Meta (formerly Facebook) has been looking forward to the release of the Apple Vision Pro. Yes, you read that right. Mark Zuckerberg’s company sees the competition as a potential catalyst to beef up the metaverse sector.
Why Meta has been Looking Forward to the Vision Pro
According to The Wall Street Journal, Meta is going bullish for the arrival of the Apple Vision Pro, which will be competing against the Meta Quest mixed reality VR headset. For them, it will serve as a validation of the $50 billion metaverse gamble of Zuckerberg and it could be instrumental in bringing more customers to the sector.
Besides attracting more buyers, more products focusing on the metaverse could catalyze healthy competition among players. Alongside these will be more developers coming into the niche, which could help in its further progress. Apple hyped that there are already 600 apps and games designed for the device, and this may very well be just the thing that metaverse needs to spice up more interest in its direction.
Vision Pro, despite its many promising features, is held back by its hefty price tag. From the get-go, people have already been frowning at its $3,499 cost. A Horizon Worlds user whom the Financial Times interviewed said the kind of cash one needs to cough up to get the Vision Pro is laughable. So, when asked how much he would be willing to pay for it instead, he answered he was not willing to pay over $700 for it.
Meta, however, considers this as an opportunity to paint the Quest as an affordable alternative to the expensive Apple device. The company hopes to present its product as the Android of the metaverse realm.
Apple’s Vision for the Vision Pro
On the other side of the fence, Bloomberg believes Apple currently has doubts about the immediate success of the Vision Pro. But then again, it’s still pushing for it because it does not want to be left out if the metaverse sector suddenly balloons. For short, it’s merely a placeholder for now.
Interestingly, Vision Pro has been evidently omitting mentions of the word “metaverse” in its marketing. Instead of that, Apple CEO Tim Cook referred to the realm unlocked by the device as “spatial computing.”
“In the same way that Mac introduced us to personal computing and iPhone introduced us to mobile computing, Vision Pro will introduce us to spatial computing,” stated the Apple head honcho in his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last year.
For analysts, Apple’s distancing itself from the “metaverse” terminology might be a deliberate attempt to prevent people from linking its product with Meta. It could also be an effort by the company to carve its mark by replacing the already widely accepted term with its preferred phrase, “spatial computing.”