Mark Zuckerberg has shared his thoughts on Apple’s new VR/AR headset, and he isn’t impressed by the high purchase cost, energy requirement, and what he calls a “real philosophical difference” between how the two companies are approaching the technology.
Speaking to Meta staffers, Zuckerberg noted he was really curious to see what Apple was planning to ship, before saying, “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.”
Zuckerberg noted the design trade-off with Apple’s higher resolution display 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”, saying such an approach wouldn’t make sense for Meta.
The Apple 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,” Zuckerberg said.
“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.”
Zuckerberg’s concerns, notably around the prohibitive cost, need for a battery pack, and anti-social elements, echo the criticism levelled at Apple’s Vision Pro headset from other corners.
