Apple’s Next Interface: Your Mind
If your next iPhone doesn’t need your hands, what’s the business case for a bulky device with a screen (a.k.a. a smartphone) to begin with?
Apple is working with Synchron to let users control iPhones and Vision Pro headsets using brain signals, no hands required. The tech, still early, uses Synchron’s FDA-cleared Stentrode implant, which translates neural intent into screen selection through Apple’s “switch control” feature.
ALS patient Mark Jackson, one of ten trial users, now navigates digital interfaces with his mind. Unlike Musk’s Neuralink, Synchron’s device sits on a brain-adjacent vein, trading precision for non-invasiveness.
This move echoes Apple’s Bluetooth hearing aid standard in 2014; accessibility first, then market adoption.
- Apple to release a neural-control standard this year.
- Synchron’s Stentrode has 16 electrodes vs Neuralink’s 1,000+.
- Brain-based inputs bypass physical limitations entirely.
We’re watching the boundary between biology and interface dissolve. Should we see this as inclusive design, or the first step toward mainstream neural interfaces?
Read the full article on Wall Street Journal.
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