*By Bridgette Webb*
Step aside, iPhones ー the Apple Watch may be coming for your spot.
Christopher Mims, tech columnist for the Wall Street Journal, said Apple's wearables division may be the tech of company's future.
"Apple's strength at this point with wearables is creating accessories," Mims said Friday in an interview on Cheddar.
"You don't need the AirPods, you don't need the Watch or the glasses, but if you put them together, and you have a wireless connection, it might allow a new kind of computing ー a new way to interact with your environment."
Augmented reality, Mims said, is another area of focus for Apple. CEO Tim Cook has expressed enthusiasm for the industry, saying last year that he believes the tech will change the way the public operates forever.
But AR technology is still in its infancy, and mass adoption remains a pipe dream for insiders. As of now, Apple's ARKit can only add digital objects through an iPhone's camera. It's a feature that Mims said will continue to pose a challenge for the Silicon Valley giant.
"Apple's real challenge is no one knows what AR is for," Mims said.
"But we don't know what the killer app for consumers will be. I wouldn't be surprised if it were just some updated version of Pokémon GO," he said.
Apple will debut new its products and features on September 12 at an iPhone event in Cupertino, Calif.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/apples-next-act).
Darden, the parent company of chain restaurants like Olive Garden and Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, beat Wall Street estimates in its latest earnings report.
A former Facebook executive pled guilty to stealing more than $4 million from the company while she was employed there.
Rising safety concerns over water bead products marketed to kids have prompted major retailers like Amazon, Target and Walmart to pull some toys off their shelves.
The Congressional Budget Office said Friday it expects inflation to nearly hit the Federal Reserve's 2% target rate in 2024, as overall growth is expected to slow and unemployment is expected to rise into 2025, according to updated economic projections for the next two years.
Intel is out with a new product to challenge other big players in the space like Nvidia and AMD.
Stocks fell after the opening bell Friday but will end on another positive week.
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Americans picked up their spending from October to November as the unofficial holiday season kicked off, underscoring that shoppers still have power to keep buying.
The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate dropped below 7% to its lowest level since early August, another boost for prospective homebuyers who have largely been held back by sharply higher borrowing costs and heightened competition for relatively few homes for sale.
Mortgage rates have dropped below 7% for the first time since the middle of August.
