Apple Probes Next Frontier With New Brain Implant Standard

Apple showcased its latest sci-fi vision by announcing that users of its products may one day be able to control them with brain signals.

Last year, Apple had a chance to lift its business when it started selling its Vision Pro augmented reality goggles. I Photo: Seasider53 Wikimedia Commons 

The initiative, aimed at making devices compatible for people with ALS or spinal cord injuries, shows that Apple still has its eye on cutting-edge innovation, Verne Kopytoff reported for Fortune Tech.

But it also highlights the company’s challenge: much of that innovation isn’t destined for the general public or ready to become a major revenue driver anytime soon.

What Apple really needs, according to Wall Street, is something far more mundane—growth in sales of its all-important iPhone. Nearly three years of largely stagnant revenue from the device is weighing on the tech giant’s shares.

Last year, Apple had a chance to lift its business when it started selling its Vision Pro augmented reality goggles.

Many reviewers praised Apple’s innovative design, but the device hasn’t appealed to a broad public due to its awkward appearance and hefty $3,500 price tag.

Other ambitious efforts, like its decade-long, multibillion-dollar project to develop self-driving car technology, fared even worse. Apple pulled the plug on that project in 2024.

The new brain-computer interface effort promises to help disabled people use its devices and give Elon Musk’s Neuralink some competition—though Apple made no mention of the project ever leading to wide commercial use. In the meantime, Apple’s iPhone sales growth problem remains unresolved.