By Tom Gerken
Technology reporter
Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has taken a personal swipe at rival company Apple’s new headset.
The Vision Pro grabbed headlines as celebrities including Diplo and T-Pain wore it in public, with the “passthrough” feature allowing them to see their surroundings while using it.
But in a video shot using the Meta Quest 3’s own passthrough, Zuckerberg insisted his company’s headset is “the best product, period”.
Apple has been approached for comment.
Passthrough is a feature used by the most recent mixed reality headsets, which allows people to see beyond the screen strapped to their head.
By utilising cameras on the outside of the headset, users are given a live, high-definition video feed of their surroundings – meaning they can wear a headset while walking or exercising.
Meta has been working on this technology for the better part of a decade, and it also features on rival products such as Sony’s PlayStation VR 2.
But it is clearly the source of frustration for Zuckerberg that the Vision Pro is being praised over technology that exists elsewhere.
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“I think Quest is the better product, period,” he said.
“It seems like there are a lot of people who just assumed that Vision Pro would be higher quality because it’s Apple and it costs $3,000 (£2,400) more.
“But honestly, I’m pretty surprised that Quest is so much better for the vast majority of things that people use these headsets for with that price differential.”
It comes as several people have started to post on social media about returning their Apple headsets, with product manager Parker Ortolani among those praising the device but saying the “physical trade-offs are just not worth it”.
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‘It’s a big deal’
Zuckerberg spent much of the video trying to stress why the Quest 3 was better, with reasons ranging from the ability to move around easily without a cable, and socialising – but above all making multiple digs at the difference in price.
“I expected that Quest would be the better value for most people since it’s really good and it’s like seven times less expensive,” he said.
“I think it’s just a lot more comfortable, and we designed it to weigh 120 grams less which makes a really big difference on your face.
“There’s no wires that get in the way when you move around – it’s a big deal.”
He also said the Quest 3 had a wider field of view, and he believed it had a brighter screen too.
Zuckerberg did accept the Vision Pro had some advantages – in particular a higher resolution – but said he was “surprised by how many trade-offs they had to make” in other areas to achieve it.
He also praised the eye-tracking on Apple’s headset, which is a feature not present in the Quest 3.
‘Fanboys’
Zuckerberg ended the video by talking about what mixed reality might look like in the future.
In a surprising move, he directly criticised “fanboys” who “get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple’s going to be the leader” in a type of technology.
“But the reality is that every generation of computing has an open and a closed model,” he said, referring to how Apple controls what can and can’t be installed on its devices.
“And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won, but it’s not always that way – if you go back to the PC era, Microsoft’s open model was the winner.
“In this next generation, Meta is going to be the open model, and I really want to make sure that the open model wins out again.”
