Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

For the past decade or so, Apple Inc.’s chief rival was considered to be Google. The two have gone toe-to-toe in smartphones, mobile operating systems, web services and home devices.

The next decade, however, could be defined by Apple’s rivalry with another Silicon Valley giant: Meta Platforms Inc.—the company known to everyone other than its own brand consultants as Facebook.

And:

The real fight will be over virtual and augmented reality headsets, smartwatches, smart home devices and digital services, as well as their own respective definitions of the “metaverse.”

From the Metaverse Wikipedia page:

The metaverse (a portmanteau of “meta-” and “universe”) is a hypothesized iteration of the internet, supporting persistent online 3-D virtual environments[1][2] through conventional personal computing, as well as virtual and augmented reality headsets.

As Mark says in his post, the Metaverse is the next big battleground, not yet here, but definitely coming in the next few years, much as 5G loomed big, was massively hyped, and is now baked in, expected.

To get a sense of the current state-of-the-metaverse, watch the video embedded below, as Joanna Stern straps on a headset and dives in deep. It’s obviously early days still, but I found this a great intro into what the fuss is all about.

And don’t worry about the lack of legs. They’ll be here soon enough.