This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. What’s Apple’s computer of the future? I’ve wondered about this for a while. MacBooks have bored me, and I use them less and less. I mean, I’m writing this article on a MacBook. I’ll publish it on a …

If you’ve been shopping for Oculus Quest, Facebook’s popular (and great) VR headset, you may be confused that there’s also a less-expensive (and not as good) Oculus Go model that’s still available, too. Not for long: Facebook announced it’s discontinuing the Go this year, just two years after its 2018 release, and will focus only on the Quest as its …

This story is part of WWDC 2022, CNET’s complete coverage from and about Apple’s annual developers conference. At this year’s remote WWDC conference, Apple announced new software for the Apple Watch. One key eye-opening announcement was what looked like a flood of new watch faces enabled though a new feature called Face Sharing. The Apple Watch has lacked a watch …

VR experiences, for me, usually follow a certain pattern. Sometimes I feel like a futuristic pilot, or a wizard about to cast a teleportation spell. I grab the headset, slip it on, slide the controllers on my wrists. I check my space, cast a long arc to draw my magic circle. The world disappears. I’m in.  Going from my reality …

Snapchat, like many companies, is pursuing augmented reality at a fever pitch, with AR-enabled smartglasses on the horizon. The company’s newest AR tools, introduced at its developer summit Thursday, are going even further, introducing world-mapping, collaborative AR capabilities into city-block-sized experiences. They’re called Local Lenses and promise to transform whole real-life neighborhoods into interactive art pieces. Snapchat’s previous Landmark Lenses worked …

If you’re looking to dive into VR, there are a few basic choices: pick a standalone experience like the Oculus Quest headset, go with a game console like the PlayStation VR or go with the most flexible experience by hooking into a PC. HP’s newest VR headset, designed with both Valve and Microsoft, aims to be the best VR gaming …

To learn about the future of VR, I met in VR. Qualcomm invited me to a briefing inside Spatial’s app on an Oculus Quest, where a virtual Hugo Swart (head of mixed reality tech for Qualcomm) floated, ready to show us slides and talk about where VR was heading. Midway through, Swart vanished into a vapor of dots. Then he …

Augmented reality and virtual reality have suddenly become more relevant in a world where people can’t meet in person as easily. Devices such as Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 would seem to be in prime position for a key role. Microsoft’s mixed-reality news at its now-virtual annual Build developer conference is, not surprisingly, HoloLens-focused. While the company continues to slowly build out …

Facebook’s Oculus Quest, a standalone VR headset, is one year old this week. Headsets are still hard to find in stock and the flow of games and apps for the hardware has been steady and high-quality. Facebook hasn’t announced any new version of the Quest yet (or any price drops), but there’s one big change rolling out — many upcoming games …

I’d love to say that when I first put on the Apple Watch, I’d never seen anything like it before. But of course, that’s not true. By late 2014 I’d been surrounded by smartwatches for a few years. So when Apple announced it was making its own watch, my thought (as so often with Apple) was: finally. The first smartwatch I …