The “metaverse” isn’t tied to AR/VR.

The metaverse , in most common definitions, refers to a virtual world and ecosystem as an alternate for the real one. See Ready Player One.

Second life is a metaverse platform in essence. But isn’t VR.

Fortnite is a metaverse but isn’t VR. Their programming language is even called Verse.

The Quest itself isn’t a metaverse product BUT Horizon Worlds (not The confusingly named HorizonOS) is. You can participate in Horizon without a headset.

Apple has no metaverse product. There might be metaverse products on Apple devices but that’s no different than an iPhone or Mac playing the things I mentioned above.

There is almost no definition of metaverse that includes augmented reality.

The knee-jerk replies you're getting are hilarious. The reality distortion field is as strong as ver. You see, because it's Apple, it can't be a bet in virtual reality with a bad connotation (metaverse). To some, Apple can do no wrong nor do they make mistakes. If they invest (and fail) in VR it was from a good angle, not purely for profit (just like Meta).

But seriously now, you can bet your left kidney that if Apple ever manages to make AR/VR work they will try to milk every penny and dime from the gullible while pretending that "it's good for you" like they do with their broken walled gardens. /rant

Metaverse means the Ready Player One / Horizon Worlds social experience where everyone is an avatar in a shared virtual world all able to interact with each other.

Apple hasn't just not implemented this they've made it impossible for developers to as well. Because only Apple can access the sensors needed to create the 3D avatar and only Apple is allowed access to this avatar i.e. it is restricted to SharePlay with your friends.

That isn’t the metaverse.

No dancing Zucks.

“Killer app” (as far as there is one) is focus. Being able to surround yourself with a large Mac screen & several Safari & iOS-type app screens, in a beautiful natural environment, and get real work done.

They haven't marketed it as "metaverse" to try to please investors, it's something they've been working on for years and have now got a working initial version they've released.

Metaverse isn't VR. Meta in particular just happens to be integrating them since they make both.

In my opinion, Apple Vision Pro is a device that will eventually replace iPhone, iPad and Mac. See Meta’s Orion glasses. That’s the goal of the Vision Pro, not metaverse. It just needs some time, like 5-10 years.

What about it? VR != Metaverse.

(FWIW I think both are way overhyped)

Alternative for what? I don’t use default Microsoft for anything on Apple, or recall seeing anything Microsoft as a default choice.

Google was default search engine in Safari, but I changed that to DDG.

In Apple’s presentation they specifically say that the OpenAI integration is akin to a plugin and they may have other providers, especially for domain specific knowledge in the future.

The third party providers is smart imho. Apple take on little risk, and it allows them to avoid being reliant on any one provider.

Apple is the most brand-aware IT company in the world. It is likely they simply recognized the synergy of partnering with the creators of “ChatGPT” that holds the mind space equivalently to “googling” but for AI among their customers.

> Mistral is in the EU which doesn't have a stable regulatory regime.

I guess the US's "no regulations ever" can be considered a stable regulatory regime.

Making your competitor solely responsible for an important component in your ecosystem is bad news, and ClosedAI is basically an arm of Microsoft only separate to shield them from legal concerns around copyright. (And if the component is not that important, which is possibly the case with LLMs, then why spend so much money and undermine user privacy?)

They have a deep hatred for Meta, so Llama is out

A few years ago saying that there will be soon AI that perfectly understands human natural language was viewed as unrealistic science fiction. Today the possibility of an AI god is regarded as unrealistic science fiction.

[dead]

Seed rounds for Ai startups with nothing more than a napkin saying "do Ai stuff" will have valuations less than a billion.

It means that the return of investment for fancy email autocomplete is not that big