Apple hiring people to build “connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world” | Hacker News Reader

Apple hiring people to build “connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world”

jobs.apple.com

4 pointsAnonboxis8 comments

From Mark Gurman latest Newsletter:

"The most interesting job listing is one that specifically calls out the development of a 3D mixed-reality world, suggesting that Apple is working on a virtual environment that is similar to the metaverse—though don’t expect Apple to embrace that term. Its marketing chief said at a recent event that metaverse is “a word I’ll never use.” That listing describes working with other developers to “build tools and frameworks to enable connected experiences in a 3D mixed-reality world.” “You will work closely with Apple’s UI framework, human interface designers and system capabilities teams—pushing you to think outside-the-box, and solve incredibly challenging and interesting problems in the 3D application space,” it reads."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-11-13/apple-...

Note that "mixed reality" is AR and not VR. In other words, overlaying 3D onto a camera feed.

Apple has previously indicated their interest in this direction.

It will be interesting to see how they compete, here. Apple is going entirely their own way - they don't even support the most basic AR/VR standards (like OpenXR). Their headset is likely to retail at 2-3x the price of their competitors and their software library is likely to be filled with things nobody has ever heard about.

What is Apple hoping for here? It sounds like they're trying to sell people a Metaverse-a-la-iPhone, but it's stuck in development hell.

The “metaverse” is probably just figmaization (presence of other users) on webpages. The innovation needed is a profile owned by the user, embedded in the browser that works universally (like a browser based wallet maybe).

Apple will never agree to a universal middleware connector for anything they make. It's antithetical to their walled garden business model.

But -- someone will make better tooling, like user wallets and browser based onboarding tools. Web3 in many ways reminds me of Web1. It's full of scam artists and there aren't great tools or documentation for anybody.

Agree with this. But they do own safari, avatars, and an apple wallet. Presumably they could combine those things to give a universal profile and monetization to every website. Not sure how it would work on mobile tho...

Any payment thing they offered would require merchants to sign up with Apple (or use a provider who does) and pay Apple a cut.

That would require web developers to work with Apple.

glances at Apple's track-record with web developers

I don't think they're going to be very cooperative.

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