Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of those in the technology community have imagined a future state of, if not quasi-successor to, the Internet – called the “Metaverse”. Metverse is a vision of the future networking that sounds fantastical. The Metaverse is a collective virtual shared space[1] including the sum of all virtual worlds and the Internet. The idea is to create a space similar to the internet, but one that users (via digital avatars) can walk around inside of and where they can interact with one another in real time. Keeping it simple, the metaverse is a potentially vast three-dimensional online world where people can meet up and interact virtually.
The metaverse was originally conceived as the setting for dystopian science fiction novels, where virtual universes provide an escape from crumbling societies. Now, the idea has transformed into a moonshot goal for Silicon Valley, and become a favorite talking point among startups, venture capitalists and tech giants. Imagine a world where you could sit on the same couch as a friend who lives thousands of miles away, or conjure up a virtual version of your workplace while at the beach.
Tech titans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg are betting on as the next great leap in the evolution of the internet. Although the full vision for the Metaverse remains hard to define, seemingly fantastical, and decades away, the pieces have started to feel very real. Metaverse has become the newest macro-goal for many of the world’s tech giants. Big companies joining the discussion now may simply want to reassure investors that they won’t miss out on what could be the next big thing, or that their investments in VR, which has yet to gain broad commercial appeal, will eventually pay off.
‘Metaverse’: the next internet revolution? article tells that metaverse is the stuff of science-fiction: the term was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”, in which people don virtual reality headsets to interact inside a game-like digital world.
Facebook Wants Us to Live in the Metaverse. According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg “What is the metaverse? It’s a virtual environment where you can be present with people in digital spaces. You can kind of think of this as an embodied internet that you’re inside of rather than just looking at.” Metaverse vision was the driver behind Facebook’s purchase of Oculus VR and its newly announced Horizon virtual world/meeting space, among many, many other projects, such as AR glasses and brain-to-machine communications. In a high-tech plan to Facebookify the world advertisements will likely be a key source of revenue in the metaverse, just as they are for the company today.
Term Metaverse was created by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson in his 1992 dystopian novel “Snow Crash” to describe a virtual space where people interact with one another through user-controlled avatars. That “Snow Crash” novel coined the terms “Metaverse” and “Avatar”.
Venture capitalist Matthew Ball has also written extensively on what he believes are the main attributes of a metaverse: a full-functioning economy, real-time persistence (no pausing), and interoperability of digital “belongings” such as clothing across multiple platforms. Experts working in the space tend to agree on a few key aspects of the metaverse, including the idea that users will experience a sense of “embodiment” or “presence.”. Read more at The Metaverse: What It Is, Where to Find it, Who Will Build It, and Fortnite and Big Tech has its eyes set on the metaverse. Here’s what that means
Proponents of the metaverse say there could eventually be huge business potential — a whole new platform on which to sell digital goods and services. If metaverse could be properly realized and catches on some future year, it is believed that metaverse would revolutionize not just the infrastructure layer of the digital world, but also much of the physical one, as well as all the services and platforms atop them, how they work, and what they sell. It is believed that verifiable, immutable ownership of digital goods and currency will be an essential component of the metaverse.
Did you hear? Facebook Inc. is going to become a metaverse company. At least that’s the story its management wants everyone to believe after a flurry of interviews and announcements over the past couple of weeks. Zuckerberg is turning trillion-dollar Facebook into a ‘metaverse’ company, he tells investors article tells that after release of Facebook’s earnings CEO Mark Zuckerberg took a moment to zoom out and wax on the company’s future goals, specifically calling out his ambitions to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.”
Some pieces of the metaverse already exist. Services like Fortnite, an online game in which users can compete, socialize and build virtual worlds with millions of other players, can give users an early sense of how it will work. And some people have already spent thousands of dollars on virtual homes, staking out their piece of metaverse real estate.
Who will be big if metaverse catches on. Bloomberg article Who Will Win the Metaverse? Not Mark Zuckerberg or Facebook article claims the social networking giant and its CEO have vast ambitions to dominate the next big thing in computing, but other tech giants are in a better position to turn the hype into reality. Facebook’s actual track record on VR tells a story that has not been very promising. The two critical components needed for companies to take advantage of the opportunities that may arise from any potential metaverse are advanced semiconductors and software tools. Facebook is not strong on either front.
There are many other companies with Metaverse visions. For example Oculus’s technology has been surpassed by smaller competitors such as Valve Index, which offers better fidelity. Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella said last week that his company is working on building the “enterprise metaverse.” Epic Games announced a $1 billion funding round in April to support its metaverse ambitions. Companies like graphics chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) and gaming platform Roblox (RBLX) are also playing Metaverse game.
Despite the current hype cycle, the idea is still amorphous, and a fully functioning metaverse is probably years and billions of dollars away — if it happens at all. Another question is are we emotionally evolved enough for it? There is a host of concerns about how the metaverse could be used or exploited. “Are we safe to start interacting at a more person-to-person level, or are the a**holes still going to ruin it for everybody?” “If you can now replace somebody’s entire reality with an alternate reality, you can make them believe almost anything,”
Keep in mind that the metaverse is a relatively old idea that seems to gain momentum every few years, only to fade from the conversation in lieu of more immediate opportunities. Though “Fortnite” and “Roblox” are often described as precursors to the Metaverse, the most significant precursor to the Metaverse is the internet itself.
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Tomi Engdahl says:
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Q&A with sci-fi author Neal Stephenson about inventing the metaverse concept, his blockchain startup Lamina1, not using ChatGPT to help write novels, and more
Metaverse creator Neal Stephenson on the future of virtual reality
https://www.ft.com/content/0ecab009-6543-4386-b936-0eecc9293d2e
The writer who invented the metaverse concept on why he decided to get involved in building it — and the trouble with AI
Neal Stephenson’s science-fiction writing has predicted (and inspired) innovations from cryptocurrency to Alexa. His breakthrough 1992 novel Snow Crash described a dystopian future of corporate city states, where a hacker underclass hides from reality in a virtual world known as the Metaverse. Several of the book’s concepts — including avatars, virtual-reality goggles, massively multiplayer online games and destructive computer viruses — are now part of our everyday experience.
