By Mike Murphy

“I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is,” Cook told a Dutch media outlet.

Augmented reality is the future, Apple Inc. Chief Executive Tim Cook says in a new interview, as he downplays the so-called metaverse.

In an interview published by Dutch news outlet Bright on Friday, Cook called AR, in which virtual objects are overlaid on the real world, via glasses or a smartphone, a transformative technology that will soon be as ubiquitous as a smartphone or the Internet.

But Cook wasn’t so optimistic about virtual reality or, as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc. (META) has called his version, the metaverse.

“I always think it’s important for people to understand what something is. I’m really not sure that…