All those dull thuds you're hearing are the sound of everyone keeling over from not-surprise.
“I finally tried Apple’s Vision Pro. I have to say before this I expected that Quest would be better value,” reveals Meta CEO and social media mega-magnate Mark Zuckerberg. “But after using it, I don’t just think that Quest is better value. It’s the better product, period.” Well, there’s a shock.
In a video posted to Instagram, the Zuck showed Meta Quest 3 doing “high quality passthrough video” with various apps running including a web browser, “just like Vision Pro”. But he says that Quest 3 is also designed to be genuinely ergonomic.
“We designed it to weigh 120g less [than Apple Vision Pro], which makes a really big difference on your face. There’s no wires getting in the way, our field of view is wider and I found our screen to be brighter, also,” Zuckerberg reckons.
The consequence? “Quest is just a lot more comfortable.”
“I also noticed that Apple’s headset has a lot of motion blur as you move around. Quest is just a lot crisper,” he goes on. The Meta maestro does concede Apple’s screens have a higher resolution, but claims that comes with compromises.
He likewise thinks Quest’s hand tracking is more accurate, but says Apple’s eye tracking is “really nice” while pointing out Meta had eye tracking in Quest Pro but took it out for Quest 3. “We’re going to bring that back in future,” he reveals in the video.
Zuckerberg also casually threw in the notion that we’ll soon need to have implants to get the full AR/VR experience. “You’re going to want things like a keyboard or controllers, or eventually a neural interface,” he said while admitting that Apple’s Vision Pro interface is pretty “nice”.
Beneath all the details, however, Zuck’s main point as he sees it is that Apple’s Vision Pro is a closed system like its phones, but he wants AR and VR to be open, using the PC and Microsoft as an example of the ideal open tech platform.
That’s unintentionally apt given all the grief Microsoft has gotten into over the years with prosecution by antitrust authorities due to its monopolistic behaviours. Zuck seems to have forgotten that the US government was once seriously considering breaking up Microsoft, that’s how “open” Microsoft was…
Speaking of the unintentional, Zuck’s room-reading skills remain questionable. “I know some fanboys get upset when anyone dares to question if Apple’s going to be the new leader in a new category,” he said without any apparent sense of irony that he was at that very moment fanboying the snot out of his own product.
As for the actual comparison between the two devices, Zuck is right about one thing. The price gap is huge, with Quest 3 at $499 and Apple Vision Pro literally seven times pricier at $3,499. In the end, the gap is so big the two devices are barely competitors. And whichever one you go for, you’re going to look equally silly wearing it in public.
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