How Apple Plans to Dominate the Metaverse With AR Hardware

Facebook spent $3 billion to acquire virtual reality pioneer Oculus in 2014, with visions of creating a new operating system. Apple has not yet publicly acknowledged plans for a headset, although it has reportedly given its board a sneak peek of the product, according to Bloomberg. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new metaverse forum. While Meta’s Metaverse utilizes virtual reality, Apple’s Metaverse will use Augmented Reality. In fact, Apple is reportedly planning to launch its first AR/VR headset product this year for that purpose, probably. Many experts believe that Apple could be one of the biggest competitors of Meta to Metaverse products and services after the big name change of Facebook, which changed its name to Meta.

The former is currently costing the latter billions of dollars a year in lost ad revenue on iOS, thanks to its prompt that asks people if they want a third-party app to track them for showing ads. Zuckerberg’s remarks suggest that even as he tries to invent his way out of being under Apple’s thumb on mobile, the two tech giants are going to be battling for years to come. The Meta CEO told employees earlier this month that they were competing with Apple to determine “what direction the internet should go in,” according to a recording of his comments during an internal all-hands meeting obtained by The Verge. He said that Meta would position itself as the more open, cheaper alternative to Apple, which is expected to announce its first AR headset as soon as later this year. Of particular note, the first-generation headset is expected to be an extremely expensive device aimed primarily at developers and other professional users.

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It is also worth observing that Apple doesn’t at present offer a product for the metaverse, beyond the AR capabilities already available across its platforms. Apple is in a unique position to shape the future of entire industries, Ball said. Axie Infinity, Sandbox 3D and cryptocurrency wallet guide for beginners CryptoKitties are among the estimated 30 crypto-based games in its app store. The metaverse is not the only sector Apple has seemingly crowded out of its influential app marketplace. It has taken a conservative stance toward crypto and porn, for instance, Ball said.

An award-winning San Francisco-based journalist, Sullivan’s work has appeared in Wired, Al Jazeera, CNN, ABC News, CNET, and many others. Historically, Apple has always kept a tight grip on the entire UX vertical. Since AR is such a different way of interacting with digital content than phones or laptops, Apple needs to create a custom OS to ensure seamless user experience. Developing capable AR headsets might be the most complex technological challenge we’ve ever faced. Ultimately, product design requires that what is produced delivers meaningful and purpose-driven experiences.

Metaverse Standards Forum

SharePlay lets Apple users watch media in sync with each other, and in iOS 16 this feature can be started within Messages. Facebook exists to make people dumb and Isolated, it is a FUD engine, as much as Metaverse seems like the perfect sub-world they can filter your existence in to their ends. I think any company with the confidence to let you be you in meta-verse pseudo-space will win out in the end. He also notes that he’s unsure whether an open or closed ecosystem would be better and that Apple’s strategy may prove more beneficial than Meta’s open ecosystem. However, he states that Meta’s goal is to get its hardware into the hands of as many people as possible.

I wouldn’t be too surprised if Apple quietly gets involved in the new standards groupdown the line— assuming the group can help it make a difference, that is. Ball said Apple users should have more freedom over how they use their devices, citing the identification systems used on iOS devices, which are limited to proprietary options like Apple ID. Applications on Apple’s iOS interface require Apple’s approval and must pay a fee to Apple. The metaverse is an emerging category of computing, which some see as the next frontier of the internet. According to a Pew Research Center study, over 50% of tech innovators and developers predict the metaverse will be further integrated into people’s daily lives by 2040.

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The formation of a Metaverse Standards Forum has been announced, with members comprising many of the companies expected to become major players in the space. Apple, however, was not one of them, despite its work on a mixed-reality headset. The word “metaverse” is a term borrowed from science-fiction and different types of cryptocurrency exchanges refers to a hypothetical version of the internet that is accessed via immersive technologies like VR and AR rather than through screens. It has to have a non-trivial profit margin, or else it wouldn’t bother. That is, unless it can make money on the software side of things like it does with gaming.

Jerri L. Ledford has been writing, editing, and fact-checking tech stories since 1994. Her work has appeared in Computerworld, PC Magazine, Information Today, and many others. Like Mac Vs PC, iOS Vs Android, PlayStation Vs Xbox, the metaverse is looking like just another battleground that we’ll all find ourselves fighting on. “One of the things I think is interesting is that it’s not really clear upfront whether an open or closed ecosystem is going to be better,” he says. Meta’s dominance in VR headsets such as the popular Quest and upcoming Cambria will soon be questioned by Apple’s much rumoured, but still top secret AR headset which could be announced as soon as September this year. Meta may prove me wrong, but from my perspective, Apple has the better metaverse strategy, even if they don’t want to use the m-word.

