Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shared his thoughts on Apple’s Vision Pro headset. While he admits Apple’s high-end approach “might make sense for the use cases that they’re going for,” he sees the “values and vision” of Meta and Apple as divergent when it comes to headsets and says Apple’s future of computing is “not the one that I want.”
Reported by Alex Heath at The Verge, Zuckerberg shared his perspective on Apple Vision Pro, how Meta’s Quest headsets compare, and more in a companywide meeting.
First, Zuckerberg said he doesn’t see Vision Pro as offering any “magical solutions” that “our teams haven’t already explored and thought of.” He acknowledges that Vision Pro has a higher resolutions display with more tech inside – but he downplayed that by saying “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.”
Getting to his core beliefs about how Apple and Meta are approaching AR/VR differently, Zuckerberg said Meta is focused on making its headsets “accessible and affordable.”
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.
Going further, Zuckerberg said he sees Vision Pro as anti-social while Meta is looking to make its headsets “fundamentally social” and “about being active and doing things.”
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.
Apple naturally disagrees with unique features on Vision Pro like EyeSight which shows a user’s eyes when someone comes near, the ability to see your surroundings, realistic avatars for FaceTime and video conferencing, and more.
Apple SVP Craig Federighi highlighted Apple’s goal with Vision Pro is not something to isolate but something to connect.
How do the vision and values of Meta Quest vs Apple Vision Pro feel to you? Share your thoughts in the comments!
For more on Vision Pro, check out my colleague Chance’s hands-on thoughts:
Here’s the full statement from Zuckerberg:
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.
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