The other day, Apple unveiled its AR/VR headset, Vision Pro, and now Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has shared his thoughts on it. In a meeting with Meta employees, Zuckerberg expressed his initial impressions of Apple’s Vision Pro, an AR/VR headset that may eventually compete with Meta’s VR headset, Meta Quest.
Zuckerberg stated that from a technical standpoint, Vision Pro didn’t offer anything that Meta hadn’t already explored during the development of Meta Quest. The fact that Vision Pro is more technologically advanced than Meta Quest is also reflected in its price tag. Zuckerberg commented on this by saying:
But look, I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests.
Furthermore, Zuckerberg believes that Apple’s vision for the future seems to be quite isolated for Vision Pro users. This is because almost everything Apple has showcased regarding the use of Vision Pro has revolved around a person being enclosed by themselves in various VR experiences. As known, Zuckerberg and Meta envision an AR/VR/XR future in the so-called Metaverse, where the technology is used to interact with others in virtual worlds:
More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and 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. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want.
Below, you can read Zuckerberg’s entire comment about Vision Pro. In the embedded tweet below, Marques Brownlee speculates a bit about why Apple might not be so keen on the Metaverse, with some references to the “metaverse film” Ready Player One.
Apple finally announced their headset, so I want to talk about that for a second. I was really curious to see what they were gonna ship. And obviously I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll learn more as we get to play with it and see what happens and how people use it.
From what I’ve seen initially, I’d say the good news is that there’s no kind of magical solutions that they have to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of. They went with a higher resolution display, and between that and all the technology they put in there to power it, it costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it. They made that design trade-off and it might make sense for the cases that they’re going for.
But look, I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important. We innovate to make sure that our products are as accessible and affordable to everyone as possible, and that is a core part of what we do. And we have sold tens of millions of Quests.
More importantly, our vision for the metaverse and 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. By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want. There’s a real philosophical difference in terms of how we’re approaching this. And seeing what they put out there and how they’re going to compete just made me even more excited and in a lot of ways optimistic that what we’re doing matters and is going to succeed. But it’s going to be a fun journey.
