Last updated: June 13, 2023, 4:43 PM IST
United States of America (USA)
Pichai is excited about Apple’s new product
The company’s first-generation mixed reality product shows promise, and the industry is closely watching how it goes.
Apple has received positive feedback since the new Vision Pro headset was unveiled earlier this month and now you have Google CEO Sundar Pichai showing his enthusiasm for the new product category that seems to show the future for mixed reality. While Pichai hasn’t yet used an Apple Vision Pro headset, he said in a report that he’s excited about the potential of the technology powering the Vision Pro-like headsets.
He believes immersive computing experiences will become a core part of the industry in the future, moving away from the traditional black rectangles, which could be his way of looking at smartphones. “Google has always felt that computing will evolve beyond the black rectangles,” Pichai told Bloomberg this week.
Apple getting a strong vote of confidence from a competitor shows that everyone has been eagerly awaiting what the iPhone maker has to offer in this area. Not all companies have provided positive feedback, especially Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who argues that Apple and company see this space very differently.
He may have a point, as Meta Quest headsets cost no more than $600 (approximately Rs 48,000) while Apple’s first generation headset costs a whopping $3,500 (Rs 2.8 lakh approx) and targets a niche segment.
Google has had a mixed experience with its wearables, especially the Google Glass, which never made it out of the developer phase. It’s likely that Google is observing what Apple is doing with its XR headset lineup and seems to be using its blueprint to develop a more mass-friendly product in the years to come.
Apple will keep the Vision Pro limited to certain markets, and the product will be available early next year unless things don’t go according to plan and the company doesn’t have enough arsenal to get people to splurge on the device.
