Apple wants certain users to navigate their iPhones, iPads, and Macs using mind-control

Apple device users can navigate the screen on their devices with their fingers and even their voices. Vision Pro can open an app with the user's eyes. Eventually, Apple wants its customers to control their devices with their minds. This isn't a new concept. Back in 2011, we told you about a company named PLX Devices that created the XWave brainwave detecting headset for mobile devices. The company said at the time that the headset "can sense and detect human brainwaves, interpret them and connect it to everyday technology."

Apple is working with Synchron, and the new technology means that instead of seeing a user signal his intention by watching his movement, the devices use decoded brain signals to figure out what the user wants to happen next. Synchron makes a stent-like device placed on top of the brain called Stentrode that uses electrodes to read brain signals. The signals are translated and help select icons on a screen.

Mark Jackson was an early tester of the Stentrode implant, and wearing an Apple Vision Pro headset, he was able to feel as though he was on the ledge of a mountain in the Swiss Alps and feel his legs shake. In reality, Jackson suffers from ALS, can't travel out of his home in Pittsburgh, and cannot stand up. He is learning how to control his iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro using a connection between his Stentrode implant and Apple's various operating systems. We first wrote about Mark last July.

Brain interface computer companies have the job of tricking computers into thinking that the signals coming from the brain implants are coming from a computer mouse. Apple plans on introducing a standard for the implants later this year that will allow them to do more. Since 2019, Synchron has implanted Stentrode in 10 people.

The first person to have Elon Musk's Neuralink implanted can move a cursor faster with his thoughts than some people can move it using a mouse. The company's N1 implant can collect more data from the user's brain than Synchron's implant. That's because the N1 has 1,000 electrodes that pick up neural activity compared to 16 for the Stentrode. Additionally, the former's electrodes are placed inside the brain rather than on top of it as is done with the Stentrode.

According to Morgan Stanley, as many as 150,000 people in the U.S. who suffer from critical upper-limb impairments would be early candidates to use this technology. The financial services firm sees the first commercial approval for one of the implanted systems taking place no earlier than 2030. Synchron Chief Executive Tom Oxley says he expects his company to receive approval before that year.

It should be noted that Elon Musk believes that these implants have the ability to help everyone, not just those disabled or suffering with a crippling disease. Musk sees this technology improving the capabilities of the brain, enabling people to compete with super-intelligent AI systems.