When Facebook renamed its parent company to Meta, it was a clear signal that the social networking giant was rolling the dice at building its next success in the metaverse. And a big part of that depends on the use of virtual and/or augmented reality glasses and headsets that allow you to be immersed in a virtual world or to add information to enhance your experience of the real world.
There have been rumours for many years that Apple has been working on some sort of virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR) hardware. There was some expectation of an announcement last year during the Worldwide Developer Conference but it never happened. But rumours of some sort of announcement regarding VR and AR are stronger this year.
The swings and roundabouts of VR
The problem with VR is that is an immersive technology that physically isolate us from the real world. When you put a VR headset on, you can see whatever is projected on the headset. If we go the whole hog and try for a complete VR experience, like in the movie Ready Player One, it’s not just what you see and hear but there are strong haptic sensations as well so you feel every kick, caress, punch and cuddle that is experienced in the virtual world.
In short, VR can embed us into a virtual world at the expense of experiencing the real world.
However, there are also some significant benefits and opportunities. Just as the internet opened up the potential for e-commerce and new ways of doing business, when someone cracks the nut of how to do VR well, it will create new opportunities. We will be able to have richer interactions across longer distances. Our virtual avatars will be far more realistic and we will feel like we are communicating to a real person rather that the legless cartoons Facebook is serving up at the moment.
Facebook is repeating history
The say that if you live long enough you get see styles fall out of style only to come back years later as ‘innovative’. We also get to see people making the same mistakes over and over.
Back in the 1990s, the internet first started being seen as a credible commercial platform. And one company, in particular, saw it as a major threat. In November 1995, Bill Gates released his book The Road Ahead where he prognosticated about the world of technology. He barely mentioned the internet although he did envision an ‘information superhighway’.
A month after the book’s release he pivoted Microsoft to become an internet-focussed company. And just 11 months later, the “Completely revised and up to date” edition of the book was released and the internet had a starring role. However, Microsoft saw the Internet as a threat to its business. So, it created the Microsoft Network – a proprietary, curated version of the internet that it controlled.
The Microsoft Network underwent many iterations and transformations, each diluting or losing an element of its proprietary nature until it disappeared.
Facebook trying to carve out a corner on the internet to create a metaverse that it ‘governs’ smacks of the same hubris and expectation of market power. Today, while Microsoft has been transformed several times and remains major technology company, it leverages the internet rather trying to control it.
Facebook would be wise to read up on that history and learn from it. Closed, proprietary pockets of the internet are doomed to fail.
Where does Apple fit?
A look back at Apple most recent product releases reveals a pattern. Whether you talk about the iPod, iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch, there is a common theme. Apple did not create any of those product categories. What Apple did was look at what worked and what was broken when it comes to the user experience.
It then created products that put people at the centre of design decisions and changed our conception of what was possible.
For example, there were many different smartphones on the market before the iPhone. Blackberry, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Palm and others all had smartphones that were in broad use. The problem was that while sales were strong, owners were rarely happy. Back then, shifting between a cellular connection to Wi-Fi when you got home from work was a painful, manual process.
in one fell swoop, Apple raised the bar on the user experience. None of the parts (touchscreens, glass screens, graphical interfaces) were new. Apple put them together in a user-centric way. And, incidentally, it’s worth thinking about whether Android would even exist if not for the iPhone and iOS.
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple will release its AR/VR headset using a number of technologies such as ultra-HD displays and passthrough cameras. The company’s investment in Apple Silicon will continue to pay off. Per Gurman:
Because of the immense processing power necessary for the feature, the headset will only support realistic avatars during one-on-one video chats. It will still allow for FaceTime sessions with several people, but additional users will be displayed as an icon or Memoji — Apple’s customized emoji.
When Apple releases Reality, probably won’t will fly off the shelves. It’s likely to be a USD$3000 iPhone accessory.
Anthony is the founder of Australian Apple News. He is a long-time Apple user and former editor of Australian Macworld. He has contributed to many technology magazines and newspapers as well as appearing regularly on radio and occasionally on TV.