“Not the future that I want,” Mark Zuckerberg on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s ‘vision’ for Vision Pro – Times of India

This week, Apple unveiled its new augmented reality headset, or as the company calls it, “spatial computer,” the Vision Pro. Days before that, Meta ran up and announced the Quest 3 headset and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg thinks that Apple’s Vision Pro, which costs about seven times the price of Quest 3, does not bring any breakthrough in the technology that Meta had not “already explored.”
While Apple CEO Tim Cook considers the Vision Pro the “most advanced piece of electronics” available today, Mark Zuckerberg thinks otherwise. “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,” said Zuckerberg.
During the first all-hands meeting since 2020 at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters, Zuckerberg addressed the announcement made by another company and highlighted the differences in values and vision between the two companies.
Apple’s Vision Pro and Meta’s Quest 3 are both mixed reality headsets, and some may consider them competitors. However, there is one major difference between the two, the Vision Pro is significantly more expensive at $3,499, about seven times more than the $499 price tag of Quest 3, and that is what Zuckerberg notes.
“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.”
Tim Cook said in an interview, “It was a design choice from the start. This is not about isolation, this is about connection,” when asked about the criticism of the ‘isolated’ design of the Vision Pro.
According to Zuckerberg, accessibility and affordability are essential to their innovation, aiming to make their products available to everyone. He went on to add that the company has already sold millions of Quests.
It is not just about the hardware or the price, Zuckerberg notes that Apple and Meta have different approaches to VR and AR. Meta’s vision is more social and interactive, focused on people interacting in new ways and feeling closer to each other. In contrast, Apple’s announcement did not mention “the metaverse” and their demos showed people sitting alone on a couch. While this could be a vision of the future of computing, Zuckerberg prefers a more active and social approach.