I was really curious to see what they’d ship, and it’s a good sign for our own development that they don’t have any magical solutions to the laws of physics that we haven’t already explored.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta
Our vision of the metaverse and presence is fundamentally social and about people interacting and feeling closer in new amazing ways. By contrast, every demo Apple showed was someone sitting on a couch by themselves.
This is certainly the last time I want to talk about the Vision Pro launch because, surprising as it may seem, Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said all that was left to be said. I
Irrational exuberance, a doffing of the hat and tugging of forelocks is also a thing, as online commentary and reporting tries to pay homage to a monolithic entity, Apple, run by very human, humans, clawing for a seat at the high table. This was not Steve Jobs’ Apple; this was a mass of C-suite of executives, and cadres of ambitious executives jostling for position. Hence, the Vision Pro is stuffed to the gills and priced accordingly. And that damn battery pack. Apparently it is okay for Apple to have a tether, but not for every single headset that’s come before it.
At the end of the day, Meta now has an adversary and that tends to work better for it than being innovative. The rest of the headset business has a lot of ammo for and against AR and VR, and that’s good, at least more people will be open to talking to them, and they won’t have to talk to each other all the time.
Qualcomm gets to sell more headset platforms either by appealing to companies’ fear of missing out or fear of being left behind or just plain fear of the unknown. We all know how great it is to sell to something to someone who is scared about not having it: you don’t even have to negotiate a good price.
Last words on Vision Pro launch: all that’s left to make the product complete is a Louis Vuitton Vision Pro case, and we can start counting down the days to the storming of the Bastille.
