Apple's announcement of the Vision Pro made headlines, but it appears that this is not the only mixed reality device the iPhone maker is exploring, as Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, in the latest issue of his newsletter, Power On, claims that Apple is experimenting with several future wearable products, claiming that Apple is experimenting with several form factors, including smart glasses, AirPods with cameras, and fitness rings with health monitors similar to the Oura Ring and Samsung's Galaxy Ring.

According to Garman, Apple engineers are exploring the possibility of developing smart glasses similar to Amazon Echo Frames and Meta Ray-Bans that provide audio without requiring AirPods. Other features would include AI capabilities and a built-in camera to identify things around you; Bloomberg reports that the glasses are in an exploratory phase at Apple's hardware engineering department, called "technology exploration."

As for the Smart Ring, it would communicate with the Apple Watch and wear a health tracking feature on its finger, according to a presentation by the company's in-house industrial design group. Garman said Apple is not actively working on such a device.

Most interesting, however, is that Apple is reportedly working on a way to integrate a camera into the AirPods earbuds, which could avoid the need for another wearable like smart glasses altogether. Codenamed "B798," Garman said the project was launched last year to figure out how to incorporate a low-resolution camera sensor into earbuds the size of AirPods. He speculated that such cameras could be used to "capture data that would be processed via AI to assist people in their daily lives."

Potentially, similar to the possible use case of smart glasses, AirPods equipped with these cameras could take pictures and interact with a multimodal voice and image AI system to answer questions about everything the user is seeing. We're already seeing a basic version of this functionality in the Meta Rayban glasses.

Of course, all of this is speculation for now, and don't expect to see these wearables on store shelves anytime soon; according to Gurman, these are all early-stage concepts within Apple, and some, like the Smart Ring, are just concepts at this point. Some, like the Smart Ring, are just concepts at this point. Nevertheless, they do provide some promising hints as to where Apple's wearables division may be headed.