2024/02/25

Mark Zuckerberg recently posted  his thoughts on the Apple Vision Pro and how it compares with the Meta Quest.

His discussion of the competition between the “open” and “closed” models of technology seems to be a kind of corollary to the idea of open and closed platforms we discussed last week. He references Windows vs Mac and Android vs iOS as examples of “open” vs “closed” models, and is trying to position Meta as the “open” alternative to Apple’s “closed” model.

It’s an interesting framing because there’s a debate about how open the Meta model actually is. It’s not a truly open platform like Linux, the example Professor Cusumano mentioned (perhaps why he chose the word “model” instead of “platform”). Meta doesn’t want you to run different operating systems on their headsets, for example. But overall, Meta likely puts fewer guardrails around what developers can access and has less stringent requirements for publishing on their platform compared to Apple.

One might see this as Meta being as open as possible such that they can maximize developer contributions while not being so open that they lose opportunities for revenue. Seems like this is a balancing act that a lot of big tech companies have to go through.