Yesterday Patently Apple posted a report titled "Apple Continues their Race with Competitors for Hardware and Augmented Reality Applications." The report covered the ongoing race to create a pair of augmented reality glasses that could one day replace the smartphone as consumers' primary computing device. While Facebook is clearly ahead of Apple on creating a headset for VR experiences, Facebook hired an Apple hardware veteran to assist and expedite next-generation features for their headset.

According to Bloomberg, "Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants the company to own the future of virtual reality, and in the short term that means putting a lot of VR headsets on a lot of faces. Even for a company with nearly 2 billion monthly active users, hardware is still an incredibly difficult beast to master. To do so, the company is hiring Michael Hillman, a 15-year veteran of Apple, to lead the VR product roadmap for Oculus as head of VR hardware.

An Oculus spokesperson tells Bloomberg that Hillman will work closely alongside Oculus COO Hans Hartmann in his role.

Earlier this year Facebook hired Xiaomi's Hugo Barra to lead their Virtual Reality business which includes the Oculus unit. Facebook is obviously wanting to step up their headset development and get it to market in full force knowing that Microsoft's HoloLens is rapidly advancing while Apple is in the wings working on a device that could really challenge all competitors in this space.

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