Enlarge / A building at Apple Park, the company's Cupertino, California, HQ. (credit: Apple)

Trademarks have been filed for "Reality One," "Reality Pro," and "Reality Processor" ahead of Apple's plans to launch a mixed reality headset, according to a report in Bloomberg.

The trademarks were filed by legal firms (not Apple itself) in the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, and Costa Rica. Apple has turned to the same firms to secure other trademarks in the past.

The filings have not been traced directly to Apple, but they fit well with prior leaks that Apple was considering naming its AR/VR operating system realityOS, rOS, or something along those lines—in fact, a trademark filing for realityOS previously appeared earlier this year. The company already offers a developer framework called RealityKit for iOS apps, which will likely be the basis for some future headset applications. Apple employees have used the word "reality" to refer to the upcoming headset internally before, according to the report.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. (credit: Facebook )

Meta and Apple are entering a period of "very deep, philosophical competition" that will define the future of the Internet, according to comments by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg obtained by The Verge .

Both Apple and Meta are planning to invest heavily in mixed reality over the next decade, but they have diametrically opposed visions for what the AR/VR/XR landscape should ideally look like.

The Verge obtained an audio recording of an all-hands employee meeting at Meta, in which Zuckerberg answered an employee question about the company's future competition with Apple in great detail. His comments shed some light on how Meta, at least, sees the rivalry.

Enlarge / An early augmented reality demo by Apple, using a smartphone instead of a headset. (credit: Apple )

Tech industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has offered the most specific prediction about a release date for an Apple augmented reality/virtual reality headset yet: January 2023.

Kuo has often made accurate, informed predictions about Apple's plans in the past, based partly on information from sources in the company's supply chain. On Thursday, he published a lengthy analysis of the VR headset industry and predicted that Apple's device will "likely" arrive in January.

Kuo called the headset "the most complicated product Apple has ever designed," noting that many current Apple suppliers are involved in the supply chain for the product. He also supported other recent leaks and speculation that the upcoming headset will not be exclusively or primarily focused on augmented reality (which places virtual options in real-world space) rather than virtual reality (which immerses the wearer in an entirely virtual space).

Enlarge / Jony Ive speaks onstage during the 2017 New Yorker TechFest in New York City. (credit: Brian Ach/Getty Images )

A series of reports in The Information paint a detailed picture of progression, politics, and problems facing Apple's plan to develop a virtual, augmented, or mixed reality headset since the initiative picked up steam back in 2015.

Citing several people familiar with the product, including some who worked on it directly, the reports describe a contest of wills over the direction of the device. The standoff was between Apple's mixed reality product team (called the "Technology Development Group") and famed Apple designer Jony Ive and his industrial design team. The report sheds light on Apple's direction for the device, which Bloomberg recently reported is nearing launch.

They also claim that Apple CEO Tim Cook has been relatively hands-off from the product compared to others like the iPhone, and that the Technology Development Group's location in a separate office from the main Apple headquarters has been a source of problems and frustration.