MARK ED FAILURE

Rival Zuck: Apple’s outta luck with its $3,499 headset

Metaverse evangelist Mark Zuckerberg took a shot at tech rival Apple over its pricey mixed-reality headset, saying the new gadget is only 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 year.

“Every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself,” Zuckerberg told employees during an all-hands meeting Thursday at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., according to The Verge.

‘Not what I want’

“I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want.”

“Our device is also about being active and doing things,” he said.

Zuckerberg has poured billions of dollars into building his vision of a metaverse that should be a “fundamentally social” experience for users, he told his troops.

Apple unveiled its longdelayed headset days after Zuckerberg announced the Meta Quest 3 was due for release this fall. The Meta headset starts at $499, and is 40% thinner than the Quest 2 version, he said.

Apple’s headset is 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 will be the most technologically advanced product of its kind on the market.

Zuckerberg noted that Apple’s device “costs seven times more” than the Meta Quest 3 headset that will launch later this year and “requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it.”

“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 of physics that our teams haven’t already explored and thought of,” Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg isn’t the only 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 at the device.

Elsewhere, former Apple executive Tony Fadell — known as the “father of the iPod” — argued the company had “jumped the shark” with the high-priced device.