From 1999 to 2006, Stephenson was an early employee at Jeff Bezos’s rocket venture, Blue Origin, and went on to join Magic Leap, a VR start-up that raised nearly $4bn. He has denied being Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
Last year, Stephenson and crypto pioneer Peter Vessenes co-founded Lamina1, a company that uses blockchain technology to build an “open and expansive” metaverse along the lines the author envisaged 30 years earlier. This conversation with FT global technology correspondent Tim Bradshaw has been edited for length and clarity.
So many people are trying to lay claim to the concept you invented. What’s your preferred current definition of the metaverse?
There’s lots of people in it. You can interact with them in real time, no matter where they are. They’re represented by audiovisual bodies called avatars, and they’re having shared experiences that are fictional in nature. They’re in fictional spaces, doing fictional things.
It’s not all one unified walled garden. There are different bits of it that are created and maintained by different people and the central metaphor for going from one of those experiences to another is movement through a virtual space. So there’s a map and experiences have fixed locations on that map. You might teleport, you might move very quickly, but there’s always a sense that you’re in an agreed-upon specific location in a larger universe.
If that’s the definition I would contend that there isn’t a metaverse right now.
When we talk about the original conception [of the metaverse], we’re going back to the late 1980s. It was pre-Doom [the breakthrough 3D shooting game], which came out the year after Snow Crash (1992) was published. Doom accomplished things that I wouldn’t have thought possible for another 10 years. That ignited a whole industry. So where we are 30 years later is the games industry is the economic engine and the technological engine that obviously is going to be the foundation of any future metaverse.
Do people know they are tiptoeing into the metaverse when they are playing a video game?
I would guess most are just playing the game. I think people who spend a lot of time playing, especially multiplayer online games, are becoming accustomed to the idea of moving around in shared three-dimensional spaces. Which is clearly the most basic idea of the metaverse.
Epic Games built Fortnite and is now expanding its metaverse platform Unreal Engine. Why build the platform first?
Whatever I build, even if it’s incredibly successful, is going to be a small part of a larger metaverse, and that might not be successful. So to roll the dice on being able to create one experience in a reasonable amount of time would be the wrong way to go about it. A smarter approach is to create underlying infrastructure, which needs to be created anyway in my opinion, and then that should enable a lot of people to try to build things.
Once the platform gets going, then there’s value. To use your example of Epic, the value of Fortnite to Epic is more than just the revenue that the game brings in. It’s also a way that they can “dog food” their own technology [tech start-ups call testing their own product “eating your own dog food”] and show people what the technology is capable of in a way that might not be possible if they were doing everything through third-party, arm’s-length kinds of relationships.
How quickly do you anticipate this metaverse being something we all visit on a day-to-day basis?
There won’t be a metaverse that is used by millions of people until it contains experiences that millions of people find worth having, and making those experiences is quite difficult.
There won’t be a metaverse that is used by millions of people until it contains experiences that millions of people find worth having
Do we need a headset to experience the metaverse?
The reality is that millions experience 3D worlds through flat screens all the time, so of course, that’s going to be a big part of it and it should be. Having said that, I have no complaint about headsets. It’s going to be both.
The metaverse hype in Silicon Valley is currently taking a back seat to artificial intelligence.
It is nice to let AI have its moment in the sun, because it takes time. The hype cycle moves fast, but engineering doesn’t. Engineering takes time. If you’re trying to engineer at the same pace as the hype cycle, it won’t work. I think of AI in terms of supply and demand. We already have an abundant supply of images: every website is plastered with them. So the ability for everyone to make hundreds of new images and put them up on their social media feeds isn’t interesting to me. Scarcity drives quality and AI art is lacking in scarcity, so it tends to be lacking in quality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.mouser.com/empowering-innovation/more-topics/immersive-technologies?utm_source=endeavor&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=ed-personifai-eit2022-#video-immersivetech
Tomi Engdahl says:
Ben Sin / XDA Developers:
Hands-on with the Xiaomi Wireless AR Smart Glass Explorer Edition, featuring two micro-OLED screens, three front-facing cameras, and weighing 126g, in prototype — Xiaomi’s AR Smart Glasses are a prototype not meant for commercial release right now, but the hardware feels more than ready
https://www.xda-developers.com/xiaomi-ar-smart-glass-hands-on/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.bauermedia.fi/audio2023/metaversumi-audio-ennenkuulumattomissa-ymparistoissa
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mom Horrified by What Her Kids Are Seeing in Roblox
This is seriously messed up.
https://futurism.com/mom-horrified-her-kids-seeing-roblox
Roblox has established itself as one of the biggest gaming outfits in the world — nevermind arguably the most successful metaverse out there — with well over 200 million estimated monthly users. In particular, it’s become the de facto place to hang out online for a staggering number of children.
But as the media personality and mother who goes by Carolyn Velociraptor discovered during a recent investigation, the popular app is allowing young children to enter some seriously questionable environments that should have parents concerned.
The massive online platform allows children of practically any age to play games that it lists as being suitable for “All Ages.” The list of games under this age restriction used to be manually curated by the company, but Velociraptor suspects that situation “changed in the last few months,” with Roblox seemingly opening the flood gates.
Some of the newly listed games listed as suitable for “All Ages,” she said, include bizarre roleplaying games that involves a public bathroom simulator.
“Clearly there have already been issues with these games, because most of these games have a pop-up at the beginning warning people not to violate the Roblox [terms of service],” Velociraptor wrote.
Worst of all, the Roblox users’ avatars become partially undressed while doing their business inside a virtual bathroom stall, while other players watch.
Velociraptor also came across several games allowing users to stab popular children’s TV show characters to death.
“You can also literally cook/eat someone’s feet in one game,” Velociraptor noted in a follow-up tweet. “I didn’t even get into all the other crazy stuff I found.”
Previous reporting has uncovered similarly questionable activity on the platform. Last year, an investigation by the BBC found the company’s metaverse was teeming with sex games dubbed “condos,” allowing users’ naked avatars to gather in large numbers.
In short, it’s a massive game of cat and mouse, except that the victims are impressionable children, not adults, who may know better.
