Metaverse evangelist Mark Zuckerberg took a shot at tech rival Apple over its pricey mixed-reality headset, saying the brand new gadget is just for people “sitting on a couch by themself.”
Apple’s “Vision Pro” — rolled out by CEO Tim Cook with an eye-popping $3,499 price tag — will directly compete with Meta’s lower-priced headsets when it’s released next 12 months.
“Every demo that they showed was an individual sitting on a couch by themself,” Zuckerberg told employees during an all-hands meeting at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on Thursday, in line with The Verge.
“I mean, that could possibly be the vision of the longer term of computing, but like, it’s not the one which I would like.”
“Our device can be about being lively and doing things,” he said.
Zuckerberg has poured billions of dollars into constructing his vision for the metaverse that must be a “fundamentally social” experience for users, he told his troops.
Apple unveiled its long-delayed headset just days after Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest 3 was due for release this fall. The Meta headset starts at just $499, and is 40% thinner than the Quest 2 version, in line with Zuckerberg.
Apple’s headset is probably the most significant challenge yet to Meta’s dominance of the so-called “metaverse.”
Meta has placed a heavy emphasis on social gaming and fitness in its version of mixed reality.
Apple billed its device as a “spatial computer” geared toward work and entertainment – with 4K resolution displays and powerful M2 computer chips – and said it would be probably the most technologically advanced product of its kind in the marketplace.
Zuckerberg noted that Apple’s device “costs seven times more” than the Meta Quest 3 headset that may launch later this 12 months and “requires a lot energy that now you wish a battery and a wire attached to it to make use of it.”
“From what I’ve seen initially, I’d say the excellent news is that there’s no sort of magical solutions that they need to any of the constraints on laws of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and considered,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg isn’t the one critic of the Apple Vision Pro.
Viral videos revealed that audience members audibly groaned when Apple executives announced the headset’s steep price and early 2024 release date. Others took to social media to poke fun on the device.
Elsewhere, former Apple executive Tony Fadell – generally known as the “father of the iPod” – argued the corporate had “jumped the shark” with the high-priced device.
