking about chairs, and you Google up some to try out in your living room. Or, you’re looking at a subway map in Tokyo, and you see suggestions on what routes to take that suddenly appear, translated into your own language. Google AR and Google Lens are getting there faster than you think. …
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Editors’ Note: This piece was first published on April 3, 2013 on the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call. What follows is the original piece. Martin Cooper changed the world when he made the first cell phone call 40 years ago. The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company’s DynaTAC phone while …
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This article was originally published on December 8, 2014 and is being republished today to commemorate Apple’s 43rd anniversary (April 1, 1976). At Apple, Bill Fernandez rode shotgun on the creation of the personal computer industry. He was on the original Mac team that made decisions that defined the modern user experience. He worked on QuickTime, which helped …
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During Huawei’s P30 launch event in Paris on Tuesday the company went all out on accessories. As well as two new phones, the company unveiled its own take on Apple’s AirPods, two new editions of its GT smartwatch and some smart spectacles. Built with the help of Korean eyewear company Gentle Monster, Huawei’s smart glasses mark a foray into a …
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Ask me to fix a broken car or motorbike, and you’d be out of luck. But that’s exactly what Microsoft wanted me to do. And the tool it gave me was its new mixed reality HoloLens 2 headset. After I slipped it on, a set of digital instructions popped up over an actual broken ATV, set up in a mock …
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Mixed-reality headsets like the Magic Leap One and Microsoft HoloLens cost thousands of dollars. Even smart glasses like the Vuzix Blade cost around $1,000. At prices like that, it’s hard to imagine augmented reality (AR) headsets ever taking off. Rokid, a China-based AI company that launched a pair of somewhat glasses-like smart glasses at CES 2018 called the Rokid Glass, showed a prototype …
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The Vuzix Blade was promised back at CES 2018: The Alexa-connected smart glasses, which I demoed then, were like an updated Google Glass that promised a larger screen and assistant modes. The Vuzix Blade is now the first product I’ve gotten a chance to test in 2019. So far, what I’ve realized is that smart glasses are really here. Whether …
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Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are seem to have been on the cusp of mainstream success for years. But you can’t decide if they offer something for you until you understand what they offer at all. Now playing: Watch this: What is AR and how does it differ from virtual reality? 3:17 Augmented reality AR is when you …
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This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. The future of augmented reality headgear and smartglasses is still very much in flux. The long-awaited Magic Leap might emerge this year. Microsoft’s Hololens has hung in a state of enterprise limbo — one from which it may finally emerge next year. Little …
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Is it better to have a self-contained pair of smart glasses, or something that simply uses your phone to do the heavy lifting and battery power? Kopin, a manufacturer of microdisplays and smart glasses components, is betting on the latter. The Kopin Golden-i Infinity isn’t really an AR device, so much as it is a smart screen that plugs into …
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