“Using a combination of human and machine detection, we conduct a safety review of every piece of content that is published on the Roblox platform, including all images, video, and audio files,” the company promised in a blog post
“The experiences are marked as ‘All Ages’ because the content is generally suitable for all ages and may contain infrequent mild violence and/or light unrealistic blood,” they said. “Currently, Experience Guidelines rate violence and blood in experiences.”
But as Velociraptor experience demonstrates, a lot of questionable activity unsuitable for young children appears to be falling through the cracks.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Wait, what?
APPLE VR HEADSET WILL APPARENTLY HAVE DISPLAY FACING OUTWARD TO SHOW THE USER’S FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
https://futurism.com/the-byte/apple-vr-headset-leak-display-facing-outward
A substantial new leak to The Information both reveals new info and corroborates previously disclosed details about Apple’s hotly-anticipated mixed reality headset — which is sounding more and more like a device unlike anything we’ve seen so far.
For one, the report backs up a fascinating previously rumored feature: a large outward-facing display on the front of the headset that will mimic your facial expressions to make you feel less isolated from the real world.
Inside the Tech Powering Apple’s Envelope-Pushing, Risky Mixed Reality Headset
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-the-tech-powering-apples-envelope-pushing-risky-mixed-reality-headset?irclickid=TwD1qcToUxyNWtJ1VQ13mQhsUkAUDzzJlwemQ00&irgwc=1&utm_source=affiliate&utm_medium=cpa&utm_campaign=10078-Skimbit+Ltd.&utm_term=futurism.com
Tomi Engdahl says:
“In 2021 and 2022, Reality Labs, the division housing metaverse projects, recorded a cumulative loss of nearly $24 billion, including $13.7 billion just last year.”
Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse
https://www.thestreet.com/technology/mark-zuckerberg-quietly-buries-the-metaverse
The CEO of social-media giant Meta has sworn by AI, popularized by the chatbot ChatGPT.
There will be no press release, no big announcement, as he would have to acknowledge that he was wrong.
But make no mistake: Mark Zuckerberg just buried the metaverse. The metaverse is dead.
The metaverse was supposed to be the Next Big Thing for the social-media tycoon, who in 2021 went so far as to rename his empire — created from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — as Meta Platforms.
It was the future of technology, according to Zuckerberg, whom Tesla CEO Elon Musk dubbed “Zuck the Fourteenth”
Meta Creates a Top-Level AI Team
For those who doubted the company’s devotion to the idea, Meta has invested billions of dollars in this massively hyped project — to the chagrin of company shareholders.
In 2021 and 2022, Reality Labs, the division housing metaverse projects, recorded a cumulative loss of nearly $24 billion, including $13.7 billion just last year.
The losses will ease significantly in coming months because the metaverse is over.
Zuckerberg has just held the funeral by turning to the next big shiny thing, namely artificial intelligence.
“We’re creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area,” Zuckerberg said in a Feb. 27 post on Facebook.
“We’re starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology. …
“In the short term, we’ll focus on building creative and expressive tools,” he wrote. “Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways.”
The legacy of the metaverse remains because Meta will continue to develop remnants of this virtual world, such as headsets, but it will be more for a target audience, such as videogamers and the crypto world.
Credit to Zuckerberg: He spares himself humiliation by surreptitiously and deftly redirecting the attention of his critics to AI, which most experts consider a true technological revolution.
The uses for consumers and businesses are indisputable: ChatGPT, the most visible expression of the AI breakthrough, has completely changed internet search. Now, we’ll get human-like responses to queries. For companies, repetitive and boring tasks can now be carried out efficiently using chatbots.
Basically, the paradigm shift expected since the internet revolution is here. Zuckerberg understands this and has immediately pivoted.
Zuckerberg knows how to capture the spirit of the times. This is his strength and it allows him today to bury the metaverse on the sly.
“About 80% of our investments – a little more — go towards the core business, what we call our family of apps, so that’s Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the ads business associated with that. Then a little less than 20% of our investment goes towards Reality Labs,” the CEO told The New York Times Dealbook conference last November.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.livemint.com/v/s/www.livemint.com/news/world/metaverse-is-dead-but-why-hasn-t-mark-zuckerberg-announced-it-yet/amp-11677840801975.html?amp_js_v=0.1&usqp=mq331AQKKAFQArABIIACAw%3D%3D#ampf=
Tomi Engdahl says:
HK[®] hyppää metaversumiin ja julkaisee virtuaalisen meetvurstin — metavursti on oodi suomalaiselle meetvurstille
https://news.cision.com/fi/hkscan-oyj/r/hk–hyppaa-metaversumiin-ja-julkaisee-virtuaalisen-meetvurstin—metavursti-on-oodi-suomalaiselle-me,c3725124
Ruokabrändi HK® yhdistää meetvurstin ystävät virtuaalitodellisuuteen ja julkaisee digitaalisen meetvurstin. Metavursteiksi kutsuttuja NFT-teoksia luodaan viisi, ja ne huutokaupataan OpenSea-markkinapaikassa 1. maaliskuuta alkaen.
Metaversumilla tarkoitetaan virtuaalimaailmoja, joihin ihmiset kokoontuvat olemaan vuorovaikutuksessa, pelaamaan ja työskentelemään. NFT:t, eli non-fungible tokenit, ovat digitaalisia taideteoksia, joihin on tallennettu uniikki varmenne.
”Metaversumi on monelle suomalaiselle tuntematon maailma. Sitä se on meillekin. HK:n ytimessä on kokeilun kulttuuri ja siksi halusimme mennä ensimmäisenä sinne, minne muut suomalaiset ruokatalot eivät ole vielä menneet. Makua ja tuoksua emme voi vielä viedä metaversumiin, mutta muotoilun kyllä”, toteaa HK:n markkinointipäällikkö Riikka Haarasilta-Suutarinen.
Suomalainen meetvursti on osa suomalaista ruokakulttuuria. Moni ei tiedä, että meetvursti on suomalainen saavutus, jonka valmistusmenetelmän keksi vuonna 1956 suomalainen lihateknologian uranuurtaja Fritz P. Niinivaara.
https://metavursti.fi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://biz.crast.net/officials-desert-meta-like-walls-closed-on-zuckerberg/
Tomi Engdahl says:
“There’s just a lot that can go wrong.”
