According to reports, Apple has been developing its own virtual universe, and the company is also planning to launch a mixed-reality headset. After Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement saying that the metaverse should be “open” as a criticism of Apple, the company’s vice president of global marketing Greg Joswiak said in an interview that he would never use the term metaverse.
Greg Joswiak and Craig Federighi, Apple’s vice president of software, were interviewed by reporter Joanna Stern at a WSJ Tech Live event on Tuesday. Stern asked the two executives about the company’s future headset and, not surprisingly, they didn’t say a word about it.
The reporter then asked the two executives to finish the sentence “The metaverse is …… ” to which Joswiak quickly replied: “…… A word I would never use.” Apple always avoids talking about future products, and this is no exception. However, Joswiak’s answer to a reporter about the metaverse sounded as if it was making fun of Facebook since the company specifically changed its name to promote what it calls the metaverse.
While Apple has yet to launch any virtual reality products, Meta has been actively investing in the category. Last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook mocked Meta, saying that “ordinary people” don’t know what the metaverse is. He also mentioned that he didn’t think people should be encouraged to “spend their lives” in virtual worlds.
A few days later, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the metaverse should be an open platform and that Apple was likely to go the other way, which in his opinion could hurt competitors and consumers.
