By Abhik Sengupta: Meta co-founder Mark Zuckerberg views Apple’s Vision Pro headset as a highly costly product that provides no “magical solutions.” In a company-wide meeting and as reported by The Verge, Zuckerberg suggested he was proud that Meta’s own virtual reality Quest headsets are much cheaper and bring people together. He said that Apple’s promotional videos only showed people being isolated, which could be the reality in the future, but something he would not like to see.
In the meeting, Zuckerberg also touched up on the tech behind Vision Pro. He notes that Apple made some trade-offs to offer a metal design, while most other VR/AR headsets feature a plastic build to keep them lightweight. The Vision Pro headset does not have an in-built battery to keep the weight light, which the Meta CEO also touched upon. He stated:
“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. 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.”
Zuckerberg also seemed optimistic about the metaverse project with the entrance of Apple into space. He said the future of AR/VR headsets is going to be a “funny journey.” However, both companies’ core visions differ, as the metaverse is more about a virtual world where people create their own avatars, while Apple wants to offer augmented reality by overlaying pictures on top of real-world objects. Meta Quests headphones are also focused towards gaming. Apple promises some gaming capabilities, though the Vison Pro headset (at least the first-gen iteration) seems more focused towards content consumption and productivity.
This was also stated by Tim Cook in an interview following Vision Pro’s official launch earlier this week. The Apple CEO stated that its first AR/VR headset can do everything iPhones and Macs can do, and much more. When asked whether an average person can buy the Vision Pro headset next year, he said a lot would depend on the global financial situation. Cook justified the cost by saying the Vision Pro features the best displays and a powerful M2 SoC to power the device. All these technologies have costs involved.
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