Welcome to Lowpass! This week: Meta’s new Horizon OS, and Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment’s latest attempt to save Redbox.

Why Horizon OS is all about Google

Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a significant announcement about the company’s AR and VR strategy: Meta is partnering with Asus, Lenovo and Microsoft to build headsets based on its spatial computing platform, which is being rebranded as Horizon OS.

Meta is also working on a framework that will allow mobile app developers to more easily port their applications to Horizon OS, and it is opening up the Quest app store to integrate titles that were previously only available in the App Lab store.

Zuckerberg framed these moves as part of a more open approach towards AR and VR. “With phones, Apple’s closed model basically won out,” he said in a video posted to Instagram. “Phones are tightly controlled, and you’re kind of locked in to what they let you do. But it doesn’t have to be that way.”

This framing, and the Quest Store changes that make it more competitive to the Vision Pro App Store with its countless iPhone and iPad apps, may suggest this move was an answer to Apple’s release of the Vision Pro. But in reality, Horizon OS is all about Google.

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