The engineers at Apple aren’t somehow imbued with any sort of special intellect that the engineers at Meta lack to do the same thing. And to be clear here, I’m no fan of Meta. But, in echoing @laserlight here, let’s not pretend that the engineers at Meta are any less capable than the engineers at Apple. There are plenty of brilliant engineers in both companies.
Why does the US still not have universal healthcare? Europe/China aren't somehow smarter or "health geniuses" - they just put in the effort and made it a priority to provide a well-functioning service.
Its tsmcs chip not apples though, anyone can up and order something of those sort of specs from them and meta has plenty of money to wave around at a crowded bar for attention.
TSMC is a fab, not a chip designer. Apple designed their own chips with in-house engineering talent. Due to how the silicon supply chain works no-one but TSMC can make those chips so everyone needs to use them. Also Meta can't just waive around money and get the most advanced chips; apple has bought out all the production for some time.
You really think if it was that easy to compete with Apple's SoCs, Google wouldn't have done it long ago for the Pixels? Or someone in the Android space would step in to compete with Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips? Samsung hasn't been able to do it for years with their Exynos line.
It's unfortunately far, far more true than whatever lead Meta still has over Apple on the VR headset side.
Also it's not just the chip itself, but moreso the whole hardware-sofrware vertical integration. Despite being a decade-long Apple-hater, ever since I got an M2 max macbook from work I simply have never touched my Windows/Linux Thinkpads again. The difference in user experience isn't even on a generational level, but more of a I-can't-imagine-how-Apple's-competitors-can-begin-to-close-this-gap level. Sadly I think all this talk of Quest-vs-AVP war is just an illusion, the outcome is very much preordained at this point.