PEOPLE FORCED TO “GO TO WORK” IN THE METAVERSE SAY IT’S A COMPLETE NIGHTMARE
https://futurism.com/the-byte/work-metaverse-complete-nightmare
“The feeling of presence that you get from VR, even today,” Zuckerberg declared during his Connect 2022 keynote speech, “can already be better than what you get in video chat.”
In theory, it’s not a ridiculous pitch. But alas, according to the people actually already working — or attempting to work — in the Meta’s Horizon Worlds mostly-unrealized metaverse, the Zuckerverse doesn’t exactly offer that “feeling of presence” quite yet.
“I am totally immersed in the metaverse, have a big headset on, and then I need to take off the Oculus, look on my phone for the two-factor authentication code that’s been sent to my phone, then memorize the number, put my headset back on, and try to key it in,” an employee at the tech-consulting firm Accenture, a major Meta funder that’s attempting to implement Oculus into the workspace, griped to Slate. “But when you take off the Oculus it automatically goes to sleep mode, and I was trying to navigate the back-and-forth.”
Also speaking to Slate, other workers attempting to get the job done in metaverse workspaces experienced similar woes.
“Between forgetting to charge headsets, operating system updates, new app installation/updates, logging into accounts, screensharing between desktop and headset,” David Stern, founder and CEO of the Slate Group’s Supporting Cast podcast platform, told Slate, “there’s just a lot that can go wrong.”
Workers also told Slate that there are some glaring accessibility issues, particularly for those with disabilities like motion sickness. And once someone actually gets into their digital workspace, the problems don’t end — even just figuring out basic social cues and conventions is apparently pretty difficult
Tomi Engdahl says:
Immersive Virtual Reality From The Humble Webcam
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/12/immersive-virtual-reality-from-the-humble-webcam/
[Russ Maschmeyer] and Spatial Commerce Projects developed WonkaVision to demonstrate how 3D eye tracking from a single webcam can support rendering a graphical virtual reality (VR) display with realistic depth and space. Spatial Commerce Projects is a Shopify lab working to provide concepts, prototypes, and tools to explore the crossroads of spatial computing and commerce.
Could we make the web more immersive using a simple optical illusion?
https://shopify.github.io/spatial-commerce-projects/WonkaVision/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kate Park / TechCrunch:
Tilia, a payment platform for game publishers and metaverse projects, has raised $22M since spinning off from Linden Lab, the creator of Second Life, in 2022
Metaverse payment platform Tilia gets strategic investment from J.P. Morgan
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/metaverse-payment-platform-tilia-gets-new-strategic-investment-from-j-p-morgan/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Glass is finally shattered
10 years after its debut, Google finally shutters the headset for good.
https://www.popsci.com/technology/google-glass-dead/
Tomi Engdahl says:
10 European Startups that Wowed MWC 2023, from AI to the Metaverse
https://www.analyticsinsight.net/10-european-startups-that-wowed-mwc-2023-from-ai-to-the-metaverse/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Apple’s AR headset operating system referenced in code
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/03/15/apple-open-source-code-on-github-references-realityos
Tomi Engdahl says:
VR STARTUP WORKING ON TECH TO “REPLAY” MEMORIES
https://futurism.com/the-byte/vr-startup-replay-memories
IT’S LITERALLY LIKE AN EPISODE OF “BLACK MIRROR.”
The dystopian TV show “Black Mirror” is one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to a virtual reality startup that’s allowing users to “replay” their memories in the exact locations where they’ve already happened.
In a video demonstration of the technology, startup Wist Labs brags that its forthcoming software will let users access precious moments “how [they] remember them” by replaying recorded “memories” overlayed over specific in-real-life settings via augmented reality.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple last week demoed its mixed reality headset, likely dubbed Reality Pro or Reality One, for its top ~100 executives, ahead of their annual offsite — Apple’s push into mixed reality will take years to pay off, with the company hoping the device follows the same trajectory as its smartwatch.
Apple’s Best Hope for New Headset: a Smartwatch-Like Trajectory
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-03-26/apple-reality-headset-details-pro-features-top-100-meeting-watch-like-start-lfpgdgdb
The company gathers top 100 executives for demos of mixed-reality device before June unveiling.
Apple’s push into mixed reality will take years to pay off, with the company hoping the device follows the same trajectory as its smartwatch. Also: My podcast about production shifting away from China, the iOS 16.4 update reaches a key stage, and Apple Pay goes live in South Korea.
Last week in Power On: Inside Apple’s companywide push to cut costs and avoid layoffs.
The group, known as the Top 100, was there to see Apple’s most important new product in years: its mixed-reality headset.
The device was demonstrated for the group, marking a key milestone ahead of the headset’s public debut planned for June. It was an opportunity for the mixed-reality team to rally leaders around what could be the next major platform beyond the iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.
Now, this isn’t the first time that the Top 100 has gotten a peek at the headset.
How Apple’s Upcoming Mixed-Reality Headset Will Work
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/apple-reality-pro-details-eye-hand-tracking-app-store-3d-ios-like-interface#xj4y7vzkg
Device will switch between AR and VR, have iOS-like interface
Long-anticipated headset can show Mac display, immersive video
Tomi Engdahl says:
New York Times:
Eight current and former Apple employees share their concerns about the upcoming MR headset’s $3,000 price, its utility, and the unproven AR/VR market — The company is expected to unveil an augmented reality headset in a few months. Some employees wonder if the device makes sense for Apple.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/technology/apple-augmented-reality-dissent.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nikkei Asia:
Meta Quest Pro teardown: US parts account for 34% of the headset’s estimated $440 in component costs, China 18%, South Korea 10%, Japan 3%, and 35% unidentified
https://asia.nikkei.com/static/vdata/infographics/vr-goggle-disassembly/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.techspot.com/news/98083-apple-employees-worried-company-headset-3000-failure.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Metaverse Is Completely Falling Apart
Mickey Mouse and Clippy are both abandoning the metaverse ship.
https://futurism.com/metaverse-completely-falling-apart
On the battlefield of the metaverse, Mickey Mouse and Clippy are the latest fallen warriors.
