Why didn’t Tim Cook say that word ‘metaverse’ at WWDC keynote?

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As predicted, Apple CEO Tim Cook didn’t mention the word “metaverse” when he introduced the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset today.

It was easy to predict that Apple was going to introduce a mixed-reality headset today, and it did so with the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro AR/VR headset.

And Cook said that the headset would inaugurate a “new era of spatial computing,” but he did not mention the metaverse.

Cook has made fun of the metaverse word before during previous talks, saying that the metaverse wasn’t the future because people don’t understand it. I had the feeling he was taking jabs at Mark Zuckerberg’s full-scale embrace of the word by renaming Facebook as Meta in the fall of 2021.

And since Zuckerberg got there first — decades after Stephenson’s book, of course — Cook didn’t want to seem like he was chasing someone else’s idea. And you could argue that Zuckerberg’s adoption of the metaverse was not successful so far, as Meta has had to lay off more than ten thousand people in recent months. Internet trolls loved making fun of Zuckerberg’s avatar and his metaverse vision.

A lot of haters have been saying the metaverse was overhyped ever since Zuckerberg’s announcement and they have been disappointed with announcements that seem so underwhelming or scammy. Searches for the word metaverse have plummeted in the past year. As a practical matter, then, Cook would probably be better off creating a new description or word, aside from a word that is on its way downward in popular discourse.

I can sympathize with that. Nobody wants to have their brand new creation compared to something that people