Mark Zuckerberg is risking a Steve Ballmer moment with his Apple Vision Pro takedown

Mark Zuckerberg (right) took on Apple’s latest big product, but Steve Ballmer’s criticism of the iPhone shows may be a dangerous play. Stringer; Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance via Getty Images

• Mark Zuckerberg trashed Apple’s Vision Pro this week and called out Apple’s “fanboys.”
• But Zuckerberg isn’t the first to vocally dismiss an Apple flagship product.
• Steve Ballmer infamously laughed off the iPhone at first.

Mark Zuckerberg posted a takedown of Apple’s just-launched Vision Pro this week, criticizing its cost, specs, and called out Apple’s “fanboys.”

It was a surprising swipe from the Meta boss at one of his biggest VR rivals. But if history’s any indication, underestimating Apple is a risky play.

After the iPhone launched in 2007, outspoken Microsoft founder Steve Ballmer infamously laughed off the product.

“Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan?” Ballmer said at the time. “I said, that is the most expensive phone in the world, and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard — which makes it not a very good email machine. Now, it may sell very well or not.”

It sold. Very well.

Now, Mark Zuckerberg has taken aim at Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro, deriding Apple “fanboys” for hyping a product with inferior specs to Meta’s $500 competitor, the Quest headset.

Zuckerberg said on top of being cheaper, the Quest has a brighter screen and is more comfortable than Apple’s divisive device — though he did concede the Vision Pro had “really nice” eye tracking and resolution.

“I know that some fanboys get upset whenever anyone dares to question if Apple’s going to be the leader in a new category,” Zuckerberg said in an Instagram review of the Vision Pro posted Tuesday.

“But the reality is that every generation of computing has an open and a closed model,” he said. “And yeah, in mobile, Apple’s closed model won, but it’s not always that way.”

He continued: “I really want to make sure that the open model wins out. Again, the future is not yet written.”