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Mark Zuckerberg dishes on Apple ‘fanboys’ and how his Vision Pro review compares to Steve Ballmer’s iPhone reaction

Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared a 3-minute video on Instagram in which he “reviewed” the Apple Vision Pro. Ultimately, he concluded that the $500 Meta Quest 3 is not only the better value than the $3,500 Apple Vision Pro, but also the better product.

In a new interview on the Morning Brew Daily podcast today, Zuckerberg explained his reasoning for posting this video and shared some of his thoughts on “Apple fanboys.”

Zuckerberg says that his decision to post the video was driven by some of the media coverage “assuming” that Vision Pro was the better product compared to Quest 3:

“I just saw the media coverage around this was just sort of breathlessly assuming that, I think because it’s Apple and because it was such an expensive product, like it must be the better one in quality, even though a lot of people are saying, hey, no, you should go buy Quest 3 because it’s the better price.

I just wanted to kind of put my flag down and say, hey, no, you know, just because this thing costs seven times more, doesn’t mean it’s better. If you actually go use case by use case on this thing, Quest 3 stacks up really well. And I’m just really proud of the work that we did. So I just kind of wanted to put that out there and say that.”

People quickly compared Zuckerberg’s video to Steve Ballmer’s takedown video of the iPhone shortly after it was announced, which obviously didn’t age well. The Meta CEO, however, isn’t worried about his video having that same fate:

“First of all, I’m not laughing at them. I take Apple seriously. I think it’s like a good company. They do good work. I’m just laying out the facts as I see them today. I’m not saying that they’re not going to improve, but hey, we’re going to improve, too. And we’re a company that moves pretty quickly, so I actually think we’ll probably move faster.”

As for Zuckerberg’s opinion of Apple “fanboys,” he seems to relate it to his argument of an open versus closed ecosystem:

“I do think that there’s this whole vibe with Apple fanboys, which I find kind of a little funny, where it’s like a lot of people just get upset if you dare to question if Apple is going to lead in a new space.

If you look at the history of computing, every major generation has sort of an open model, where it’s more partnership oriented, more favorable to developers. And then they have a closed model where it’s usually just Apple, basically just integrating all their stuff closely together.

In mobile, Apple won. There’s technically more Android phones out there, but you know basically Apple, from a business perspective won. And then in all the developed countries, where people could afford their products, people basically prefer the iPhone.”

You can watch Zuckerberg’s full interview on the Morning Brew Daily podcast below or find it on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere.

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Avatar for Chance Miller Chance Miller

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to chance@9to5mac.com

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