edit: sorry for the length, this ended up being way longer than I intended...
The more I play around with the Vive, the more I realize the major difference between it and the Rift is really not in the performance of the VR experience but in the philosophy behind the engineering, design and packaging. Where the Rift has been designed through and through for elegance (as a purely customer-facing consumer product), the Vive on the other hand feels like an engineer's ideal product built around utility. Communication fallbacks, FPGAs everywhere, every component is independently firmware updated/managed, every sub-system feels like it could have a lot more functionality than what comes out of the box.
The lighthouse boxes are required to sync with each other for tracking operation and that can happen either wirelessly(optically) or by the provided 50ft(!) sync cable. Not that the cable is fancy or costly, but I really can't remember the last time I've seen 50ft of anything included with a product, least of all something that's intended purely as a corner-case backup that 99% of customers won't need.
The lighthouses can have their firmware updated by either micro-USB connection to the PC, or by bluetooth. Don't have a bluetooth module you say? Well there's a bluetooth module built into the cable/link box, and that device isn't even installed+enabled by default during initial setup, so it's something that seems to exist solely as an additional method of updating the firmware of the lighthouses, (and probably also as a 'just-in-case' catch-all for the future, cause having a standardized wireless protocol already rolled out in the field has huge utility.) Same thing goes for the built-in camera in the HMD - not enabled by default, not really necessary for the core product operation, but it's there anyways.
The lighthouses function in a master/slave sort of configuration, so each base station has three potential modes of operation depending on which is the master/slave and which sync method is used. You configure the mode by toggling via a button on the base stations. The lighthouses could have displayed the mode identification via some discrete single tri-color LED (or whatever would be common for small/mobile devices), instead the boxes have a full 7-segment display inside them.
Hopefully none of that comes across too strongly as praise or criticism for either the Rift or Vive, it's just meant to differentiate between them. If I were to offer an opinion though I think it would come from the position that I feel this generation of VR hardware and content is too early for general consumers to even think about buying in, and I probably would much rather have had Oculus release a DK3-style HMD with the base components of the Rift-CV1 back in 2015 and some form of early devkit for Touch available for purchase by now. In that sense the Vive feels more in tune with what I would have liked from Oculus. The Vive is like an engineering test bed of anything 2015 had to offer, while the Rift is an attempt at polishing and productizing the well explored features from 2014 VR.
Granted that's all armchair quarterbacking and doesn't pay any mind to the pressure Oculus would have been under to release a consumer HMD in order to make good on their developer partnerships depending on software sales (not that that's likely to be going all that well given the fumbled launch, lukewarm press reception, and incredibly toxic word of mouth coming from a vocal contingent of Valve/Vive fans.) If you look for any VR reviews of each system on the web, you'll pretty much see unanimous preference for the Vive. If you go to reddit you'll see /r/Vive typically has something like 50% more active users despite /r/Oculus having double the subscribers, being several years older, and at one point was the central social hub on the internet for this whole VR resurgence. Oculus may feel cushioned from the negative response given their financial backing from Facebook, but this surely can't be a comfortable prospect looking forward.
And the craziest part of all that is I still haven't the slightest clue how PC VR is ever supposed to transition into a prospering ecosystem from either of these platforms, even if they were both compatible every which way. Most AAA publishers can't even justify making PC-specific content that works on tens of millions of budget/mid-range PCs, never mind the hopeful market of hundreds of thousands whom have enthusiast video cards coupled with $800 VR systems. Facebook obviously didn't buy Oculus to just throw money away at an unprofitable PC gaming market, and I'm assuming Valve only entered with their own hardware because they felt obligated to make some sort of hedge on VR and ensure that Steam can keep a foothold in the medium. On top of all that you have the fact that VR HMDs aren't likely to get any cheaper anytime soon because all of the must-have features they're lacking are only going to add further complexity and cost. Eye tracking, specialty high-PPI displays, wireless, batteries, etc.
So what's the light at the end of the tunnel here? Maybe there's some future if PC VR can similarly leverage content development dollars being spent on the more popular console VR systems just as they do for regular console->PC multi-platform titles? Maybe once HMDs have high enough resolution to be usable as general computing and media consumption devices they'll be able to tap into the general TV/monitor consumer market? Will most VR developers be forced to design around the lowest common denominator of smartphone VR in order to tap into the Android/Google/Samsung market? Can premium cost HMDs and big budget content be subsidized through ads in some way akin to basic web services?
He mentions that he's smacked the controller in to the walls of his room as well as other furnishing many times, but hasn't damaged them yet because he has a habit of moving his arms very "delicately." People that move their arms more forcefully may likely end up having to re-adjust how they play or risk damaging their controllers and hands/arms/head (his head came really close to smacking into his desk a few times).
