Why I’m Excited About Meta Orion

I have read dozens of excited reviews of Orion like these pieces from The Verge and Ben Thompson. I have also seen a comparable number of people surprised by this wave of affection, like John Siracusa in the most recent ATP episode. 

And I can understand this. Orion can be an impressive demo, but it’s still a demo. A prototype. A concept car. It’s reasonable to assume that Apple might have a similar pair of glasses in their labs somewhere and faced the same cost issues. “Apple doesn’t release prototypes”.

But I think we should stop giving Apple the benefit of the doubt. It’s their job to convince us. We’re excited about Orion precisely because Meta showed them, and Apple didn’t. I honestly do not care if they have something cooking. Yes, they have a good track record overall. But I don’t believe in a second we should buy in on their secrecy. They do it for their benefit, not ours. Otherwise, it becomes a cult with blogger shamans trying to interpret the divine signs. 

Also, Apple Vision Pro is exactly this – an expensive prototype. And probably a failed one. Yes, this might not age well, like the early stories about the death of iPhone. Apple can turn this ship around. But it’s telling that even the people most excited about Apple Vision Pro acknowledge they haven’t touched it in months. It’d be perfect for an airplane, it’d be perfect for a workplace, and yet practically nobody bothers to carry them on their next flight. Who’s the Federico Viticci of Apple Vision Pro, i.e., the person willing to go to unimaginable lengths to use the device they love so much? I don’t know, I haven’t seen one. 

Apple focused on a great passthrough and came out with a compromised device that is too heavy and expensive and is struggling to engage either users or developers. Meanwhile, Meta now has a $300 device with Oculus Quest 3S. It has passthrough that enables you to see around, not bump into furniture or play AR games. Nobody is going outside in these headsets anyway. But in the end, Meta owns the VR market and has an army of users and developers building all kinds of experiences. They have extremely popular Meta RayBan glasses that I actually see people wearing. 

Now, each of these developers understands that the experiences they build might end up on unobtrusive AR glasses in a couple of years. Meanwhile, nobody is pressured to build apps for Apple Vision Pro, which still has neither Netflix nor YouTube and not much immersive content from Apple itself. 

Meta showed us a convincing vision of the future, and they seem perfectly positioned to get there.