Between mass industry job cuts and a trance-like shift toward generative AI, it’s a strange time for the tech world. And as often happens during widespread changes and reorganizations, some efforts get lost in translation — one of those efforts being, it seems, the huge rush toward the metaverse after Facebook-turned-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded the entirety of Facebook around the concept.
According to reporting from The Wall Street Journal, both Disney and Microsoft, two big-name companies that had skin in the game, have made big moves to wind down their metaverse operations, with Disney slashing its entire division and Microsoft shutting down a VR organization that it had acquired in 2017.
“A lot of companies and businesses understandably feel like if they need to reduce headcount or spending overall, this kind of category would seem to be a pretty easy target,” Scott Kessler, a tech-sector analyst at research firm Third Bridge Group, told the WSJ.
“All these things that are going on, related to AI, seem to be able to be used and leveraged now,” he continued. But when it comes to the metaverse, “no one,” Kessler told the WSJ, “knows when you’re going to reach critical mass.”
In other words, AI looks like money now, while metaverse looks like “maybe money at some point, just not for a while.” And investors, apparently, don’t prefer the odds of the latter.
Disney, for its part, had been working on metaverse projects as far back as 2021,
CEO Bob Chapek doubling down on his trust in the metaverse in an October 2022 company call.
Microsoft’s change-of-metaverse-heart is particularly interesting, given the timeline. It’s one thing for Disney to see the writing on the pixelated wall. But Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was onstage with Zucko praising the Facebook founder’s digital world just three short months before it invested a reported $10 billion into OpenAI (and meanwhile layed off 11,000 Microsoft employees.)
To Nadella’s credit, though, even Zuck himself has pared back his metaverse efforts — at least in lip service — to focus on AI. In a recent call, according to the WSJ’s tally, the meat-smoking CEO used the word “AI” 28 times, while the word “metaverse” was said a comparatively measly seven times
Elsewhere, the WSJ also notes that sales of Meta’s Quest 2 headsets were down last quarter — a number that feels in line with the number of people that can be found in Horizon Worlds, which apparently just isn’t that many.
Of course, Meta’s got more money in the metaverse pot than anyone, so it’ll be interesting to see where the nascent industry.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The Metaverse Is Quickly Turning Into the Meh-taverse
Disney and Microsoft both closed projects tied to the digital realm this month
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-metaverse-is-quickly-turning-into-the-meh-taverse-1a8dc3d0
The metaverse, the virtual world that was the hot thing in tech less than two years ago, is facing a harsher reality.
Walt Disney Co. has shut down the division that was developing its metaverse strategies, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Microsoft Corp. recently shut down a social virtual-reality platform it acquired in 2017. And Mark Zuckerberg, who renamed Facebook as Meta Platforms Inc. to signal his seriousness about the metaverse, focused more on artificial intelligence on an earnings call last month.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Although VR has yet to reach the stratospheric heights its cyberpunk fantasy promised, the latest wave hasn’t been a high-profile failure either.
What happened to the virtual reality gaming revolution?
VR hasn’t taken over the world, but that doesn’t mean it has failed.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/10/what-happened-to-the-virtual-reality-gaming-revolution/?utm_medium=social&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_brand=ars
Tomi Engdahl says:
TECH
American teens aren’t excited about virtual reality, with only 4% using it daily
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/american-teens-not-into-virtual-reality-only-4percent-use-it-daily-.html
KEY POINTS
Virtual reality hasn’t caught on with American teens, according to a new survey from Piper Sandler released on Tuesday.
“To us, the lukewarm usage demonstrates that VR remains ‘early days’ and that these devices are less important than smartphones,” Piper Sandler analysts wrote.
Only 4% of teenage headset owners polled used VR daily, the investment firm found.
Tomi Engdahl says:
MARK ZUCKERBERG ABANDONS METAVERSE AS SHINY NEW TOY APPEARS
https://futurism.com/the-byte/mark-zuckerberg-abandons-metaverse
WHAT DO YOU EXPECT, AN ATTENTION SPAN?
Squirrel!
Poor, poor, Horizon Worlds. According to Facebook-turned-Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, the company’s metaverse of dead-eyed avatars has been all but abandoned by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who, in an added blow, is instead said to be spending the bulk of his time chasing the investor-appeasing Silicon Valley squirrel that is generative AI.
“We’ve been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world,” Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview on Wednesday. “We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people.”
To be fair, as Bosworth noted, Facebook has been working on AI R&D for years, and their large language model (LLM), LLaMa, is rumored to be quite powerful. The CTO also threw the metaverse a generative AI-laced bone elsewhere in the Nikkei Asia interview, explaining that Meta hopes that AI will ultimately make its beleaguered metaverse better.
In the short term, though? Meta, per Bosworth’s comments, is unsurprisingly gearing up to deploy AI in its advertising machine, the channel where the company makes the vast majority of its money — as opposed to the metaverse, which at this point is a multibillion-dollar money pit. (Get ready for those hyper-targeted, AI-generated ads, y’all. Cheers to living in hell!)
Tomi Engdahl says:
Facebook’s Former Metaverse Czar Publicly Shreds the Company’s Mistakes
He’s not pulling any punches.
https://futurism.com/facebook-metaverse-head-mistakes
John Carmack was a critic of Facebook’s Metaverse even when he was still nominally tasked with building it — and now that he’s out, he’s pulling no punches.
In a recent interview with Meta’s current CTO Andrew Bosworth on his “Boz to the Future” podcast, Carmack said that although he’s still quite “bullish” on virtual reality itself, he thinks his ex-employer isn’t doing it any favors.
“I still think it’s a great bet,” he told his former co-worker, “and it’s Meta’s to lose at this point.”
Perhaps best known as the man who built “DOOM,” Carmack was CTO of Oculus when it was purchased by the company formerly known as Facebook. Although he remained on at Meta until resigning at the end of last year, he was known to criticize his erstwhile employer even when he was still on the payroll as its consultant.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://muropaketti.com/tietotekniikka/tietotekniikkauutiset/virtuaalitodellisuus-ei-kiinnosta-teineja-luvut-ovat-karuja-tekniikan-tulevaisuuden-kannalta/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/american-teens-not-into-virtual-reality-only-4percent-use-it-daily-.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
VIRTUAL METAVERSE REAL ESTATE IS COMPLETELY IN THE TOILET
https://futurism.com/the-byte/virtual-metaverse-real-estate-trouble
Virtual real estate platform Decentraland, once valued at $1 billion, is now in free fall.
