Bloomberg: Apple's Top Executives Don't Use the $3499 Vision Pro as Meta Pulls Ahead

Mark Gurman, a Bloomberg columnist, responded in the latest episode of the Power On podcast to a wave of criticism of his Vision Pro coverage. His main point: even Apple's top executives don't use the headset. The device costs $3499, has been on sale since February 2024 and, in Gurman's assessment, remains too heavy and too expensive for daily work. If the company's own leaders don't put the product on, outside buyers have even fewer convincing reasons to do so.

The podcast announcement contains no other figures. The remaining context below comes from public market data, not from the episode itself.

What exactly Gurman said

The episode boils down to two things. First, Gurman is answering those who think his Vision Pro coverage is too harsh. Second, he makes an argument that marketing can hardly rebut: the people who make product decisions inside Apple don't wear it themselves.

For a company that builds its reputation on people using its devices every day, this is an uncomfortable signal. The iPhone, Apple Watch and AirPods have become part of the daily routine of millions of people. Vision Pro remains a demo device that gets shown to guests.

Why Meta is winning on a different field

Meta took the opposite route. Instead of a single premium headset, it built a lineup: inexpensive headsets for games and video, plus glasses with a camera and an assistant that look no different from ordinary ones. Its partner is EssilorLuxottica, the owner of the Ray-Ban brand, so people buy the glasses as an accessory rather than as a technology experiment.

Comparison of the main specs:

• Apple Vision Pro: $3499, about 600–650 g for the first version, M2 chip plus R1 coprocessor, micro-OLED displays totaling 23 million pixels.
• Meta Quest 3: about $499 at launch, roughly 515 g, Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 platform.
• Meta Quest 3S: from $299, the most affordable entry point into mixed reality.
• Ray-Ban Meta: from roughly $300, with a camera, microphones and a voice AI assistant in a regular frame.
• Meta Ray-Ban Display: about $799, glasses with a built-in display and a wristband for gesture control.

The 7–10x price gap between Vision Pro and Meta's headsets explains most of the difference in sales volumes. Weight explains the rest: after an hour in a heavy headset, the desire to go back to it drops.

What Apple has already tried to fix

In October 2025, Apple released an updated Vision Pro with an M5 chip and a new strap, but did not cut the price. According to industry reports, the company has also been redirecting resources toward lighter devices and smart glasses. The logic is clear: the market has shown that people are willing to wear something on their faces if it looks like glasses and handles simple tasks, such as recording video, translating speech or answering questions.

Apple holds strong cards: display quality, its ecosystem, in-house chips and user trust. But none of them makes up for a kilogram-like feel on the bridge of the nose and a laptop-level price tag.

Practical takeaway

For developers, the signal is this: invest in visionOS as a niche platform for demos, training and design, not as a mass-market channel. If you need an audience, it makes more sense to look at Quest and the smart-glasses ecosystem, where Meta's SDK and partner programs are developing faster.

For buyers, the advice is simple. If your goal is entertainment and fitness, the $299 Quest 3S is enough. If you want an AI assistant in everyday life, Ray-Ban Meta glasses are a closer fit. Vision Pro makes sense for a specific work task where image quality justifies the price.

For Apple, the main question of the coming years is whether it can build a wearable that its own executives will want to put on without being asked.