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Apple Vision Pro is already making the Meta Quest 3 better

You don’t need to own an Apple Vision Pro to appreciate it. Just having competition from the high end is pushing Meta to improve its mainstream mixed reality headset.

Meta Quest 3 hit the market last year for $499. That’s $3000 shy of Vision Pro, but with the same goal of colorized passthrough for mixed reality. The only problem was that Meta’s version of passthrough was hardly comparable to Apple’s. My own evaluation is that Meta Quest 3 passthrough is usable but not convincing.

That appears to be changing now. In a Quest software update called v64, Meta says that it has improved passthrough quality for the Meta Quest 3 headset. Here’s a summary from the release notes:

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Threads joining the fediverse; Trending posts fully rolling out in the US

Threads joining the fediverse | Interconnected cotton threads

We’ve known for a while that Threads is joining the fediverse, and parent company Meta has now provided a preview of how things will work.

The concept of the fediverse is to network together individual social media platforms, such that you can post once on one of them, and then share your post on other services …

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Zuck insists Quest 3 is also a computer and not just for games in latest Vision Pro criticism

Mark Zuckerberg Meta Quest Apple Vision Pro headset

Shortly after Vision Pro was released last month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Threads to offer his “review” of the product. At the time, Zuckerberg concluded that not only is the Meta Quest 3 a better value than Vision Pro, it’s also the better product.

In a new series of posts on Threads this, Zuckerberg offered some additional critique of Apple Vision Pro.

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Age verification should be Apple’s job, says Tinder parent Match

Age verification should be Apple's job | Young woman partly covering her face

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that for age-restricted apps, age verification should be Apple’s job. He’s now been joined in this view by the new head of trust and safety at Match, the company behind leading dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and Plenty of Fish.

Yoel Roth – who formerly had the same role in Twitter – said that Apple and Google are in a better position to accurately assess the age of their smartphone users …

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Global meta outage: What do we know, and what was the likely cause?

Global meta outage cause | Plug removed from socket

Yesterday’s global meta outage seemingly took out the company’s entire network, with users unable to access Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Threads, and Quest headsets.

The outage lasted between one and two hours for most users, and while everything now appears back to normal, questions are naturally being asked about what went wrong …

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Meta service outage causing Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and Threads to go down

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Update: Services were restored after an outage of 1-2 hours for most people. The most likely explanation appears to be a mistake within Meta, similar to that in 2021.


Did you just get randomly signed out of Facebook? It’s not just you. The platform is facing an outage that has logged out users. The outage will cause your password to be rejected, but your password isn’t wrong.

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Meta Glasses expected to be revealed in the fall, but not go on sale for years

Meta Glasses expected to be revealed in the fall | Mark Zuckerberg wearing "Deal With It" meme sunglasses.

Apple and Meta won’t just be competing with their VR headsets – they are also likely to be gearing up for a later battle between Apple Glasses and Meta Glasses.

While both devices are believed to be years from launch, a new report today says that we’ll get a sneak peek at Meta Glasses later this year …

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Meta and Microsoft ask EU to reject Apple’s new app store terms

Meta and Microsoft ask EU to reject Apple's new app store terms | 'Denied' stamp over App Store icon

Apple’s new app store terms have come under fire for what many are describing as ‘malicious compliance’ with the EU’s Digital Markets Act – that is, technically complying with the antitrust law while completely negating its intent.

A new report says that both Meta and Microsoft have now lobbied the EU, asking it to reject Apple’s new terms as “onerous” and “prohibitive” …

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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.”

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Vision Pro latency the best on one metric; lags behind Meta on another

Vision Pro latency | Display model in an Apple Store

Scientific tests of Vision Pro latency show that Apple’s spatial computer lives up to Apple’s claims of superiority over rival headsets – but only in the first of two metrics.

This means that the passthrough feature, which lets you see the real world around you, is better than any of its rivals in one way, but is very slightly (and imperceptibly) worse than Meta in another …

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Zuckerberg’s AI announcement raises privacy and toxicity red flags

Zuckerberg's AI announcement | 3D representation of Meta logos

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s AI announcement has raised major concerns, after he said that the company had more user data than was used to train ChatGPT – and would soon be using it to train its own AI systems.

The company’s plan to use Facebook and Instagram posts and comments to train a competing chatbot raises concerns about both privacy and toxicity …

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Mark Zuckerberg explains why there will be no Meta app store for iPhone in the EU

Meta Apple App Store

Many developers and tech companies didn’t react well to the changes proposed by Apple last month to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) antitrust legislation, and Mark Zuckerberg is on that team. The Meta CEO said on Thursday that he doubts developers will opt in to the new “onerous” terms set by Apple in the EU.

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Senate hearing on social media: Zuckerberg apologises to families; bizarre racism

Senate hearing on social media

The Senate hearing on social media saw Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologise to families who hold social media responsible for children who harmed themselves, including some who took their own lives.

It also saw some bizarre racism by one senator who apparently can’t tell the difference between Singapore and China …

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Zuckerberg doubles down on saying app age verification should be Apple’s responsibility

App age verification | 'Sign here' PostIt on an iPhone

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has doubled down on his view that app age verification should be the responsibility of Apple and Google, and not social media companies.

His remarks form part of prepared testimony to Congress, as he and other social media CEOs come under fire for failing to do enough to protect their teenage app users …

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Social media CEOs testifying to congress on teen safety

Social media CEOs quizzed | Apps shown on iPhone

The timing of Meta’s announcement of new teen safety measures earlier this week likely wasn’t coincidental: Mark Zuckerberg and other social media CEOs are set to testify to Congress on the topic.

Facebook’s founder will be joined by the chief execs of TikTok, Snap, Discord and X as Congress seeks to determine whether the companies are doing enough to protect teens from harm …

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Unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – but only in Europe

Unlink your Instagram | Screenshot on smartphone resting on MacBook

Meta has announced a radical new move to comply with European antitrust requirements taking effect in March. The company will let you unlink your Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger accounts – as well as those for Facebook Marketplace and Facebook Gaming.

This means you’ll have the option of setting each up as a completely separate account, with no shared data between them …

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Ray-Ban Meta glasses convinced me to believe in smart glasses

Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses

Smart glasses aren’t a new thing, in fact, they’ve been around for a long time. But over the years, companies have been working on improving them, or at least trying to make them mainstream. Meta is one of the companies trying to do this, and I decided to give the Ray-Ban Meta glasses a try to see if there’s any point in having smart glasses.

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