ALBAWABA – Apple’s first product in the realm of Virtual Reality, $3499 Apple Vision Pro has just been released with plenty of online figures praising and criticizing the new headset, but an insightful overview of the device can also come from industry leaders and tech professionals, with different remarks from Google, Meta, and Tesla’s CEOs, as well as Apple’s own Tim Cook.
Tim Cook recently appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine wearing the Vision Pro in an exclusive interview where he talked about earlier versions of the device being bulky and heavy, he praised Apple’s engineers for bringing the headset together, calling it the future of computing and entertainment, considering it a product that would change the feature of technology.
CEO Tim Cook pictured for the first time wearing the Apple Vision Pro, in his Cupertino, California office. (Norman Jean Roy.\ Vanity Fair)
The CEO of OpenAI, known for their infamous ChatGPT, Sam Altman, has recently went on X (previously Twitter) to talk about his experience with the Vision Pro in a positive fashion, calling it the "second most impressive tec” being second to the iPhone, remarking that just like how the iPhone changed the mobile phone scene, the Vision Pro might be the genesis for VR headsets.
In an interview with Bloomberg ahead of the announcement of the Vision Pro in June 2023, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai was asked about his thoughts on the headset, he explained that while he did not see or use the device yet, he is excited about the potential of the technology, noting that he always believed that tech will evolve further than the smartphone.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, who’s Quest headsets are in competition with the Apple Vision Pro, did not seem very fond of Apple’s take on VR, saying that it did not bring anything new that Meta hasn’t tried in a meeting with Meta employees according to The Verge, adding that Apple’s marketing material shows users of the Vision Pro sitting alone in on a couch rather than using the headset with others, saying that is not what he wants, touching on the social aspect of the Quest platform.
Elon Musk, head of Tesla and owner of X, has also shared Zuckerberg’s negative outlook, saying on X that he did test the Vision Pro but was not impressed, claiming that headset “does not feel it is there yet” and it did not amaze him, he drew comparison with the first iPhone, which he said was not great until iPhone 3, which he considered the best ‘smartphone’ at the time.
