Recently, Apple unveiled their long-awaited Apple Vision Pro during the WWDC 2023 keynote, and it made a significant impact on the event. The mixed reality headset garnered a lot of attention. Meta, Apple’s rival in the realm of mixed reality glasses, has also made its first statement in response. CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed his thoughts on Apple Vision Pro in a lengthy statement.
During a company-wide meeting with Meta employees, which included representatives from The Verge, Zuckerberg stated that Apple’s device did not offer any major technological advancements that Meta had not already explored. He also claimed that Apple lacked a vision regarding how people would use the device.
Moreover, Zuckerberg highlighted that Meta’s upcoming Quest 3 headset, with a price tag of $499, would be significantly cheaper compared to Vision Pro’s $3,499, thus providing Meta with an opportunity to reach a broader user base. Based on his comments, it seems that Zuckerberg was not particularly impressed with Apple Vision Pro.
Zuckerberg emphasized that Quest is about “new ways of interaction, feeling closer, being active, and doing things.” Regarding Apple’s WWDC presentation earlier in the week, he stated, “On the contrary, every demo they showed was someone sitting alone on a couch. That might be the vision for the future of this industry, but it’s not what I want.”
Meta has been striving to establish itself as a leader in the virtual and augmented reality space, investing billions of dollars in these efforts. The release of Apple’s glasses poses a significant competitive threat to Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg made the following comments about Apple Vision Pro:
”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 and 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.”
{{user}} {{datetime}}
{{text}}