The arrival of Apple Glass, Apple's mysterious augmented reality (AR) wearable lens, is not as far off as once thought Despite conflicting reports of its release date, a world is coming where many people will be able to wear the Apple logo on their temples Our hope is that these first generation smart frames will be as sophisticated as this one

Techweartrend, a wearable gadget blog, published a series of Apple Glass concept designs on Instagram earlier this week The purported lenses look absolutely gorgeous, with their Wayfarer shape, subtle sensors on the hinges, and eye-catching gold accents

In fact, if the lenses in these renderings were tinted, they would look like the Sunnies I once bought at Bloomingdale's

Is it too soon to say that we're relieved? Front Page Tech host Jon Prosser holds most of the Apple Glass leaks we've heard about this month, and his description of the purported prototype he saw is "not intimidating"

No one should expect the first-generation model of Apple Glass to break their balls, but let's hope Apple is working on an aesthetic worthy of the rumored $499 price tag

This cost for a nondescript plastic frame certainly blurs the vision Even if Apple has perfected Starboard, its AR operating system, why would people want to wear Apple Glass on their faces if it doesn't look beautiful?

That said, one might say that when the AirPods wireless earbuds debuted, everyone thought the AirPods were ugly And now, I don't need to explain how ubiquitous these white-stemmed pods have become

Techweartrend makes no credits or claims for the Apple Glass design it posted, so it is impossible to trace the image back to a reliable source Nevertheless, to date, we have not seen such an image on the Internet

In any case, these images are clearly conceptual and probably far from what Apple Glass will actually look like But that does not mean that we can expect something as fashionable as this to materialize

Cosmetics aside, there are a few features we can expect from Apple Glass It will have a LiDAR scanner that works with the Starboard interface

All processing for Apple Glass will be done on the iPhone, which may contribute to the lens' affordable cost of $499 Prosser also stated that Apple Glass will not have an integrated speaker system Instead, it would be recommended to own Apple's AirPods for audio integration

The launch of Apple Glass could happen as early as next year, but some longtime analysts say it is at least two to three years away