In the Vision Pro vs. Quest Debate, Don't Forget Real Price Considerations -- Not to Mention Meta's Advertising & AI Clauses

Above: From Meta VR's Terms of Service

Since Mark Zuckerberg is currently doing a viral comparison of the Apple Vision Pro with his Meta Quest line (watch below), I checked in with VR expert Avi Bar-Zeev, who recently tried to a side-by-side review of his own.

He hit some small problems on set-up, unfortunately:

"Sorry, I was unable to don the Meta Quest 3 consumer HMD due to their enshitifying terms of service. I do not consent to having a company use my personal information to target me or train their machine learning, to retain personally identifying information indefinitely, and to force me to give up my usual legal rights when I discover they did something against MY personal terms of service."

Avi is referring to sections in Meta VR's Terms of Service which stipulate the company's right to "provide you with offers and other promotions" and "use and develop advanced technologies – like artificial intelligence and machine learning systems – to enable us to offer a better and more useful service to everyone who uses the Meta VR Products". (Screencapped above.)

Meta would no doubt argue that advertising and AI enable the company to make its Quest headsets so much less expensive than Apple Vision Pro's $3500 price.

But there again, Avi says there's a catch to the cost comparisons -- especially if you're concerned about privacy:

"If you try to configure a Meta product closest to the Apple Vision Pro specs," he argues, "you need get the Quest Pro (for eye tracking), plus $15-$24/month for the Quest for Business account that doesn't scrape your personal information. That could be about $2000 over 3-4 years, versus $3500."

On that logic, Meta is still more affordable, but it's not as simple as the $500 vs. $3500 comparison that's usually made. 

Also, the Vision Pro seems to be intended to replace its high-end desktop PCs, as opposed to being a side peripheral. 

Bar-Zeev, by the way, did some development work on the Vision Pro, but no longer works or contracts with Apple -- and given his thick resume (Google, Microsoft, Linden Lab, etc.) hardly needs to play favorites on these questions. On the other hand, if you're as concerned as Avi about Meta's advertising/AI policies, consider joining his XR Guild non-profit advocacy group.

In my book, he shared one solution to address the Quest privacy challenge:

“We need a Glass-Steagall Act for data,” he tells me immediately. That’s the former US law which prohibited banks from also operating as investment firms. “We repealed it and we regret it, right?” 

Largely eliminated in 1999, the law’s expiration was a core cause for the financial crisis of 2007–2008 that nearly led to a global depression. 

So, yes.

“What we need,” Bar-Zeev goes on, “is a separation from the parts of the companies that collect the data and use it for practical purposes like improving the quality of the world." 

He means VR/virtual world user interaction data that helps a company track down performance problems and system bugs. 

"So that part of the company has access to data. And maybe it needs to be a whole other company that sells all the ads. They shall not talk. They shall not share information. That's the way I would write it: The information must be firewalled so that the ads can't use it." 

It’s not enough, he adds, to ask that metaverse companies strip the user’s names from the tracking data. 

"A lot of people make this mistake. They say, well, as long as we anonymize it, we're fine. But no, it's not about anonymizing it. It's about how effective it is. You don't have to know who I am, if you can build a profile of me on the fly in 10 minutes."

So does that mean breaking up Meta from its XR division?

“I would be OK if they can technically prove that the data does not flow between the biometric collection and the advertising [division],” Bar-Zeev speculates. “If they can firewall it in such a way that literally the user has the keys to the encrypted data for anything that's saved, and the company does not have the key, and it's never sent to the cloud. And there's no possibility of that data leaking over to the other part of the company. That would be a good start. 

“But if they can't prove that, I think you have to separate the financial concerns just like we did with Glass-Steagall.”

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Comments

[Luther Weymann]

“Also, the Vision Pro seems to be intended to replace its high-end desktop PCs, as opposed to being a side peripheral.”

Dell Computer must be dancing in the aisles, hearing that Apple has gone so Woke and gotten so out of touch with the real-life Americans live that they think someday we’ll just be one of their Apple Slaves and strap the Master’s gimmick on our faces. That’s almost as remote a possibility as Elon thinking brain implants will be popular.

[Galaxy Littlepaws]

I'd rather try the Valve Prism. They did so well with the Steam Deck, and I'd greatly prefer something open. I dislike "Meta" and Apple. I'd gladly pay out a little bit more than the Quest for something that respects my privacy, and that I can do whatever I want with.
I just hope that later on they or someone else can make a longer-lasting battery, but then again, you probably don't want a computer sitting on your head for hours at a time.