While companies like Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Facebook, Sony, and HTC are making huge investments in virtual/augmented reality, we haven’t really heard anything from Apple’s end, at least nothing in terms of an actual commercial product. There are some hints of Apple’s interest, such as their acquisition of Metaio, and recent Apple’s CEO Tim Cook also said that he believes augmented reality is doing better than virtual reality.
We’re not sure what Apple’s plans are for the technology, but it definitely sounds like they’re stepping up their efforts. It has been recently noted that Apple has made several new hires. One of them is Zeyu Li, a former employee of Magic Leap, and the second is Yury Petrov, a former engineer from Oculus.
Granted both engineers could have been hired and then reassigned to different parts of Apple without anything to do with virtual or augmented reality tech, but then what would be the point? Like we said, Apple has shown some interest in the tech in the past, and these recent hires only serve to cement that.
However at this point in time it is unclear as to what Apple will do with the technology and what products we can expect. It is possible that Apple may simply be exploring both technologies on a deeper level, so maybe that’s the extent of it, but we guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
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