Apple filed a patent application in 2008, entitled “Head-Mounted Display Apparatus for Retaining a Portable Electronic Device with Display”.

In the patent description it talks about the glasses being like a remote viewer and controller for the iPhone. In Neil Hughes’s post on Apple Insider about the patent, he summarizes that “the form factor, the application states, would allow the user to ‘relax while viewing image based content on the head-mounted device because he does not have to hold onto the portable electronic device.'”

Suppose that Google’s Project Glass were not a stand-alone device, but rather a remote control that connects to your smartphone.

For one, that would answer some of Viticci’s questions about if the glasses will be “PC-free” and how would enter passwords onto them. But moreover, that could give some resolution to the juxtaposition about this technology that is supposedly there when you need it and out of your way when you don’t.

Say Project Glass were a remote control for your phone. If so, you could surely configure it to only display certain types of incoming messages, and maybe even only from certain types of people / networks. In that type of scenario, Glass would be more like a very advanced, visual version of a Bluetooth headset.

Apple’s Head-Mounted Display Apparatus