Mark Zuckerberg would not seem to be worried at all by Apple’s new Vision Pro, a device that according to him would have no “magic solution”, which costs seven times more than the Quest and which would also be far from what is his concept of metaverse.
A comment on Apple’s new AR / VR viewer by the CEO of Meta was certainly highly anticipated, and came a few days after the official announcement.
In an internal meeting with employees in Menlo Park, as reported by The Verge, Zuckerberg said that Apple has not presented major technological breakthroughs that Meta had not “already explored” (calling it “good news”), also underscoring the fact that Meta’s new Quest 3, announced three days earlier, will be much cheaper. $499 versus $3,499 for a Vision Pro.
“I was really curious to see what they were going to accomplish. Obviously I haven’t seen it yet, so I’ll learn more when we use it and see what happens and how people use it. However, I think their announcement really shows the difference in the values and vision that our companies have. I mean, theirs might be the vision of the future of computing, but it’s not what I want.”
Meta’s goal, according to Zuckerberg, is to offer products that are “accessible and affordable for everyone”, it is a fundamental part “of what we do”. The metaverse for Meta has to be “fundamentally social, make active,” he added, while the Vision Pro seems to be “more isolating” given that in “every demo they showed there was a person sitting on a couch alone.”
On the hardware side, however, Zuckerberg acknowledged the fact that the Vision Pro has much more defined displays and much more internal technology but minimized it by saying that
“It costs seven times more and requires so much energy that you need a battery and a cable attached to use it. They had to accept this design compromise that might make sense for the use cases they’re looking for.
Meta has been trying for years to position itself as a leader in the virtual and augmented reality sector by investing several billion dollars a year, which is also worrying some investors. The Quest Pro, launched last year, was seen largely as a flop.
Obviously, Apple’s entry into the field can only represent a serious competitive threat to Zuckerberg’s company who said he was still “enthusiastic” and in many ways “optimistic” about how Meta is moving: “it will be a fun journey”
