Zuckerberg Takes Jabs at Apple’s High-Priced Vision Pro Headset: ‘No Magical Solutions’ That Meta Hasn’t ‘Already Explored’

Apple this week announced Vision Pro, its augmented-reality and VR headset priced at a cool $3,500, seven times the price of meta’s upcoming Quest 3 headset.

meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, apparently, was not blown away by the Apple reveal.

“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,” Zuckerberg told employees at an all-hands meeting Thursday, per a report by the Verge.

Apple’s Vision Pro will use a higher-resolution display than meta’s Quest 3, Zuckerberg noted. The Vision Pro will deliver 23 million pixels across two displays, more pixels for each eye than a 4K TV. However, with the high-end display “and all the technology they put in there to power it, it costs seven times more” than a Quest 3, slated to ship in the fall of 2023, and “requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it. They made that design tradeoff and it might make sense for the cases that they’re going for,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg continued, “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.”

A bigger difference between Apple and meta’s approach to VR and AR is that “our vision for the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social,” Zuckerberg said. (Apple’s announcement included no mention of “the metaverse.”) meta’s vision is “about people interacting in new ways and feeling closer in new ways” and “also about being active and doing things,” according to Zuckerberg. “By contrast, every demo that [Apple] showed was a person sitting on a couch by themselves. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but, like, it’s not the one that I want.”

During his 15-minute address, Zuckerberg also spoke about “tough decisions” in making mass layoffs at meta — totaling about 21,000 jobs cut. “I want us to use this period to rebuild and evolve our culture,” he said at the meeting, the New York Times reported. In addition, Zuckerberg told employees that meta plans to put generative AI “into every single one of our products,” per an Axios report.

Zuckerberg shared a post on Instagram about the all-hands meeting Thursday, writing, “Great to be back in person in Hacker Square for meta’s All Hands! So much energy and excitement for building the future of human connection together.”