During a companywide meeting with employees on Thursday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on Apple’s debut of the Vision Pro, says The Verge‘s Alex Heath. Zuckerberg told the gathering that the Vision Pro has no “magical solutions” that Meta has not thought of, and “costs seven times more” than its recently-announced Quest 3 headset.
Zuckerberg also said that Apple’s announcement “really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this.” He said that Meta’s goal is to offer products that are “accessible and affordable to everyone.” Apple’s Vision Pro will have a starting price of $3,499, while the Quest 3 will be base priced at $499 and the Quest Pro goes for $999.
Zuckerberg claimed that while Meta’s goal with the metaverse is “fundamentally social,” the Vision Pro appears to be more isolating. While admitting that Apple’s approach “could be the vision of the future of computing,” he said it is “not the one that I want.”
Zuckerberg’s full comments, via The Verge:
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.
Last week, Meta unveiled the Quest 3, its upcoming next-generation mixed-reality headset. Meta says the Quest 3 headset is 40% slimmer than its predecessor, and is said to boast a more comfortable design. The provider will also sport a higher-resolution display, and up to twice the graphics performance of the Quest 2, which was released in 2020. Meta says the Quest 3 is the first headset to be powered by a next-generation Snapdragon chipset developed in collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies.
Apple said the Vision Pro will be available in the U.S. in early 2024.