The Petal to the Meta
At Meta Connect, Mark Zuckerberg makes one last case to steer XR before Apple arrives…
Meta’s Connect conference this week was fascinating. In ways both good and bad. It started out about as bad as one of these presentations can go,¹ but slowly built into something actually impressive. Snark and snide yielded to surprise. A comically stilted presentation got bludgeoned over the head with technology and more so just a relentless Mark Zuckerberg, selling his vision to the masses.
A year ago, I wrote about Facebook’s “Second Quest” — that is, Zuckerberg’s attempt to completely remake the company from the name on down. A year later, the market has melted and Meta along with it from a stock perspective, but the company clearly remains committed. There will be no pivoting back to Facebook. In fact, they’re seemingly slamming on the gas to try to outgun their new mortal enemy.
The fruit company that shall not be named.
Zuckerberg began and ended his keynote talking about the importance of open ecosystems, just as Google used to do in the heyday of the Android vs. iPhone wars. But this is different in that Apple hasn’t actually entered the fray yet. But everyone knows what’s coming. In fact, this was very likely Zuckerberg’s last chance to make the case for Meta to own what’s next in computing without a big ass elephant standing right next to him in the room: the largest company in the world. And Meta brought a friend to the fight. The second largest company in the world.
This is smart. On both sides, I think. Meta needs Microsoft more than Microsoft needs Meta, but that’s relative. Microsoft needed Facebook back in the day to try to make Bing relevant (and Facebook happily took Microsoft’s money, on which Microsoft eventually made a mighty return). The two oddly seem to find themselves often intertwined. But I’m not sure it’s that odd as they often find themselves with common enemies. At points, Google, and now Apple. And if there’s a leader that Zuckerberg seems most molded after, it’s obviously his fellow and famously ruthless Harvard alum Bill Gates.
Further, the narrative that the rise of the Metaverse could be more akin to PCs than smartphones, as Ben Thompson and others have recently been talking about, is provocative. Of course, Microsoft is now angling to be the Microsoft here whereas Facebook could be the IBM… It’s not going to be so seamless an analogy, obviously. But I think it’s at least directionally accurate in that this market is not going to explode overnight.² It’s going to be a long haul and one that perhaps does start with either enthusiasts (gamers) or desk jockeys (workers). In both cases, the teaming up with Microsoft makes a ton of sense. Certainly more than going it alone.
And while it’s been en vogue for much of the past decade now to shit on Facebook — something I do quite often myself — I think it’s important to note that the company and Mark Zuckerberg specifically deserve a lot of credit for keeping this dream not only alive, but again, betting the entire company on it. A lot of other companies would — and have — recoiled in defeat here. Not Meta. Of course, it helps when you control the entire (public) company in the way that Zuckerberg does.
And it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago when Facebook was running circles around every other tech company as the young, hot upstart. Zuckerberg may not understand PR — nor did Bill Gates in his earlier years — but he understands how to win the games that really matter to him.
So yeah, the takeaways from Connect are:
- Holy shit, Microsoft is teaming up with Meta to form an implicit alliance against Apple.
- The Quest Pro looks impressive, but is far too expensive for the masses, so the enthusiasts (and companies) will have to continue to carry the day.
- The future stuff Meta showed off, the new avatars and brain/machine interfaces — shout out CTRL Labs! — look amazing but who knows when they hit the market.
- Meta is really bad as staging these types of events. You absolutely should not try to have two people talking to one another on stage as if they’re having a casual conversation when it’s so comically scripted.
- Legs!
Microsoft isn’t coming out and saying that Hololens has failed, of course. But this is step one of that process, it seems. Well, maybe step two. Step one was the pivot to enterprise. Which is now… where Microsoft is betting on Meta. Yeah, yeah AR vs. VR. We’ll see.
On the Quest Pro, it’s wild how much more expensive it is versus the Quest 2. Again, it looks great. But that’s a massive price spike. I know, I know: not aiming at the same audience. But also, that’s not entirely true. Everyone in VR right now is an enthusiast.³ Everyone in that camp will want this headset. But not everyone can afford it.
At the same time, I sympathize — especially if Meta really is selling this thing at or around cost — we all would love for the state of VR/AR/XR to be a pair of lightweight glasses that we all can wear around all the time. We’re a long ways away from that, which Zuckerberg kept acknowledging (while still trotting out the Luxottica executive). We all know where Meta wants to get. And where we all want to get. But it’s going to take time, and a shit ton of capital. And so I say again, kudos to Meta for pouring the resources into making this a reality.
One which the aforementioned Apple is about to enter. And while their first device may or may not be similar to the Quest Pro (the rumors sound similar), Apple will have a massive inherent advantage on a few fronts. Namely, their processor. Their tie-in to the iPhone. And their ability to sell consumer goods through their stores. Meta has none of those (Qualcomm partnership aside). And so they have to hope that the Microsoft partnership is good enough to combat those things. Again, it’s a smart counter.
My guess would be that Apple’s initial entrant into this world is more akin to the Apple Watch than anything else. That is, an interesting piece of hardware, tied to the iPhone, that has no idea what it wants to be yet. It will have to grow up before our eyes. Which the Apple Watch has. And Apple, much like Meta, hasn’t given up despite some wayward years. So… the fight should be on.
But this world is so nascent that there will be other players too — namely from Asian markets. If this really is a future layer of computing — even if not the dominant one — it will bring out a lot of competitors. A lot of folks who probably should have been working on this five years ago but only will once Meta and Apple have validated some level of the market. We’ll see how committed to his open ecosystem Zuckerberg really is!
And what effect does Meta’s other war — the “hot” one — with TikTok have on all this? It seems pretty clear that Zuckerberg cares about his metaverse vision first and foremost, with the legacy social apps now just means to those ends. At the same time, they need those means to keep providing the means to pour into the ends. And that means combating TikTok and anything else that comes along which could eat into time spent and thus, ad revenue, and thus, money coming in the door to build Meta’s verse.
I’m looking forward to checking back in, in another year.
¹ I mean, seriously, who signed off on this staging? I get that Meta wants to humanize both the company and their work in the metaverse, but having two people sit down to “chat” in pre-scripted lines was beyond awkward. It had the exact opposite effect of what they were hoping for, I imagine. It got better once Zuckerberg just started talking in full on nerd. He loves this shit. Give us more of that. Work with your strengths. Even Snap gets this.
² And yes, the iPhone didn’t truly explode until they switched to the carrier subsidy model. Get this: the original device was just too expensive, relatively speaking, at the time! Ballmer wasn’t entirely wrong to laugh! And until the launch of the App Store, of course.
³ Full disclosure: we’re betting on this reality as well!
