Meta’s new VR Glasses — a $1,299 glasses-style headset that ships in spring 2027 — are the Vision Pro Apple should have shipped, Bloomberg News’ Mark Gurman writes in his latest Power On newsletter.
The device puts the processor, cooling, battery, and storage in a pocketable external puck connected by a cable, leaving about 100 grams on the face. That is roughly one-sixth the on-head weight of Apple’s Vision Pro, which still carries nearly all of its compute in the headset itself and only offloads the battery.
At $1,299, Meta undercuts Apple’s current $3,699 Vision Pro by about two-thirds while promising three hours of battery life and a 5K micro-OLED display. Gurman, who tried the hardware for nearly an hour, described the lighter form as far more comfortable than Vision Pro for watching sports, navigating a redesigned interface, and working on a virtual desktop.
Apple previously explored lighter, more tethered Vision designs and later scaled back its headset roadmap. Meta’s approach — glasses on the face, computer in the pocket — is the tradeoff Cupertino declined to make at launch.
Vision Pro still leads on field of view, light sealing, and some software polish. Meta’s bet is that most people will choose something they can actually wear.
As we wrote back on March 22, 2024:
There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
“Tim’s not a product person, per se.” – Steve Jobs
Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” fizzled in ignominious failure. So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
Apple Vision Pro is a devkit for developers, not for average users, and should have been released as a devkit for developers.
When a product is released too early to average users, you get reviews like “it’s the spiritual successor to the Newton.” And you deserve them. – MacDailyNews, March 26, 2024
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals — including the world’s most valuable company, Microsoft — in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
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Apple once made the future; now it rents it. It used to thrill customers; now it pleases shareholders. Insanely great became insanely lucrative.
Steve built for customers. Tim built for shareholders. Guess which one got the stock price. Who will John Ternus build for?
EXACTLY!