During the companywide meeting, Mark Zuckerberg said that Apple’s device didn’t introduce any major advancements in technology that Meta hadn’t “already explored”, reported The Verge.

He also stated how Meta will be able to reach a larger user base due to the Quest 3 headset’s lower pricing of USD 499 as compared to the Vision Pro’s USD 3,499 selling price.

“I think that their announcement really showcases the difference in the values and the vision that our companies bring to this in a way that I think is really important,” Mark Zuckerberg mentioned.

According to Mark Zuckerberg, the Quest headset is about “people interacting in new ways and feeling closer” in addition to “about being active and doing things”.

“By contrast, every demo that they showed was a person sitting on a couch by themself,” he said about Apple’s ‘Worldwide Developers Conference’ keynote event.

“I mean, that could be the vision of the future of computing, but like, it’s not the one that I want,” he added.

The iPhone maker unveiled the ‘Apple Vision Pro’ headset in June 2023, which seamlessly blends the digital world with the real one around us.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook, during the launch, said that the new headset “seamlessly blends the real world and the virtual world”.

The headset, which has a two-hour battery life, has a price tag which is considerably higher than virtual reality headsets currently available on the market.

Apple also used the phrase “augmented reality” to describe the functionality of the new device.

Augmented reality, also known as mixed reality, is known for superimposing virtual objects around its users, thus enabling the latter to mix reality with virtual reality by looking through a screen.

“It’s like your phone but right in front of you – big, bright and bold, wherever you are,” BBC technology editor Zoe Kleinman wrote about the Apple Vision Pro headset.

“In letting you do things like watch videos of your family blowing out birthday candles or immerse yourself in your photography by making your panoramic photos life-size, she says it is pitched as a device which is very much about being part of your daily life”, unlike many other headsets on the market geared primarily towards immersive gaming,” she said.

“Users can access apps, watch movies, and write documents in a virtual world. But so far, there is little evidence of a big market for this kind of wearable tech. It’s still at the end of the day a VR headset,” she stated further, while adding, “Apple is going to have to have an awful lot of content to throw at this when it ships early next year. And of course, the other thing is the price point – USD 3,499 is a lot of money.”

Image Credits: Apple

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According to The Verge, the tech giant has debated adding health-related functions to its AirPods for years.

According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, this is now finally taking place.

In the next year or two, the iPhone manufacturer “may improve the AirPods to become a health tool,” and they “could even come with the capacity to receive hearing data of some form,” Mark Gurman claims.

It was revealed in 2020 that the tech giant intended to include ambient light sensors in the subsequent iterations of the AirPods to track information like blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate.

Another rumour from later in 2021 stated that the business was looking towards new health-related capabilities for its AirPods.

Nevertheless, in 2023 January, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the tech giant will begin shipping new AirPods Max, which might cost USD 99, in the second half of 2019 or the first part of 2025.

Meanwhile, photos from a Twitter account named MrWhite128 reportedly showed ribbon cables that look like they’d fit perfectly in a set of eye-shaped goggles, thus giving rise to chats that the tech community might have just witnessed the looks of cables and sensors for Apple’s upcoming and much-rumoured virtual/ augmented reality headset.

The account also shared pictures of a cable that has three bulbous sections, which, for The Verge, could be some sort of sensor/camera array. The headset is rumoured to have colour-passthrough capabilities that let the users see the real world outside of it, similar to the Meta Quest.

There are rumours that Apple may announce the launch of the interactive headset at the 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) and release it before the end of the year.

These developments come at a time when the tech giant is facing a talent exodus at the leadership level. Since the second half of 2022, Apple has lost about a dozen high-ranking executives, as per media reports.

Most of these people carried the title of vice-president, which is just below the senior vice-president level that reports to the company CEO Tim Cook. They are some of the most important figures at Apple, responsible for the daily operations of many core functions.

The departures included vice-presidents overseeing Apple’s fields like industrial design, the online store, information systems, cloud efforts, aspects of hardware and software engineering, privacy matters, sales in emerging markets, subscription services and procurement. In total, close to 12 key officials have left the company so far.

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