I noticed a lot of similarities of how Zuckerberg is reacting to Apple’s Vision Pro in his internal newsletter and Lex Friedman’s podcast to Steve Ballmer’s wacky reaction to Apple’s iPhone. All in all, Zuckerberg tries to play it more cool by saying everything is a trade-off. Which is essentially saying nothing. Yes, genius. Decisions make a company. But the message is the same. —— “The $3,500, I don’t think a lot of people are going to find that affordable. Quest 3 is the best in the market they can afford and it’s great” - Zuckerberg “500 dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that is the most expensive phone in the world… You can get Motorola Q series device for $99. It is a very capable machine, can do music, internet and more…” - Ballmer “Paying an extra $500 for a computer in this environment—same piece of hardware—paying $500 more to get a logo on it? I think that’s a more challenging proposition for the average person than it used to be” - Ballmer —— “we’ve sold 10s of millions… Apple is building about 1 million…” - Zuckerberg “There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance” - Ballmer “Right now, we're selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace” - Ballmer “If you actually look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70%, than I would to have 2% or 3% , which is what Apple might get” - Ballmer —— “it costs seven times more and now requires so much energy that now you need a battery and a wire attached to it to use it.” - Zuckerberg “Having a controller allows you to have a more tactile feel and allows you to capture fine motor movement much more precise than what you can do with hands without something that you’re touching” - Zuckerberg “… it doesn't have a keyboard. Which makes it not a very good email machine” - Ballmer —— “Our focus is a more democratic ethos. We want to build things that are accessible to a wider amount of people.” - Zuckerberg “every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself. I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing… it’s not the one I want” - Zuckerberg “We have our strategy. We are very happy with Windows Phone devices in the market today.” - Ballmer
This type of cherry picking of metaphors is fallacy. There is a significant difference between the iPhone and Vision Pro. Most notably, the smart phone market was ready to explode due to pervasive 3G networks that made a winner being crowned inevitable. There are no such tail winds for VR/AR headsets. It is very possible and I would argue probable that no one will achieve critical mass of users.
Apple doesn’t release things just because they can build it (as all other big tech does). They do it if in their opinion, the thing can give an objectively good lifestyle experience and not just some cool tech product. (In that case, in their opinion, the only way to provide that experience with today’s tech is $3,500. Any other trade off to make it cheaper would diminish the experience) So far, Apple’s opinion and decision on what experience is good to sell billions has a good track record. If you trust in Apple’s opinion, then the future is bullish as the only thing deciding its success is price which will come down.
HomePod
I think you’re leaving out the history of the iphone pricing. It was very, very high at launch. Six months later, you could get them for something like $200 on a two year contract. All my friends went from “$500 for a phone is crazy” to half of them having an iphone in a year. Plus, people already owned phones - having one that could get on the internet, play music, have apps, was a fairly natural extension. I’m not sure that is true with an AR/VR device.
The category may never be as big as smartphones, but the same can be said of the Apple Watch. An unproven market but Apple has been able to make a huge killing that no other existing smart watch player could. Not quite like the iPhone, but I think this’ll spark a new AR industry. Maybe not as big as the App Store, but certainly much bigger than the watch.
Is your phone company gonna have incentive to provide Apple Vision Pro at a discount through their plan? No. No they will not. Most people probably have their iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones because they're "free" while their provider profits off their monthly service payments for the 3 years they have to commit to. I wanna see AR and VR take off. I just don't think we're going through the path as smartphones.
What’s he supposed to do? He’s spent what 100b on this form factor and now he’s supposed to not discuss product differentiation? Just give up? Let another company be the android of AR/VR? Everything he’s saying makes sense.
This. He can’t come out and applaud Apple. He has to sell a story to his investors
Everything Steve Ballmer said made sense too.
“Pro” implies there will be a non-Pro. That Battery pack looks a lot like an iPhone doesn’t it? Hmm…
The industry went through this early with Daydream and GearVR. Turns out the tradeoff of 30 minutes of XR for half your phone battery is a bad one for consumers. It may become an option however but hard to imagine it as a near term primary use.
also known as copium
The Ballmer meme refers to someone who was in the right place at the right time and who bootlicked the founder to take over the company when the founder moved on. A Ballmer does not start a company, they ride the coat tails and lick the boots of the founder and then one day they get the keys to car and they crash it in epic fashion. Zuck is someone who stole others ideas to create a company then could not duplicate that success thereby proving it was only by stealing an idea that he became rich. Zuck is a meme for others that do that.
Ballmer was a lot of things. A bootlicker surely wasn't one of them.
As a SWE if any AR/VR product allows me to code with 3 screens with all the ecosystem present while I am at my couch .. take my $$ already. When I am WFH i dont want to glue myself to a shitty desk with joke of monitors.
I might buy one just to reward Apple for not doing layoffs :)
Andy Jassy is the new Steve Ballmer
He should name his son Hugh Jassy
He's just making sure that Amazon is dependent on AWS and won't stop being a customer after hedge funds make the two companies split-up.