“For Apple, this is about a new computing experience and opportunity to engage consumers with a device and new experiences that build on what they’ve done with content.” “This is the next frontier,” said Carolina Milanesi, a technology analyst with Creative Strategies, a technology research firm. He and others believe it could become the next wave of computing, succeeding the smartphone age dominated by Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android software, much as those platforms followed the decades of Windows and Macintosh. Last year, Meta’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, dropped Facebook as his company’s name and committed it to building a concept known as the metaverse, where the online, virtual and real worlds coalesce in a new universe. Microsoft, Google and Facebook’s parent company, Meta, are in various stages of developing software and hardware to create environments where three-dimensional digital images and the physical world coexist. The planned headset will thrust Apple into an emerging competition to define the future of mixed reality. Separately, at its annual conference for developers on Monday, Apple plans to unveil software tools that would allow apps to add new camera and voice functionality, laying the groundwork for a hands-free interface that customers will eventually be able to navigate on the headset, according to two people familiar with the project and documents reviewed by The New York Times.

Favreau, an executive producer of “Prehistoric Planet” on Apple TV+, is working to bring that show’s dinosaurs to life on the headset, which looks like a pair of ski goggles and aims to offer virtual- and augmented-reality experiences, these people said. The company has enlisted Hollywood directors such as Jon Favreau to develop video content for a headset that it is expected to ship next year, according to three people familiar with that work.

Nearly 15 years after the iPhone set off the smartphone revolution, Apple is assembling the pieces for what it hopes will become its next business-altering device: a headset that blends the digital world with the real one.

Virtual reality mac hardware