In what seems like Apple is ready to embrace something similar to metaverse, a report by news agency Bloomberg says that the company is working on a virtual environment similar to the metaverse. The tech giant is also working to introduce its own mixed reality headset next year, as per the new job listings for people to work in the Technology Development Group, which works on the headset.
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”, says Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.
A job listing for the TDG department said: “We are looking for a software engineer who will work on the App Intents framework to help design and implement solutions to unlock deep system intelligence, enable new developer tools, and facilitate novel user interactions from application data models which are leveraged by a variety of system services such as Shortcuts, Siri, Search, and more.”
Meanwhile, Apple is working to bring a big change to its voice assistant’s phrase from Hey Siri to just Siri. If successful, the shift from “Hey Siri” to “Siri” would match rival and retail giant Amazon’s shift from Hey Alexa to Alexa. Google, meanwhile, is also making changes to the prompt “OK Google” or “Hey Google” by making follow-up requests without repeating the wake word.
By removing the “Hey” in “Hey Siri,” Apple would also, in turn, speed up back-to-back requests. The tech giant has recently made a few other tweaks to Siri, including redesigning the interface on the Apple TV as part of tvOS 16.1, Bloomberg’s Gurman said earlier last week.