Revenues have absolutely cratered over the last year, The Block reports, with only a handful of users actually trading virtual real estate, or the slices of land inside Decentraland’s virtual world that can be transacted in the form of NFTs.
The numbers are absolutely brutal. According to the report, only between 20 and 30 people are actually buying and selling property on a weekly basis, amounting to roughly $50,000. That’s a massive drop, considering trading volumes were in the millions between late 2021 and early 2022.
Decentraland’s woes are symptomatic of a much bigger decline in interest in owning virtual real estate.
Last year, data aggregator DappRadar found that Decentraland only had 38 “active users” over a period of 24 hours, a shockingly low number given the company’s lofty billion-dollar market cap. Other platforms including The Sandbox have been seriously struggling to draw in serious numbers of users as well.
Decentraland recently put on a Fashion Week event, with 60 labels including top brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Adidas sponsoring shows. But despite over 100,000 people showing up to the same event last year, only 26,000 users attended this year, according to The Block.
“The world didn’t feel very alive,” The Verge’s Jay Peters recalled after attending the event. “While walking around, I’d usually only see one or two other people in my vicinity.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://etn.fi/index.php/13-news/14810-konsertti-vaelittyi-5g-n-yli-tampereelta-helsinkiin-virtuaalilaseihin
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.uusiteknologia.fi/2023/04/11/nokia-arena-kutsuu-metaversen-ja-web3n-innovaattorit-tampereelle/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/10/supercon-2022-aedan-cullen-is-creating-an-ar-system-to-beat-the-big-boys/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta has reportedly stopped pitching advertisers on the metaverse
https://bit.ly/3UIJEg4
Less than one year after Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg was pushing the Metaverse, the firm has moved away from the technology in meetings with advertisers.
Meta has shifted away from pitching the metaverse to advertisers, The Information reported.
In pitch meetings, the company has reportedly been prioritizing Reels and AI tools.
The move comes as the firm has moved away from its metaverse ambitions over the past few months.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta Tries to Lure Advertisers With Reels Discounts, AI Tools
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/meta-tries-to-lure-advertisers-with-reels-discounts-ai-tools
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple is developing VR apps and services for its upcoming headset across gaming, fitness, live sports, and collaboration, like FaceTime and Freeform — Apple Inc. is racing to build a trove of software and services for its upcoming mixed-reality headset, seeking to win …
Apple’s AR/VR Headset to Feature Sports, Gaming, iPad Apps and Workouts
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-04-18/apple-vr-ar-headset-apps-sports-tv-fitness-gaming-wellness-ipad-features?leadSource=uverify%20wall
Device to feature collaboration, virtual workouts, meditation
Upcoming headset also will offer sports app and eye scanning
Tomi Engdahl says:
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Meta opens Horizon Worlds to teens in the US and Canada, despite objections from some lawmakers and activists, and introduces age-appropriate safety features
Meta opens up its social VR space Horizon Worlds to teens
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/18/meta-opens-up-its-social-vr-platform-horizon-worlds-to-teens/
Meta announced today that it’s opening up Horizon Worlds to teen users in the U.S. and Canada, after previously restricting the social VR platform to users 18 years of age and above. As part of the expansion, the company says it’s introducing a set of age-appropriate protections and safety defaults.
The move comes as lawmakers and children’s rights activists had urged Meta to abandon its plans to open up the platform to young users.
Today’s announcement doesn’t come as a surprise, as a leaked memo revealed back in February that Meta planned to open up access to Horizon Worlds to users aged 13 to 17. At the time, Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Ed Markey (D-MA) wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg urging him to halt the plans, arguing that giving teens access to “digital space rife with potential harms” would be a bad idea.
Welcoming Teens to Meta Horizon Worlds in the US and Canada
https://about.fb.com/news/2023/04/horizon-worlds-teen-expansion-us-canada/
Takeaways
We’re beginning to open Meta Horizon Worlds to teens ages 13 to 17 in the US and Canada in the coming weeks with a robust set of age-appropriate protections and safety defaults.
We’ve expanded our existing VR parental supervision tools to include Meta Horizon Worlds, making it easier for parents and guardians to help manage their teens’ experience and support healthy conversations about safety in VR.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Senators urge Zuckerberg to keep teens out of the metaverse
https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/senators-urge-zuckerberg-to-keep-teens-out-of-the-metaverse/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/09/blinks-are-useful-in-vr-but-triggering-blinks-is-tricky/
There are several known ways to induce a blink reflex, but it turns out that one novel method is particularly suited to implementing in VR: triggering the menace reflex by simulating a fast-approaching object. In VR, a small shadow appears in the field of view and rapidly seems to approach one’s eyes. This very brief event is hardly noticeable, yet reliably triggers a blink. There are other approaches as well such as flashes, sudden noise, or simulating the gradual blurring of vision, but to be useful a method must be unobtrusive and reliable.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch:
Mark Zuckerberg disputes the narrative that Meta is moving its focus away from a metaverse vision and sees AI tech working in tandem with the metaverse — Things are looking up for Meta. The company beat revenue expectations, reporting an increase in year-over-year revenue for the first time in three quarters.
Meta beats revenue expectations, remains committed to metaverse
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/26/meta-beats-revenue-expectations-remains-committed-to-metaverse/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yaling Jiang / Wired:
Experts say that China’s mostly government-led metaverse efforts are more about supporting the economy, health care, and industry than about consumer services
China’s Metaverse Is All About Work
The government wants the metaverse to be less about having fun and shopping and more about health care and industry.
https://www.wired.com/story/china-metaverse-work-health-care/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Käärijä pääsi supersuosittuun Fortnite-peliin https://www.is.fi/viihde/art-2000009559047.html
Suomi on ensimmäinen maa, joka promoaa euroviisuehdokastaan suositussa Fortnite-pelissä.
SUOMI on maailman ensimmäinen maa, jonka pääkaupungista on julkaistu fotorealistinen kaksonen Fortnitessa. Julkaisua tähdittää Suomen euroviisuedustaja Käärijää promoava uusi pelikokemus, tiedotteessa kerrotaan.
