Watching #WWDC23 yesterday - Apple's annual developer's conference - felt quite momentous. The huge announcement was obviously the launch of Apple's entry into the AR/VR/XR space - The Vision Pro. If it can do just half of the things they showed yesterday, this is going to be a literal game changer.
Seeing the capabilities and plans for the Vision Pro, I immediately felt like it would only be a matter of time until Apple got into the whole 'metaverse' conversation that is being driven by Web2 companies like Meta/Facebook and Web3 projects like Sandbox and Decentraland to name a few. This cross over between the metaverse and crypto is very intertwined, with many web3 projects trying to be THE metaverse platform in the upcoming arms race for users as they enter web3.
The thing is, Apple was recently in the news on the crypto front with their partnership with Stepn - allowing users to use Apple Pay to purchase NFTs. This is actually quite a huge move from them as nobody really knew where Apple stood when it came to crypto. The Bitcoin white paper was discovered and then removed in the MacOS which only led to more uncertainty and ambiguity.
Vision Pro changes things though. Apple has the hardware and software, as well as the resources to make a solid push into the metaverse space - which includes crypto. Their recent partnership with Stepn only strengthens the argument that they are open to NFT based projects and provides a little optimism that these partnerships with web3 based projects will only continue to grow over time.
As I said earlier, the interlink between metaverse, crypto, and web3 is so convoluted - but in a good way. Apple will be forced to jump in with 2 feet if they want to make the appropriate sized splash with the behemoth of a company they are. That could potentially bring in the masses, and I for one am excited about it.
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