Apple Is Officially Coming for Meta’s Privacy-Invading Lunch With Its Own Smart Glasses in Late 2027

While checking out of a recent medical appointment, I was suddenly horrified to realize the front desk receptionist I was speaking with had on a pair of Meta x Ray Ban smart glasses. “Those aren’t filming, right” I asked, mentally pre-filing my HIPAA violation suit. She seemed surprised to even receive such a question, taking a moment to clock that I was referring to the recording device on her face that has been embroiled in controversies . No, she assured me, once it clicked, the camera wasn’t on. She was only using them to listen to music. Resisting the urge to suggest that the AirPods lying on her desk might better serve that purpose, I opted to leave the convo there, further surrendering myself to the idea that I am part of a dying breed who actually cares about the existential privacy invasions presented by a population paying to be walking panopticons. Despite complaints from women recorded without their knowledge and consent by creeps sporting them —who are then extorted for money when they ask for the published video to be taken down—wearing smart glasses in public is not (yet) being treated like the breach of social contract it inherently is, in or out of doctors offices. In fact, the number of units sold just keeps going up. A Q4 earnings repor t from Ray-Ban’s parent company, EssilorLuxottica, showed that sales for the wearables had tripled in 2025 over the previous year. It will come as no surprise to anyone that one of the biggest names in consumer tech is planning to carve out a big slice of that market for themselves. Recent reporting by Bloomberg ’s Mark Gurman confirms what we all knew was coming—Apple’s got their own smart glasses in the works and hopes to disrupt that wearable market similarly to how they did with smartwatches, which now generate an estimated $17 billion annually for the company. Rumors have been swirling about the tech giant’s inevitable foray into the smart glasses space for years, the most recent of those suggesting their firs