Pelaajat voivat vierailla virtuaalisella Senaatintorilla, joka on koristeltu euroviisujen ennakkosuosikkien joukkoon nousseen artistin materiaaleilla. Lisäksi pelikentällä voi tanssia erillisellä tanssialueella Cha Cha Cha -teemaisen musiikin tahtiin.
Uuden pelikokemuksen ja virtuaalisen Helsingin on luonut suomalainen metaversumiyritys ZOAN.
FORTNITE on Epic Gamesin suosittu metaversumialusta, jossa voi pelata ja osallistua livetapahtumiin sekä keskustella yhdessä muiden pelaajien kanssa. Alustalla on 70 miljoonaa aktiivista kuukausittaista käyttäjää ja yli 500 miljoonaa pelaajatiliä
Epic Games julkaisi hiljattain avoimen lähdekoodin Unreal Editor for Fortnite -päivityksen, jonka avulla pelikehittäjät voivat luoda uusia pelejä ja kokemuksia Fortniteen aiempaa nopeammin ja tehokkaammin. Suomi on edelläkävijä alustan uusien ominaisuuksien hyödyntämisessä.
– Käärijässä on kyse rajojen rikkomisesta
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tästä päivästä lähtien Käärijä-kokemukseen sekä uuteen virtuaaliseen Helsinkiin voi tutustua Fortnitessa syöttämällä koodin 1530-0619-6061 pelin Discovery-näkymässä.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://hackaday.com/2023/05/04/nvidia-jetson-powers-real-time-iron-man-hud/
Tomi Engdahl says:
RIP Metaverse
An obituary for the latest fad to join the tech graveyard
https://www.businessinsider.com/metaverse-dead-obituary-facebook-mark-zuckerberg-tech-fad-ai-chatgpt-2023-5?r=US&IR=T
The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old.
The capital-M Metaverse, a descendant of the 1982 movie “Tron” and the 2003 video game “Second Life,” was born in 2021 when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of his trillion-dollar company to Meta. After a much-heralded debut, the Metaverse became the obsession of the tech world and a quick hack to win over Wall Street investors. The hype could not save the Metaverse, however, and a lack of coherent vision for the product ultimately led to its decline. Once the tech industry turned to a new, more promising trend — generative AI — the fate of the Metaverse was sealed.
The Metaverse is now headed to the tech industry’s graveyard of failed ideas. But the short life and ignominious death of the Metaverse offers a glaring indictment of the tech industry that birthed it.
Grand promise
From the moment of its delivery, Zuckerberg claimed that the Metaverse would be the future of the internet. The glitzy, spurious promotional video that accompanied Zuckerberg’s name-change announcement described a future where we’d be able to interact seamlessly in virtual worlds: Users would “make eye contact” and “feel like you’re right in the room together.” The Metaverse offered people the chance to engage in an “immersive” experience, he claimed.
These grandiose promises heaped sky-high expectations on the Metaverse.
A wonky virtual-reality interview with the CBS host Gayle King, where low-quality cartoon avatars of both King and Zuckerberg awkwardly motioned to each other, was a stark contrast to the futuristic vistas shown in Meta’s splashy introductory video.
The Metaverse also suffered from an acute identity crisis. A functional business proposition requires a few things to thrive and grow: a clear use case, a target audience, and the willingness of customers to adopt the product. Zuckerberg waxed poetic about the Metaverse as “a vision that spans many companies” and “the successor to the mobile internet,” but he failed to articulate the basic business problems that the Metaverse would address.
The concept of virtual worlds where users interact with each other using digital avatars is an old one, going back as far as the late 1990s with massively multiplayer online role-player games, such as “Meridian 59,” “Ultima Online,” and “EverQuest.” And while the Metaverse supposedly built on these ideas with new technology, Zuckerberg’s one actual product — the VR platform Horizon Worlds, which required the use of an incredibly clunky Oculus headset — failed to suggest anything approaching a road map or a genuine vision. In spite of the Metaverse’s arrested conceptual development, a pliant press published statements about the future of the technology that were somewhere between unrealistic and outright irresponsible.
CNBC host Jim Cramer nodded approvingly when Zuckerberg claimed that 1 billion people would use the Metaverse and spend hundreds of dollars there, despite the Meta CEO’s inability to say what people would receive in exchange for their cash or why anyone would want to strap a clunky headset to their face to attend a low-quality, cartoon concert.
A high-flying life
The inability to define the Metaverse in any meaningful way didn’t get in the way of its ascension to the top of the business world. In the months following the Meta announcement, it seemed that every company had a Metaverse product on offer, despite it not being obvious what it was or why they should.
Companies’ rush to get into the game led Wall Street investors, consultants, and analysts to try to one up each other’s projections for the Metaverse’s growth. The consulting firm Gartner claimed that 25% of people would spend at least one hour a day in the Metaverse by 2026. The Wall Street Journal said the Metaverse would change the way we work forever. The global consulting firm McKinsey predicted that the Metaverse could generate up to “$5 trillion in value,” adding that around 95% of business leaders expected the Metaverse to “positively impact their industry” within five to 10 years. Not to be outdone, Citi put out a massive report that declared the Metaverse would be a $13 trillion opportunity.
A brutal downfall
In spite of all this hype, the Metaverse did not lead a healthy life. Every single business idea or rosy market projection was built on the vague promises of a single CEO. And when people were actually offered the opportunity to try it out, nobody actually used the Metaverse.
Decentraland, the most well-funded, decentralized, crypto-based Metaverse product (effectively a wonky online world you can “walk” around), only had around 38 daily active users in its “$1.3 billion ecosystem.” Decentraland would dispute this number, claiming that it had 8,000 daily active users — but that’s still only a fraction of the number of people playing large online games like “Fortnite.”
Meta’s much-heralded efforts similarly struggled: By October 2022, Mashable reported that Horizon Worlds had less than 200,000 monthly active users — dramatically short of the 500,000 target Meta had set for the end of 2022. The Wall Street Journal reported that only about 9% of user-created worlds were visited by more than 50 players, and The Verge said that it was so buggy that even Meta employees eschewed it.
