Meta ‘blacklisted’ developer after learning his VR fitness app will also launch on Vision Pro, lawsuit says
The developer of a virtual reality yoga app has filed a lawsuit against Meta, accusing the company of retaliating after...
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They're probably not scared of the Vision Pro, they're probably scared of whatever comes after. Apple has a history of being able to take established tech and make it so user-friendly (for the casual user, not the power users) that your grandmother could use it. I think that's what they're afraid of. I think they're scared that they're the BlackBerry and Apple's gearing up to launch the iPhone.
Meta is not in the hardware business, they're in the software and data transport business.
The hardware is just an intermediary step while they wait for someone else to take on that burden
Facebook / Meta is one of the few data hoarding companies that doesn't have "full control" of how their products are consumed / used and how much data gets collected in which way. Apple has the Mac, TV, Watch, and iPhone platforms. Google has the Pixels, Android, and Nests, Amazon has Kindles, Fire, Alexa devices, and so on.
Facebook doesn't have any of these. The best they can do today is being a parasitic add-on to a platform they have no total control over like "the others" do.
Making their own hardware is a key element, not a burden. But they're still treating it like the latter. If the Metaverse would already have been the New Thing (tm), they'd have been the quasi-dominators of that territory because they're pioneering the hard- and software. But along came AI which doesn't need it's own hardware platform, and still nobody wants to live in the Metaverse.
I think Nintendo is a better company to create VR. NES, Gameboy, N64, Wii: all are genre defining devices that are easy to use.
VR is not great for anything but porn and games. Maybe movies.
And the iPod and iPad. But I see your point. My sweet Zune lost that war.
The more likely reason for blacklisting the developer is to cause a chilling effect on other developers. Apple has one of the best developer ecosystems and Meta is likely terrified of letting their developers anywhere near Apple. Having good apps is so important to a platform