Apple CEO Tim Cook panned tech rival Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for the metaverse, calling it too difficult to understand and a misguided approach to virtual reality.
“I always think it’s important that people understand what something is,” Cook told the Dutch publication Bright in an interview on Friday.
“And I’m really not sure the average person can tell you what the metaverse is.”
Cook also called out Zuckerberg’s virtual reality social platform for being a poor implementation of VR technology.
“It’s something you can really immerse yourself in, and that can be used in a good way, but I don’t think you want to live your whole life that way,” Cook said.
“VR is for set periods, but not a way to communicate well. So I’m not against it, but that’s how I look at it.”
In July, Zuckerberg told his employees that Meta is in a “very deep, philosophical competition” with Apple to build the metaverse, with the Meta chief executive touting VR as a new battleground frontier for tech companies.
“This is a competition of philosophies and ideas, where they believe that by doing everything themselves and tightly integrating that they build a better consumer experience,” Zuckerberg said.
“And we believe that there is a lot to be done in specialization across different companies, and [that] will allow a much larger ecosystem to exist.”
Apple is expected to release its own augmented reality headset by the end of the year, and Zuckerberg said he plans to steer the company towards offering a cheaper, more accessible VR alternative to Apple.
