Mark Zuckerberg was not surprised by Apple’s new Virtual Reality glasses, the Vision Pro. At least, that’s what emerges from the latest email he sent to Meta workers, in which he explains the differences in the strategies of both companies and ensures that Apple’s vision “is not what I want for the future of computing”. Apple this week announced its first virtual and augmented reality headset, the Apple Vision Pro, which will ship starting next year for $3,500. PIXEL has had the opportunity to test them at the WWDC developer conference that was held this week at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
In the email, Zuckerberg acknowledges that he has not yet been able to touch the device and that he did not know the details of it, beyond rumors. “I was very curious to see what they were going to release. And obviously I haven’t tried it yet, so I’ll learn more as I play with it and see how people use it,” begins the email to his employees.
But Zuckerberg is generally unimpressed with the device. “There are no magical solutions to the problems and limits of physics,” he explains before confessing that those responsible for the Quest team, the company’s virtual reality helmet, have already considered many of the decisions that Apple has made with the helmet and he discarded them because they increased the price considerably.
For the founder of Facebook, this decision summarizes the difference in strategy between the two companies. While Apple is trying to create a device capable of providing a user experience focused on high resolution, stability and fluidity, Meta “is making sure that the products are as accessible and affordable as possible for everyone. It is a fundamental part of what we do. And we’ve sold tens of millions of Quests,” he explains.
Zuckerberg also insisted that Meta’s vision for what is known as the metatarsal is “more social,” noting that Apple demos used to show a person sitting on a couch and interacting alone with the content (several of Apple’s demos, however, they included situations in which there was interaction with other people, both in the physical world and in the augmented reality interface).
“Seeing what they have launched and how they plan to compete has made me even more excited and in many ways now I am more optimistic and believe that what we are doing matters and it is going to be successful. It is going to be a fun ride,” he concludes in his statement.
Meta decided to get ahead of Apple and a few days before the apple company conference, it announced its intention to sell a new virtual reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, at a price of approximately 500 euros. The headset is expected to arrive later this year and the company has announced a big event at the end of September where it will offer more details about the device and its content strategy.
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