Written/Contest Moon
With the development of the metaverse, all companies want to occupy a favorable position in the metaverse field. After Facebook changed its name to Meta and made plans to gradually march into the metaverse, a wave of marching into the metaverse has been set off in the past few months. Other big tech giants such as Microsoft, Samsung and Sony have also ventured into the metaverse, introducing collaboration software with better connectivity and more immersive user experience products.
Attention has also been focused on Apple for a long time, with many analysts and experts waiting for one of the tech world's biggest trailblazers to launch their own "mixed reality" headset. However, recent reports confirm that Apple has no plans to enter the metacosm in the short term with a long-awaited device that will likely be released later this year. Instead, the company is said to be only focusing on developing content related to games, communications and entertainment.
With the prospect of the metaverse evolving, will Apple finally enter the metaverse market with a Web 3-compatible device? First, let's take a look at what will be the highlights of apple and Meta's next headset released in 2022. Then, analyze what Facebook and Apple are best at and why Apple doesn't necessarily lag behind Meta.
How much do we know about Meta and the Cambria Project so far?
Facebook's first high-end headset after renaming it Meta will be released later in 2022 — though the exact timing has yet to be announced.
Meta's latest device, dubbed the Cambria Project, was originally presented at the company's virtual connectivity conference last year. The headset is promised to be the successor to the wildly popular Oculus Quest 2, and its immersive features are unprecedented in previous headset versions.
Notable features include realistic facial communication capabilities, the ability to track users' facial expressions, reconstructions of mixed reality objects, a special avatar personalization engine, and other advances consistent with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's promise of a "materialized" metaversary experience.
In terms of its design, several new design concepts were also showcased in Meta's Connect 2021 demo:
More ergonomic design: In the prototype currently released, the Cambria project will feature a sleek, all-black structure that is lighter, more compact than its previous generation, Oculus, and equipped with a slimmer strap.
Tracking Controller: It is expected that the Cambria project will also have full-body tracking capabilities, allowing users to have a better sense of and control over their virtual environment.
More advanced sensors and reconstruction algorithms: The Cambria project also features more advanced sensors and reconstruction algorithms that represent physical objects in the real world with impeccable perspective and depth. These sensors will also adapt to a variety of different skin tones and facial features, enabling users to have a more immersive feel.
According to Meta analyst Noelle Martin, the company "aims to be able to simulate every pore of the user's skin, every strand of hair, every microkinesis ... ... the goal is to create 3D replicas of people, places and things, so realistic to the touch that they can't tell the difference between real and virtual." ”
So far, Meta's project has had a smooth start. Since the name change, the company's stock price has risen about 5 percent. Meta's plan includes hiring at least 10,000 new employees to build their meta-universe space. While the news wasn't fully confirmed, Meta even started recruiting employees from Microsoft and Apple.
How much do we know about Apple's upcoming "mixed reality" headset?
While multiple sources claim that Apple's upcoming headset will launch in 2022, Bloomberg has now said we're more likely to see a new headset release by the end of the year.
Some of the features expected from Apple's first XR product include:
Turbo Acceleration Processing: Apple's released headset is expected to have the same power as the M1 processor in the latest MacBook Pro series and come with a 96W USB-C power adapter. It also reportedly comes with a low-end processor that can power any sensor-related computation.
Tracking camera: Apple's headset will be equipped with two tracking cameras, capable of sending information to the two 8K displays located in front of the user's eyes.
Lidar sensors: These sensors are considered to be the innovation of Apple's first headset - measuring distance with lasers can quickly and accurately collect spatial areas. This will allow for better placement of objects in augmented reality.
While there are plenty of predictions that Apple will work with Meta, Microsoft, and other tech leaders to create a metaverse-compatible device, there doesn't seem to be a trend towards working together. According to Mark Gullman, a reliable Apple analyst at Bloomberg, "The idea of a completely virtual world, where users can escape the real world into the metaverse, is the same idea as Meta's vision for the future, but it's something Apple is adamantly opposed to." Instead, he said, the upcoming mixed reality headset will guide users through shorter-term activities such as gaming, communications and entertainment consumption.
With the advent of Web 3, Apple's refusal to offer users access to the metaverse for a long time caused shock and disappointment among users. The news also places Meta and Apple in very different arenas of competition, and Apple's upcoming vision stands in stark contrast to Meta's vision — a brand that's entirely revolving around a new positioning to build a metaversary space in Web 3.
