Apple Investing in Augmented Reality Products; Development Team Lead Includes Early Second Life Consultant

Great scoop by Bloomberg detailing Apple's plans in augmented reality, which are far more extensive than I ever would have guessed:

When it was developing the Watch, Apple put together a multi-disciplinary team drawn from inside and outside the company. It has done much the same with the AR effort. In 2015, Apple recruited Mike Rockwell, who previously ran the hardware and new technologies groups at Dolby, the iconic company known for its audio and video technology. Rockwell also advised Meta, a small firm that makes $950 AR glasses and counts Dolby as an investor...  Apple has also recruited people with expertise in everything from 3D video production to wearable hardware. Among them, the people say: Cody White, former lead engineer of Amazon's Lumberyard virtual reality platform; Duncan McRoberts, Meta's former director of software development; Yury Petrov, a former Oculus researcher; and Avi Bar-Zeev, who worked on the HoloLens and Google Earth. 

Bar-Zeev (that's his LinkedIn pic above) was a consultant on Second Life very very early in its development, so it's notable he's among the leaders of the Apple AR effort. Also notable that Apple is drawing from so many folks from the immersive VR space:

I had assumed any AR application from Apple would be integrated with their iPhones, and primarily used for practical use cases -- navigation, in particular. VR evangelist Robert Scoble has long speculated that the iPhone itself would be translucent, and act as the AR display. But Bloomberg cites sources saying Apple wants to get into the goggles game, which suggests they want an even more immersive experience. (Which suggests Apple might be making a really bad move here, but that's the topic of another post.)