Apple itself is no stranger to augmented reality, and props up its products with a famous reality distortion field where whatever it does is perfect, super cool and brilliant.   It has been flickering a bit lately after people started to realise that tablets were pretty pointless.

Of course Apple has not announced anything – that is the sort of actions of a company which is interested in maintaining an illusion that it invents stuff rather than buy or nick other people’s ideas. However a legal document was spotted online in which it shows Metaio transferring its shares over to Apple on the 21 of May.

Apple’s official statement was: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”

So what does Apple want with AR?  Well Google and Microsoft has been hitting the headlines with some interesting ideas related to the technology and if Apple does not come up with something fast, people will not believe that it actually invented it.

Some suggestions are that it could bring in augmented reality to its Points of Interest feature of its Maps service – so that as you drive over a cliff in Texas, the technology could point out that you are just passing the Eiffel Tower.  It will be wrong of course but it might make you feel better.