All the commenters above express variations on "I just don't get it!! What are they thinking?" which is sensible. However, don't confuse what Meta and MS are saying on stage with what they are considering in boardrooms and research teams.
They put this presentation on for specific, fairly focused, reasons of their own. 'Oh, it's a way of aiding remote team collaboration'' or some such such, using today's tech. It's a bland, non-threatening use for uninspiring hardware. However, they are paying smart people a lot of money to analyse how the game will play out over various timescales. The tentative map of this landscape they are keeping to themselves. On stage they didn't talk much about scaling education, on architecture, on role-playing new social policies in a persistent game over months - like a super-complex focus group exercise. In private they will be assessing all these things.
Take Facebook's A / B testing of political advertisements some years back - try advert A on this group of people, and B on some others... get feedback on which has the most effect. Now make it more invasive, persistent, fine grained... Yuck, right? Horrible.
Let Facebo... ahem, Meta, near our children?! No! is an obstacle they face. Microsoft might have an easier job of being accepted, after all, little Johnny already Skype's his grandma, and does his homework on Office. So, brand reputation matters to these companies as they seek to touch more our lives. And these is a company that has always been self aware of it's own reputation and has been notably competent at managing it: Apple.
Not only does Apple have a better reputation for privacy than Meta, it's clear that they've long been mindful of their reputation amongst parents (I,e people with caterers and more money than teenagers).
And of course Apple has been laying the groundwork for an AR device for years, has a near unlimited budget for research and acquisitions, and already has supporting hardware being used by millions its customers, such as headphones with spatial audio or watches which know where they are in relation to other devices.
Meta know this of course, and in greater detail and scope. Short term, Apple are well placed to prevent Meta from developing a monopoly or reaching a critical of threshold of users. And that's likely a good thing, since their business model doesn't evolve around advertising, and the strong emotions that advertisers have to provoke in people to make them 'engage' as proof their eyeballs saw the client's message.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