If we shift our focus back to Meta, we are left with an important question – what advantage do they have in this competition? Did Facebook's success and business model lay the right foundation for Meta's growth?
What Facebook does best is connect people
From the earliest days of Facebook's creation, it has had a major mission: to bring people closer together.
At that time, the young Mark Zuckerberg, a sophomore at Harvard, founded Facebook, a social media site designed to make better connections between Harvard students. This connectivity is then used to help students at different institutions connect with each other. Ultimately, the Facebook universe will revolutionize how the rest of the world connects, communicates, and shares personal information through a central database.
Now Meta's goal is to enhance the user experience and make these virtual connections more immersive. According to Mark Zuckerberg, "The decisive quality of the metaverse will be a sense of presence — like you're with another person or in another place." In addition, he described the goal of making users feel really present with each other as: "The ultimate dream of social technology."
Today, It's arguably the only large tech company with the scale and capital to create metacosmities — with a 3.5 billion user base and a total profit of $86 billion last year. With an unmatched number of users, Meta already has the largest internet of all-ages social media history.
However, will the expanse of the Meta ecosystem continue to provide a safe and fair space for users to freely connect and share information? Despite Facebook's long history of controversy, Zuckerberg seems to have a goal of creating an egalitarian metaverse — promising greater operability and lower developer fees. But with the advent of virtual land on decentralized platforms, questions now arise about how Meta will manage its new internet media, or where communities can find ways to connect more freely in Web 3.
With that in mind, it's easy to wonder: Should Meta be forced to share metaverses with these updated, blockchain-powered platforms, and will the Cambria Project headset provide fair access? Or will it one day be offered by another device that may be more mainstream and user-friendly?
Apple does the best: innovation
Apple is often credited with innovating some of our most widely used products. Well-known examples include the iPod, the iPhone and, of course, Apple's Macintosh, one of the first machines to help personal computing ubiquitous. To illustrate an example, let's go back to the early days of computation.
In 1979, then-ambitious tech giant Steve Jobs visited the Parc (Palo Alto Research Center) laboratory. During this time, Xerox was the first company to produce an operating system based on a graphical user interface — a device known as Xerox Alto.
However, Alto will never be commercially distributed. With a price tag of $32,000 (equivalent to $114,105 on the market today), Xerox's managers saw only one workstation that was too complex to be mass-produced. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, saw much more than that. He was surprised by the graphical user interface and thought Alto was the ideal blueprint for how all computers should work.
Most analysts agree that Xerox Alto is well ahead of the times it existed. Before computing any other machine in history, it had the same type of keyboard and mouse interface that we still use today. Incredibly, it also has concepts that are now common, such as email, event reminders, and word processing.
Jobs wanted a piece of the innovation, so he sold his stake in Apple to Xerox in exchange for Alto's technology. Apple will then use their data to create a more sophisticated, user-friendly, and affordable computing device for the average home.
The same logic applies to the creation of the iPhone. While Apple wasn't a pioneer in mobile smartphones, they were able to reinvent the concept of the phone and turn it into the closest thing we came to a pocket computer at the time. To date, the construction of Apple's mobile phones has become a de facto blueprint for how future touchscreen devices will be built and integrated into our daily lives.
Throughout the history of technology, Apple has mastered the art of taking existing technology and making it better. While Steve Jobs may no longer be at the forefront of the Apple empire, their continued efforts (such as today's lightweight, M1 processor in industry-standard MacBooks, or a highly expanded app store library) have proven that the tech giant hasn't lost its innovative edge.
So, what does all this have to do with our current technology paradigm, Web 3?
Here's one example of what Apple has done best: innovation. While it's too early to draw conclusions, Apple's decades-long design trends suggest that once the tech giant decides to create an innovative, metaversy-enabled device, we're likely to see history repeat itself. Just like the iPhone or Macintosh, it could make its way into the homes of the masses.
So, what's next?
With neither tech giant yet releasing their XR-specific headsets, it's too early to tell which one will go which way. Recent reports suggest that Meta plans to enter the NFT market, although there is no evidence that the company has any plans to adopt a more decentralized business model.
However, when we look back at the history of computing, one thing is clear: the continued development of headsets has never been the ultimate goal. They are not the problem in themselves, but rather they are what brings us to the next problem. And when it comes to getting closer and closer to Web 3, companies that can take users to a better, more ubiquitous experience win.