In challenge to Meta, Apple expected to unveil mixed-reality headset

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc is widely expected to announce a new headset that will blend video of the outside world with the virtual one at its annual software developer conference next week.

Apple CEO Tim Cook and Meta Platforms Inc’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, are jockeying to define how consumers will put to use a new generation of technology where real and digital worlds converge.

Zuckerberg has laid out a vision of the “metaverse,” a parallel digital universe where people will gather together to work and play, and has had products out for years.

Apple marketing chief Greg Joswiak, by contrast, recently called the metaverse “a word I’ll never use.”