After an eight month wait, the Apple Vision Pro debuted on February 2, 2024. It's still an immature product.
I decided to write a retrospective on the Apple Vision Pro release early last week for today's February 2 anniversary. It hasn't gone well.
If you're of a certain age, you remember a Sesame Street bit, where a piano player couldn't quite figure out the alphabet order. He'd smash his head on the piano, and Grover, or Kermit, or somebody would help him out, and the piano player would happily hammer along, in the proper order, no longer atonal.
It's been like that here. And, I have no Kermit this morning to set me straight.
Two and a half years ago, I was intrigued by the hardware and potential that seemed to go beyond the Valve Index which I owned, and the HTC Vive which I had tried. I didn't go to WWDC, I almost never do, but the coverage and still-present Apple reality distortion field got my attention.
"Early next year" seemed like an eternity away. Fortunately, I got to try one early, after WWDC.
Lucky Apple Vision Pro access early
My friends joke that I know a guy. Being almost 60, I know a lot of guys.
One of those "guys" was seeded with an Apple Vision Pro shortly after the WWDC release. It was... okay. The software at the time I thought wasn't mature enough, but retrospectively, it was almost the same as when it shipped.
What Apple believed the Apple Vision Pro experience could be like - Image Credit: Apple
I said this in mid-August, 2023, after I got to play with it for a while.
There's still a lot of work to do on the operating system and presentation, and understandably so. The headset is a phenomenal piece of engineering, and to completely exercise that technology, the operating system and development tools are going to need a lot of iteration not just before launch, but for years afterwards.
That was oddly prescient.
Flash forward to February 2, 2024. The Apple Vision Pro started shipping, at the eye-watering price of $3499. I knew I had to have one to tell you, our faithful reader, all about it. I hoped that Apple had fixed some things that weren't great about it.
I was not impressed. The OS was a mess, the most impressive thing about it was media. I regretted the cash I spent on it.
Skipping ahead again to today, and the OS stuff is fixed, but the main issue with the headset beyond the price, still hasn't been.
Not a daily wear
I am not a daily user. I will say, though, that I do use it periodically. I very much like the Roddenberry Star Trek archive's app to wander some bridges, and play with ships in 3D.
Not all that long ago, I toured a Star Trek original series set reproduction that at the time was on the Georgia and Florida border. I get the same feeling with the Apple Vision Pro on, that I did wandering that set and sitting in that center seat.
Exploring the Star Trek set in the Apple Vision Pro
I'm also playing around with using it to play Steam games, streamed in VR from my beefy gaming PC with ALVR. This isn't ideal, of course, and there are far cheaper alternatives to do that on the PC.
But it works, and works pretty well. I'll be talking more about this very soon.
My daughter really, really wants to use Apple Vision Pro more. She has a vision of 3D Minecraft which does not exist, or her Roblox worlds on it, which I do not want to exist.
I don't feel that I've gotten my $3500 out of it, plus more for the new headband. Fortunately, I have a developer's strap on loan from Apple, or I'd be in it for another $200.
I'm not sure that I'm going to get that $3500+ value out of it before Apple decides that it's obsolete. Those are the breaks, I guess.
Apple Vision Pro, in 2026
I am not the site's resident Apple Vision Pro fanatic, that's Wes Hilliard. Following-through with the Muppet metaphor about a thousand words up, he's the closes thing I have to a "Kermit" on staff as it pertains to the headset.
Even he has some reservations about the device. Like me, he feels like the software still isn't where it needs to be, even now, two years later.
It's easier than ever to do a preview for somebody who wants to try it. It still lacks multi-user support, and for a $3499 computer on your face, that's ridiculous, but not surprising given that it still doesn't support the feature on iPad.
The moment things go bad in the Apple Immersive Video "Submerged" — Credit - Apple
Worse yet, Apple Vision Pro, two years later, still lacks a killer app for me. Give my submarine service, I liked and appreciated Submerged, but 3D and immersive media content is still lacking.
It's great that I can watch the dog show on it, should I want to. It's fine that there's content from Disney+ that's 3D on it, and some of the movies I bought through iTunes have it too.
It's great that there's "new" hardware, which is essentially the old hardware with a M5 processor. This speaks more to Apple's supply of M2 chips more than it does commitment to this form factor.
The Apple Vision Pro situation remains an ouroboros. There's not a killer app, because there aren't enough headsets in the wild — as you'd expect for a $3499 entry price. There aren't enough sales of Apple Vision Pro, because there isn't a killer app. And around, and around.
The iPad relied on iPhone apps, upsized, to launch. Apple Vision Pro did the same with iPad apps. The iPad at $499 was obviously more of a mass-market device, so it didn't have the spiral of doom that the Apple Vision Pro has, as it pertains to software.
When the best use of a $3499 headset two years after launch is just being a Mac's display, that's not fantastic.
Apple updated the internals, but there's no real external difference in the Vision Pro generations.
The most damning statistic is that there are only about 3000 native Apple Vision Pro apps available on the App Store. That is a major problem.
Apple. Needs. Developers. It needs more and perfected Apple Vision Pro software for this ecosystem to have any kind of traction.
Stuck in the middle with you
It's clear that the Apple Vision Pro is a transitory step, despite generating about $3 billion in hardware sales in two years. Apple had to have the iPod to have the iPhone. It had to have the iPhone before the iPad. All of this was user-training, to the next, best thing.
It's a common refrain around here. Apple has the money to wait forever for a product line to exit hobby status. The first and second products out of the gate for visionOS being "Pro" suggests that a non-pro version is coming at some point.
This form factor will die out in the next few years. Apple very clearly wants something less obtrusive, but it wants developers on board now, and users to at least have a sense of the product.
Don't use the Apple Vision Pro outdoors. Wait for Apple Glass.
The next-best thing in this field will be smart glasses, that others have failed to deliver. I had seen a future for Apple Vision Pro in enterprise, and it's just not happening. They may be waiting for that smaller and more practical form factor.
For now, Apple Vision Pro doesn't work for Mr. and Mrs Everyday Apple user either. The market is poorly defined outside of gaming, and what the potential consumer base wants, besides relatively affordable, isn't clear.
Right now, Apple Vision Pro, and by extension, visionOS are an answer in search of a problem to solve. And, for now, that problem is practically manifesting in folks buying one, and selling it, or letting it sit on the shelf, unused for weeks or months at a time.
