In a Friday put up on Threads, the Meta CEO exchanged messages with Mosaic Ventures companion Benedict Evans, calling out the “tradeoffs” in Apple’s VR headset that, in his view, make its $3,500 product worse than Meta’s $500 competitor, Quest.
“There are a variety of limitations to the Imaginative and prescient Professional, however I’m genuinely baffled by Meta VR engineers claiming it is ‘mainly simply the identical factor’ because the Quest,” Evans wrote, prompting the preliminary response. “Apple is promoting just about the gadget Meta needs to succeed in in 3-5 years. The Quest is promoting on the value Apple needs to succeed in in 3-5 years.”
Zuck simply wasn’t having it.
“I do not assume we’re saying the units are the identical,” he replied. “We’re saying Quest is best. If our units weigh as a lot as theirs in 3-5 years, or have the movement blur theirs has, or the shortage of precision inputs, and so forth, then meaning we’ll have regressed considerably.”
Zuckerberg added: “Sure, their decision is larger, however they paid for that with many different product tradeoffs that make their gadget worse in most methods. That is not what we aspire to.”
Representatives for Meta and Apple didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark from Enterprise Insider.
Apple has offered greater than 200,000 Imaginative and prescient Professional models because the headset turned accessible for preorder in January, in comparison with Meta’s 20 million Quest models offered between its debut in 2019 by February of final yr. In Meta’s fourth-quarter financials in 2023, the corporate’s Actuality Labs division crossed $1 billion in income for the primary time, which Meta attributed to “Quest having a powerful vacation season.”
Evans and Zuckerberg continued their thread, discussing the advantages — and disadvantages — of the upper decision on Apple’s gadget, with Zuck in the end saying Apple’s option to commerce larger decision for higher ergonomics and movement blur wasn’t “a transparent win,” particularly “when Quest’s decision can also be fairly good.”
Friday’s social media posts have been simply the most recent in a sequence of snarky feedback Zuckerberg has pointed towards Apple’s Imaginative and prescient Professional. In a pointed evaluate on Instagram, he reamed the gadget on all the things from value to specs, and he critiqued the headset at an organization assembly, telling Meta workers that Apple’s imaginative and prescient of a VR headset is “not the one I need.”
