I have a strong feeling that Apple is going to be promoting AR, MR and VR products, but not the metaverse. Especially bc Meta was the first co to promote it to the masses like its a product of their own. You can't have several companies claiming to be the one metaverse. Apple likes clarity and less dreamy bullshit. So it's possible they will stay away from using the word. After all, they are mostly a hardware company anyway. It would be unusual if them to produce an ecosystem beyond an market that provides apps that can be metaverse in of themselves. The other high possibility is that they'd partner with a Metaverse company like Epic instead of trying to be a Metaverse co themselves. This is just my speculation.
Ultinately it's not necessary to be part of the Metaverse narrative in order to be a "Metaverse co" . After all, the metaverse is a big dreamy, abstract concept that was baked out of dystopian science fiction. The internet will Ultinately have to be the metaverse by adding a virtual layer to it, if there's ever going to be a true Metaverse. I'm hoping that Meta is instead building a walled garden, bc if they are pushing the universal web as the metaverse on their own, then they'll have unrestricted control over how it emerges and the technologies used. That is not a decentralized, evenly democratized effort. We need the internet to be the metaverse and Apple may realize that all this Metaverse hype will fall flat before its actually realized, avoiding the embarrassment of a young overly ambitious CEO trying to grab power and failing miserably before we enter a 3rd VR winter.