雅虎香港財經 Apple’s Vision Pro announcement at WWDC didn’t mention the word “metaverse”
Apple announced an augmented reality headset on Monday (June 5), a direct challenge to Meta’s Oculus virtual reality platform.
“In the same way that Mac introduced us to personal computing and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in his keynote address at WWDC, Apple’s annual developer conference.
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There are differences between Apple and Meta’s dueling approaches to immersive headsets, notably that Meta opted for virtual reality (VR) and Apple is going for augmented reality (AR). But Cook’s announcement was a departure in a linguistic sense, too.
Neither Cook nor his deputies used the word “metaverse.”
Meta says metaverse, Apple uses “spatial computing”
Ever since Facebook changed its name to Meta, the company has insisted that its end goal is building the metaverse, an immersive version of the internet powered by VR.
WWDC 2023 — June 5 | Apple
The metaverse is a term from science fiction, originating in the 1992 Neal Stephenson novel Snow Crash. It generally refers to a vision of the internet connected by virtual or augmented reality. Instead of clicking and scrolling through the modern web, you can walk around the metaverse.
But Apple is instead opting to use the term “spatial computing.”
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising. Apple famously zigs where others zag. And the company’s vice president of worldwide marketing, Greg Joswiak, told a Wall Street Journal reporter last year that he would never use the word metaverse. Well, so far, that’s a promise kept.
Apple and Meta want to control the metaverse—or whatever you want to call it
The real reward for building the dominant AR or VR platform is stewardship over a brand-new industry. Apple and Meta are under intense scrutiny from global antitrust regulators, which makes buying up companies a difficult way to expand into new sectors.
But no one is stopping them from creating new technologies—and perhaps ushering in entirely new industries—on their own, just like Apple did building its mobile app marketplace, the App Store.
The company that controls the metaverse—or whatever you want to call it—can effectively take a cut of all software for that platform. And whether you call it a metaverse or not, that’s a lucrative business to be in.
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