by Jason Snell
Former Meta exec Hugo Barra on Vision Pro
Hugo Barra, former head of Oculus at Meta, has a lengthy review of his Vision Pro experience that’s well worth reading. Don’t let the somewhat inflammatory first headline (of four?!) put you off:
But in the case of VR at Oculus, we also never really felt like the world had a Northstar that could truly capture human hearts and minds, and without that it would be impossible to transition VR from being a niche gamer tech to the incredible spatial computing paradigm that we always thought it potentially represented…
The Vision Pro launch has more or less done exactly what I had always hoped for, which is to build a huge wave of awareness and curiosity that elevates the spatial computing ecosystem and could ultimately lead to mass-market consumer demand and a lot more developer interest that VR has ever had. Now it’s up to the industry to create enough user value and demonstrate whether this is in fact the future of computing.
Barra makes some smart observations about the hardware—most first-generation hardware is over-engineered because it’s being built before the final needs of the product are clear—and when he’s impressed by what Apple has done, he is very impressed.
Barra also makes a point similar to the one I’ve been making for a while now: For all of Mark Zuckerberg’s protests and insistence that his own product, the Quest 3, is “better” than the Vision Pro—I mean, it’s his product, of course he’s going to say that—the truth is that the Vision Pro is great for Meta:
Wile working at Meta/Oculus I used to semi-seriously joke that the best thing that could ever happen to us was having Apple enter the VR industry…. I knew Apple would do the best job of any company making people really want VR through its unparalleled brand, design and marketing…. For Meta, the Vision Pro launch is the best marketing tool for Quest VR that the company could have dreamed of but could have never achieved on its own.
The Vision Pro validates Meta’s interest, makes more people aware of the category, helps establish the strengths and weaknesses in the format, and helps give Meta a competitor to focus on. Similarly, Meta’s existence in the category will hopefully prevent Apple from getting complacent.