Gurman: Meta’s $1,299 VR Glasses are what Apple Vision Pro might have been

The useful part

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.

How it works

• 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 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.
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• Apple previously explored lighter, more tethered Vision designs and later scaled back its headset roadmap.

What to take from it

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.

Example or evidence

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• 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...
• 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 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.

Details worth keeping

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. 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.

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