'No magical solutions': Mark Zuckerberg unimpressed with Apple's Vision Pro
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Two days after Apple’s launch of its AR/VR headset Vision Pro, competitor and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that it “costs seven times more” and “requires so much energy.”
Of course, he was comparing Apple’s headset to Quest 3, which Meta launched on June 2. Some say Meta’s launch timing was strategic given that Apple WWDC was going to take place four days later.
Zuckerberg, speaking to his employees on June 8, said he was curious as to what the Tim Cook-led company has come up with. But he seemed unfazed, as per The Verge.
He told a group of Meta employees that “there’s no kind of magical solutions that they (Apple) have to any of the constraints on laws and physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of.”
Some would say Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest 3 are competitors. They were both launched within four days. They are both mixed reality headsets. And as per early reviews, they both feel uncomfortable to the wearer after 30 minutes of use.
But there is one stark difference.
Vision Pro is steeply priced at $3,499, whereas Quest 3 costs $499, which might act as a deterrent for AR/VR enthusiasts looking to buy pocket-friendly technology.
Zuck's remarks on Apple Vision Pro: pic.twitter.com/WeiQPqIpCp
— Peter Yang (@petergyang) June 8, 2023
Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk took a 'trippy' swipe at Vision Pro's cost in a tweet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2023
‘There’s a real philosophical difference’
Apart from the price difference, Zuckerberg thinks there’s a difference in the values shared by Meta and Apple. Sharing his vision, Zuckerberg said he wants the tech to be affordable and accessible, and that the company has already sold tens and millions of Quests.
“By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself,” he said. “I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want.”
He said, “Our device is about being active and doing things,” calling Metaverse ‘fundamentally social.’
However, Zuckerberg did take note that Apple’s Vision Pro is using a higher-resolution display than Meta’s Quest 3, with the former delivering 23 million pixels across two displays, more pixels for each eye than a 4K TV.
Meta isn't playing around
Zuckerberg is not faffing around when it comes to making dents in the AR/VR space. Meta is funneling big bucks, to the tune of billions of dollars monthly, towards Reality Labs, the research unit of Meta. This has been a cause of worry for Meta’s investors due to the economic downturn and major economies slipping into recession.
But undaunted, Zuckerberg is sprinting to push virtual reality, while keeping an eye on artificial intelligence. In the same meeting, Meta announced that they will put generative AI into Facebook and Instagram in the upcoming months. Interesting Engineering had reported earlier on how Meta might be planning on embedding an AI chatbot with Instagram.
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