The Metaverse fell seriously ill as the economy slowed and the hype around generative AI grew. Microsoft shuttered its virtual-workspace platform AltSpaceVR in January 2023, laid off the 100 members of its “industrial metaverse team,” and made a series of cuts to its HoloLens team. Disney shuttered its Metaverse division in March, and Walmart followed suit by ending its Roblox-based Metaverse projects. The billions of dollars invested and the breathless hype around a half-baked concept led to thousands — if not tens of thousands — of people losing their jobs.
But the Metaverse was officially pulled off life support when it became clear that Zuckerberg and the company that launched the craze had moved on to greener financial pastures.
Did anyone learn their lesson?
While the idea of virtual worlds or collective online experiences may live on in some form, the Capital-M Metaverse is dead. It was preceded in death by a long line of tech fads like Web3 and Google Glass. It is survived by newfangled ideas like the aforementioned generative AI and the self-driving car. Despite this long lineage of disappointment, let’s be clear: The death of the Metaverse should be remembered as arguably one of the most historic failures in tech history.
I do not believe that Mark Zuckerberg ever had any real interest in “the Metaverse,” because he never seemed to define it beyond a slightly tweaked Facebook with avatars and cumbersome hardware. It was the means to an increased share price, rather than any real vision for the future of human interaction. And Zuckerberg used his outsize wealth and power to get the whole of the tech industry and a good portion of the American business world into line behind this half-baked idea.
The fact that Mark Zuckerberg has clearly stepped away from the Metaverse is a damning indictment of everyone who followed him, and anyone who still considers him a visionary tech leader. It should also be the cause for some serious reflection among the venture-capital community, which recklessly followed Zuckerberg into blowing billions of dollars on a hype cycle founded on the flimsiest possible press-release language. In a just world, Mark Zuckerberg should be fired as CEO of Meta (in the real world, this is actually impossible).
Zuckerberg misled everyone, burned tens of billions of dollars, convinced an industry of followers to submit to his quixotic obsession, and then killed it the second that another idea started to interest Wall Street.
There is no future for Meta with Mark Zuckerberg at the helm: It will stagnate, and then it will die and follow the Metaverse into the proverbial grave.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Putkiasentajaopiskelijoille kehitetty virtuaalipeli vastaa työelämän tarpeisiin ja on kestävää kehitystä
https://www.taitotalo.fi/artikkelit/putkiasentajaopiskelijoille-kehitetty-virtuaalipeli-vastaa-tyoelaman-tarpeisiin-ja-kestavaa-kehitysta?fbclid=IwAR11RtgVrXsRzT-miS6INsAGke6mWtNqsinNWTfzOLPgnXXC1vHkYY4XxP0_aem_th_AbRevuT3SRH4u64yqFeTcTspI2WkywtmM2XbxvWNPL2gQbrR_9z7nWJP3m0Y0onoWIqzN1zNkFauOpCgstul6gIb
Taitotalo ja Salpaus kehittivät yhdessä VR-oppimisympäristön putkiasentajaopiskelijoille. Putkentaivutuspeli opettaa hahmottamaan putkentaivutuksen perusteet.
Kun virtuaalista oppimisympäristöä käytetään ennen työsaliopetusta, alkuharjoituksissa syntyvä kupariputken hävikki vältetään.
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Mark Zuckerberg Led the Tech Industry Into a Metaverse Wasteland
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/05/the-metaverse-was-a-ridiculous-idea-where-did-it-come-from.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
An overview of the executive team behind Apple’s upcoming mixed reality headset — Apple is just a few weeks away from debuting its mixed-reality headset. This past week, I gave an in-depth look at the device’s development and features. Now, here’s a list of the key people involved in the project.
Apple’s Key Decision-Makers Behind the New Mixed-Reality Headset
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-21/the-key-apple-aapl-executives-behind-the-mixed-reality-headset-coming-at-wwdc-lhxh0lok
Apple is just a few weeks away from debuting its mixed-reality headset. This past week, I gave an in-depth look at the device’s development and features. Now, here’s a list of the key people involved in the project. Also: Apple pivots to clothing and details iOS 17’s new accessibility features, while ChatGPT comes to the iPhone.
Last week in Power On: Apple begins testing speedy M3 chips as it pursues a Mac comeback.
Apple Inc. has thousands of employees working on its upcoming mixed-reality headset, including executives, marketers and engineers. But there are a handful of people who have been especially critical to the seven-year-plus effort, which could be the company’s riskiest product launch in decades.
That cadre includes top lieutenants to Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook and executives from the company’s Technology Development Group, the secretive team behind the device. There’s also someone on that list who is no longer at the company, but still casts a shadow over Apple’s product strategy.
Here are the people who helped steer Apple into the world of mixed reality
Of course, Cook is ultimately responsible for the product. The final version has veered from his initial vision, as I detailed in the latest edition of Bloomberg Businessweek, but now it’s up to him to get it over the line. After more than a decade running Apple, this device could ultimately either strengthen or undermine his legacy. The company is betting that it’s the former.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Financial Times:
Sources: Meta is in talks to sign a multiyear deal in which Magic Leap provides IP licensing and contract manufacturing in North America for Meta’s AR products — Social media giant seeks technologies to help create an avatar-filled ‘metaverse’ — Facebook’s parent company is in talks …
https://www.ft.com/content/476dd2ca-8dd9-4b75-9d74-7b978c250fef
Tomi Engdahl says:
Meta hakkaa päätään seinään 13 miljardilla, kukaan ei ymmärrä – mutta Mikko Hyppösellä on teoria https://www.is.fi/digitoday/art-2000009611078.html
Metan kärkihanke on ollut immuuni säästöille ja leikkauksille.
FACEBOOKIN omistava Meta on satsannut merkittävästi metaversumina tunnettuun virtuaalitodellisuuteensa. Yhtiön kärkihankkeisiin kuuluvan projektin tarkoitus on rakentaa virtuaalinen maailma, mihin on käytetty paljon rahaa.
Metaversumi on virtuaalilaseilla käytettävä kolmiulotteinen keinotodellisuus, jossa jokainen käyttäjä luo itselleen avatarin eli hahmon ja pystyy liikkumaan muiden käyttäjien seurassa ja viestimään näiden kanssa.