Apple is building in tools to support always-on web experiences, occasionally extending from AR apps through Safari to browser-based notifications. These can point to how the company sees metaverse hype becoming relevant to reality.
AR as a platform
Two new features coming to iOS XNUMX (currently in beta testing) provide a glimpse of how Apple might think about it: Web XR and Web Push Notifications on iOS. Developer Maximiliano Firtman says that neither feature is working yet, but both are described in the current beta version, which implies that they will be at some point.
Combined with the rest of Apple's AR-centric tools, APIs, and frameworks, you now have an increasingly powerful set of interrelated solutions with which to create and consume those experiences. They are all already compatible to some degree on the more than a billion devices that people use every day.
All you need is the tool with which to access it.
All you need is a platform.
Better maybe better than better
Apple CEO Tim Cook often likes to use the phrase "pull the string" to describe how Apple is working with new areas and industries. It's an articulation of what happens when you invest billions of dollars in R&D but aren't necessarily burdened with a deadline.
If you have the ability to delve into a topic, you may be able to find a way to create supposedly simple solutions to complex problems. "To make the solution seem so utterly inescapable and obvious, so simple and natural, is so hard enough," said Jony Ive, the legendary former Apple designer. Simplicity is difficult.
Apple has always and always tackled pretty tough drawbacks this way.
He understands that solving challenges isn't as simple as locating the answer, it's about making sure the answer is profoundly attainable.
I still remember Michael Krantz's pivotal "Time" interview with Apple's CEO at the time, Steve Jobs (XNUMX), when he said:
“Technology has skyrocketed. It gets harder every day. And there are very few ways for us mere mortals to approach all this technology. People don't have a week to investigate things and find out how they're doing. Apple has always and at all times been, and I hope it always will be, one of the first bridges between mortals and this extremely complicated technology.
That is why Apple moves these threads through different manifestations of technology. Taking technologies and also impressively complex ideas and transforming them into understandable realities that people can use and understand, and creating products that people seem to like and understand from those ideas.
Apple will not be the evil twin
In the case of the metaverse, which is a stupid sentence, what could be more complex than building "digital twins" of all our lived reality?
The company has been quietly working on this since at least XNUMX, when Cook said, "I think AR is big and deep and it's one of those huge things that we'll look back on and be fascinated by now." this."
Nor is it a single view of the planet. AR isn't about virtual hangouts with friends, Pokemon, or Facebook's version of social control and surveillance capitalism.
It is about increasing truly essential tasks and processes, such as surgeries, emergency response, industrial maintenance, education, tourist attractions, prototyping and design of new products. These are meaningful sports entertainment, physical therapy, wellness and exercise experiences. It is about increasing what surrounds you with information that otherwise you could not summarize.
At its best, AR should be about creating digital models for any conceivable process of the real planet so that it can change the factors of that virtual planet while figuring out how to progress the results of the real planet. It's about configuring these automated virtual worlds to work for you, increasing their capabilities.
They are "digital twins".
Exactly what planet will you live on?
There will be multiple metaverses. But it will be Apple working to create a digital reality that meets people where they are, not where you want them to be. The fourteen zero ARKit apps that are free on the App Store give you an idea of where we're headed.
Meta, meanwhile, visits conservative legislators and libertarian organizations to persuade them that his vision of the Metaverse is not bad. Across the political divide, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) appears unpersuaded.
“Apple is focused on the here and now, refusing to get caught up in metaverse hype,” GlobalData analyst Emilio Campa said recently.
"Competitors like Meta (formerly Facebook) are focused on building the 'metaverse of tomorrow', but that can confuse users. Apple knows how people are using technology today, and its silence on the Metaverse should not be construed as ignorance. Apple is well positioned to build on its established software and platforms, when the metaverse starts to become consistent.
When it comes to the Metaverse, Apple can wait until everyone has tried it and then step in and present its fresh approach.
Or, as I once stated:
“'Different' and 'new' is partly simple. Making something truly better is really hard.
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