Mark Zuckerberg's Apple Vision Pro and Meta Quest 3 Review

About

Mark Zuckerberg Apple Vision Pro and Quest Review refers to a viral video posted by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in mid-February 2024 in which he compared the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset to his own company's Quest 3 headset. Zuckerberg concluded that, in general, the Quest 3 was better than the Apple Vision Pro and he advocated for an "open model" for the new era of computing. Online, many commentators saw the video as evidence of Zuckerberg's drive to compete with Apple in the virtual reality space and as a kind of casual, low-key advertisement. The video also generated a notable amount of memes and discourse on social media as it spread.

Origin

Mark Zuckerberg posted the video review to his Instagram account on February 13th, 2024, earning over 189,000 likes, 8,800 comments and 3.9 million views in 20 hours (seen below).^[1] The review came shortly after the release of the Apple Vision Pro in early February 2024. Zuckerberg's Meta had notably produced the Oculus Quest, Rift and other early VR headsets in the early 2020s and continued to innovate in the space. However, Apple's announcement in 2023 and release in 2024 of the Vision Pro was accompanied by considerable press coverage and public interest.

In the video, Zuckerberg argued that the Quest 3 was about seven times cheaper than the Apple Vision Pro and purportedly performed better for many practical tasks. While conceding that the Apple Vision Pro was higher resolution and had better graphics quality, Zuckerberg argued that Apple did this at the cost of weight, producing a headset that was uncomfortable to wear.

Spread

On February 13th, 2024, X / Twitter user @pitdesi reposted the video to X shortly after it was first posted, receiving over 69,000 likes and 9,700 reposts (seen below) in the course of 20 hours.^[2]

Commentators online discussed Zuckerberg's move, with some praising the video as a stroke of brilliant management and publicity, like X user Joe Weisenthal on February 14th, who called it "really good" and received over 460 likes in 10 hours (seen below, top).^[3]

Others were more critical, comparing it to a famous video of then-CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer dismissing the iPhone in 2007 because it was too expensive and did not have a keyboard. For example, on February 13th, 2024, X user @tina__nigro described the video as a "misstep" in a post that received over 2,900 likes in a day for criticizing Zuckerberg (seen below, bottom).^[4]

Others discussed Mark Zuckerberg's personality, commenting on his drive to succeed. For example, on February 14th, X user @netcapgirl (seen below, top) described Zuck as mogging, earning over 5,100 likes in five hours.^[5] On the 13th, X user @levelsio (seen below, bottom) attributed Zuck's confident performance in the video to his MMA training, earning over 30,000 likes in a day.^[6]

Discussion of Zuckerberg's ad also took place on Reddit where a post on the /r/apple subreddit sharing the @pitdesi post from Twitter / X received over 1,600 votes and 900 comments on February 14th.^[7] There and elsewhere, the review sparked discussion of a possible "headset war" or "platform war" between Meta and Apple as each company sought dominance in the market.

Various Examples

External References