During a corporate meeting with his employees, the CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg commented on Apple’s announcement of Vision Pro, the $3,499 augmented reality headset. According to The Verge’s Alex Heath, Zuckerberg claimed that Vision Pro does not offer “magic solutions” that Meta has not already considered and that the its price is “seven times higher” than that of the Quest 3 – which they cost only $499.
Zuckerberg: Apple Vision Pro offers no ‘magic fix’
Ahead of WWDC, Apple’s annual developer event, Meta unveiled its new mixed reality headset: Quest 3. It will arrive on the market by the end of 2023 and has reduced volume by 40% compared to the previous model, improved the quality of its display and its graphics performance. The starting price will be $499 for the version with 128GB of internal memory. And for Zuckerberg it would be radically different from Apple’s Vision Pro.
Zuckerberg also highlighted the “difference in values and vision” between the two companies, saying Meta wants to create products that are “accessible and affordable for everyone.” Implicitly saying that this is not the case for Apple. He further stated that Meta’s goal with the metaverse it’s “fundamentally social,” while Vision Pro appears to be more isolating. He admitted that Apple’s approach “might be the vision of the future of computing,” but “that’s not what I want.”
Zuckerberg’s comment
For completeness, we report Zuckeberg’s entire comment that The Verge transcribed on its website: “Apple has finally announced its headset, so I want to talk about it for a second. I was really curious to see what they would ship. And of course I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll learn more as we play through it and see what happens and how people use it.
“From what I saw initially, I’d say that the good news is that there is no kind of magic fix that have none of the constraints on the laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought about. They’ve gone for a higher resolution display, and between that and all the tech they’ve put in there to power it, it costs seven times as much and now requires so much energy that you now need a battery and an attached cable to use it. They’ve made that design trade-off and it might make sense for the cases they’re looking at.
Difference of values
“But look, I think their ad really shows the difference in values and vision that our companies bring to that in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure our products are as accessible and affordable as possible, and this is a fundamental part of what we do. And we’ve sold tens of millions of quests.
“Even more important, our view of the metaverse and of presence is fundamentally social. It’s about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways. Our device is also about being active and doing things. In reverse, every demo they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themselves. I mean, that might be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not what I want. There’s a real philosophical difference in terms of how we’re approaching this. And seeing what they’ve put out there and how they’re going to compete has made me even more excited and in many ways optimistic that what we’re doing matters and will be successful. But it will be a fun journey.”
Meta Quest 3 will arrive by 2023, while Apple Vision Pro is expected to debut in early 2024.