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In Apple’s case, it could be a combination of keeping its intentions secret, for now, and not wanting to limit itself by adhering to standards for a technology that is far from understood, let alone mature. Apple has no problems contributing to standards when it suits it. The Matter standard for home automation incorporates Apple airbitz vs mycelium reddit how to move power ledger to nano ledger HomeKit tech, its Safari browser is based on the open-source Webkit, and Apple had a hand in the creation of USB-C. Before any of us have really worked out what the appeal of the metaverse is supposed to be, here comes the Metaverse Standards Forum. Eager to be at the metaverse frontier, but not sure how to get started?

• This level of familiarity can be enough when you need educational information about this topic.
• With this being said, a lot of things that are being said are actually just speculation.
• The goal is to get “a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade,” providing the same revenue as Meta’s current ad business.

Our north star is can we get a billion people into the metaverse doing hundreds of dollars a piece in digital commerce by the end of the decade? If we do that, we’ll build a business that is as big as our current ad business within this decade. I think a big part of how you do that is by pushing the open metaverse forward, which is what we’re going to do. Meta’s augmented and virtual reality division, Reality Labs, spent an astounding $12.5 billion in 2021, while only bringing in only $2.1 billion in revenue.

If choosing between Meta’s glasses and Apple’s, they might understandably choose the ones from the tech company with a proven record of protecting privacy. Apple would also have a big privacy incentive to reject the term “metaverse.” Apple and Meta very likely have put the most R&D money behind mixed-reality projects and have the most engineers working on it. Apple naturally wants to differentiate its AR experiences from Meta’s AR experiences as much as possible. The word simply doesn’t describe the kind of mixed-reality experiences Apple is likely trying to create. Apple isn’t likely to adopt the metaverse term just because it’s already in the public domain.

• Notably absent from this list of heavyweights is Apple, a company heavily rumored to be working on its own mixed reality products.
• In answering questions from employees at a recent Meta meeting, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made it clear that he’s fully aware that the two tech giants are about to butt heads big style on the battleground of the metaverse.
• Not to mention the countless XR experts and engineers that have been working at Apple for years.

A senior administration official told reporters last week the export controls focus on areas that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said are strategically important to the country, including artificial intelligence and quantum computing. It’s the second recall announced by Tesla this week, following reports that the automaker found about 54,000 vehicles that might roll through stop signs at low speeds without coming to a complete stop. Tesla officials said both issues, neither of which is known to have caused serious injuries, will be resolved through over-the-air software updates.

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So, it’s only logical that Apple would be looking into this as well. Get stock recommendations, portfolio guidance, and more from The Motley Fool’s premium services. Volatility profiles based on trailing-three-year calculations of the standard deviation of service investment returns.

Apple’s alternative to Meta’s embodied Internet will likely be a broad offering spanning the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and a future AR/VR headset. The metaverse may simply be an app competing with other AR/VR experiences across multiple devices. CEO Tim Cook this week did an interview with China Daily, where he once again commented on on the future of augmented reality and hinted at Apple’s work on an AR/VR headset. Render via designer Ian Zelbo Cook said that Apple is excited about the opportunities available with augmented reality, which is not too far off from prior comments that he’s made, but he went on to say that people should …

• Meta is in a “very deep, philosophical competition” with Apple over the future of technology and the metaverse, the social network’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in an internal meeting last month, reported by The Verge.
• Like Mac Vs PC, iOS Vs Android, PlayStation Vs Xbox, the metaverse is looking like just another battleground that we’ll all find ourselves fighting on.
• Our vision of shared, real-time, persistent, virtual worlds has been shaped by popular culture, from Neal Stephenson’s…
• But Google’s main product has never been Google glasses, it was a shot in the dark with little risk.
• It’s likely that the company has a similar roadmap to that of Meta, which plans in 2023 or 2024 to release a consumer mixed reality headset that blends virtual objects in the real world by feeding camera footage into a display.

Facebook has been the loudest proponent of the idea that the metaverse represents the future of the internet, while Apple has taken a more restrained view. Zuckerberg said one difference between Meta and Apple is that while he believes Apple will create a closed ecosystem for its metaverse tech, Meta will try to be more open. “The Metaverse is a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces, that uses Virtual Reality, or Augmented Reality as we know it now, to immerse users in an alternate world.” We don’t know what Apple has up its sleeve from a glasses standpoint, but the company has been rumored to be working on either VR or AR glasses for years. If that’s the direction the market heads — which isn’t certain given the slow adoption of the Oculus Quest VR headset — Apple is more prepared than you might think. Note that, this article will be updated if there is any official news about Apple products for Metaverse.