Hubris supposedly comes before a fall, and the swagger with which Mark Zuckerberg dunked on Apple's $3,500 Vision Pro this week is causing acute deja vu among critics.
In one (n Instagram In a post on Tuesday, the Meta founder dismissed the premium mixed reality headset as inferior to his own Quest 3 mixed reality headset, both in price and performance, calling the latter the “better product, period“.
But Zuck's bravado is compared unflatteringly to the hasty obituary for the iPhone written by his rival Steve Ballmer when the revolutionary device first hit the market nearly 17 years ago.
“There is no chance that the iPhone will gain significant market share,” said the ex-Microsoft CEO famously predicted in 2007 in a quote that has aged very poorly since then.
Like Zuckerberg, Ballmer criticized the phone's price in particular, ignoring the potential value it could offer consumers through a thriving digital app economy.
“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized with plan? I said this is the most expensive phone in the world!” Ballmer said in a separate interview. “And it's not attractive to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard – which makes it not a particularly good E -Mail device does.”
The “Steve Ballmer iPhone video” is 16 years old. It's worth watching the entire 2-minute clip. I actually think it got worse as the video went on. Ballmer hinted that a Motorola Q could do everything an iPhone can for just $99. Sound familiar?
pic.twitter.com/Rf2c7SmjA2— Neil Cybart (@neilcybart) February 14, 2024
In Zuckerberg's latest criticism of Apple's headset, the Meta founder similarly blasted everything from the Vision Pro's design to its comfort and practicality to its cost, at seven times the price of his Quest 3.
“Is Zuckerberg inspiring Steve Ballmer by trying to discredit Apple?” asked Glen Kacher, founder and chief investment officer of Palo Alto-based asset manager Light Street Capital.
Is the quest closer? Nokia or blackberry
Finally, Ballmer regretted his lack of foresight, which he attributed to a deep-rooted person cultural hostility in the company towards expansion into the hardware sector.
It's like watching a Nokia fan from 2007 tell you that the iPhone isn't that advanced because you can do the same thing with Symbian.
He could have just said nothing, taken the best things about visionOS, added eye tracking and been a king. Now he has his own Ballmer iPhone video. Surprising misstep https://t.co/Z4Ac4sR0Pl
— Tina Debove Nigro ᯅ (@tina__nigro) February 14, 2024
According to the former Microsoft boss, the mindset of upper management at the time was firmly anchored in the loosely outlined business model that separated chip, system and software manufacturers from personal computers. The company didn't anticipate the shift toward end-to-end vertical integration that Apple popularized in mobile.
However, the comparison with Ballmer is not entirely accurate. While the Microsoft boss said his word biggest mistake limited their focus to Windows Mobile Instead of entering the mobile phone business sooner with a true iPhone competitor, Zuckerberg's problem is exactly the opposite: He already has the hardware – it just doesn't catch on.
A closer analogy is the possibility that Meta's Quest is the Nokia or Blackberry of mixed reality headsets, a mass-market device that lacks enough compelling content and useful applications because it has failed to keep pace with innovation in the technology industry.
It wasn't until this month's launch of the Apple Vision Pro that the technology suddenly gained broader prominence in pop culture, a blow to the Quest 3 that launched just four months earlier.
Zuckerberg received some moral support However, in response to his Ballmer-esque video.
“He is one of the most impressive CEOs there is” wrote Kaushik Subramanian, Partner at Early Stage Investor EQT Ventures, who once worked for the Meta founder. “Don’t bet against Zuck!”