NOTE: An invitation for DFD readers: The full transatlantic tug of war over tech regulation will be hashed out on stage next Thursday, at POLITICO's Global Tech Day in London. See the full details and register here. So, Apple has entered the… wait, what are we supposed to call this business again? CEO Tim Cook pitched the long-awaited Apple Vision Pro headset yesterday as the company’s first foray into “spatial computing” — the next step beyond personal computing (desktops, laptops) and mobile computing (smartphones). You might already know this as “virtual reality,” or “augmented reality,” to put a finer point on it, or “extended reality,” to use the industry’s preferred catchall. Just don’t call it the metaverse, if you’re at Apple. The word was conspicuously absent from Cook’s presentation yesterday at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, implicitly highlighting the fact that the company has just entered into direct competition with Meta as Mark Zuckerberg continues his effort to will a 3D internet into existence. Semantics aside, the world’s premier device company (and digital storefront) entering the VR business is a huge deal for the development of an immersive virtual overlay for the internet. What exactly is Apple, a company with a reputation for perfectionism in their product design, doing in a field that’s proven impossible thus far to crack at the consumer level? Cook touted the Vision Pro as “the most advanced personal electronics device ever,” with more than 5,000 patents filed in its development — and a beyond-luxury $3500 price tag to match. A headset at that price point won’t exactly be stuffing stockings after it comes out “early next year,” beyond the one percent and various discount-enjoying Apple employees. What it could do, however, is create a two-track development path for the metaverse, much like the one that exists for mobile phones, especially in the early days of the smartphone: a relatively “closed” luxury market served by Apple, and a more open and affordable one served by pretty much everyone else. “Apple has historically pioneered novel forms of interface and interaction… and at the same time, we can see exactly how that comes together to a price point that is not just out of reach for most Americans, but nearly every American,” said Matthew Ball, the author of last year’s “The Metaverse and How It Will Revolutionize Everything.” “Apple is going to play Apple, and Meta is going to try to be the Android for the open-source ecosystem,” said Yonatan Raz Fridman, co-founder and CEO of the gaming company Supersocial. (Meta recently announced its own mixed-reality headset, the Quest 3, at a decidedly lower $499 price point.) This has ramifications far beyond just Bay Area R&D outlays and balance sheets. The philosophical clash between Apple and the rest of the computer hardware industry goes back not just to the iPhone and the Android but to the very beginning of the personal computing era, when Steve Jobs bet that users would trade affordability and wonky customization for a seamless and stylish consumer product. (It took a few decades, but it paid off.) Of course, Apple’s long game isn’t just to make popular products, but to then control the platforms that power them (see: the App Store). Apple has been embroiled for years in a legal battle with Fortnite creators Epic Games over esoteric questions about how the former company’s strict control over the App Store might, or might not, stifle competition. A world where people across the country are playing Fortnite on their Apple Reality device is a long way off, but what would it look like if the company gained the device supremacy in VR that it enjoys with the current internet? “To the extent to which you find today's power structures in the digital economy problematic, they're only going to intensify,” Ball said. “If you take a look at what Apple's doing, they're very much positioning this as a productivity and work oriented device and that may provide a lens for them to conquer a category where today Windows remains the leader — maybe you're talking about dominance on all screens.” Fridman, whose company develops experiences for Roblox, doesn’t think that will scare developers away from Apple. “People want to build content for the best devices and for where people are actually going,” he said. “As long as Apple continues to build the best product, and as long as people crave Apple devices, you will see developers and creators flock there.” For now, however, what qualifies as “the best product” is deeply relative. As wildly sophisticated as it might be — Ball estimates Apple has been spending tens of billions of dollars per year on R&D for the device — the Apple Reality Pro is still untested in American homes, and is unlikely to reach many of them at its current price. That means the other companies scrambling to write the next chapter of the internet’s future might still have a chance to do it in as large letters as Apple, despite the latter company’s historic hardware dominance. “It probably sucks to be Mark Zuckerberg in this moment,” Raz Fridman said, as Apple has more or less single-handedly renewed the VR hype cycle. “But on the other hand it has to be great, because now he can say to investors: ‘Hey, guys, everything you've been bashing me about with my investment in the metaverse, I was right. Look at Apple. I have to play in this category, and we have to continue to invest to make sure that we can play against the biggest company in the world.”
| 
