Apple Vision Pro turns two

I really need to set up some kind of reminder for these kinds of anniversaries. While I'm not in any danger of forgetting my wedding day or any birthdays, Apple's product releases are a bit harder to keep up with.

Mike Wuerthele wrote a two-year retrospective for AppleInsider today, and while he's hard on the product, he doesn't say anything that isn't true. It still lacks proper developer support, and so, it's a tough product to justify at $3,500.

I get a lot more use out of Apple Vision Pro than Mike, that's for sure. He's focused on the entertainment side of things, which is increasingly supported by creators, while I'm more varied. I like the immersive video, spatial photos, and 3D movies on it, sure, but it's also an interesting tool for games and getting work done.

That's right, I still don the Apple Vision Pro from time to time for hours of a shift. It's nice just getting lost in an immersive environment and writing out some long-form text while keeping tabs on RSS and social feeds off to the side. Spatial widgets help increase the usefulness of this use case, though you have to choose between full immersion and widgets, which isn't always an obvious choice.

I still believe Apple released Apple Vision Pro at the right time, and yes, even at that price. The hardware is excellent and the M5 model checks some important boxes for a simple iteration.

The problem, as Mike says, isn't with the hardware – it's the software. visionOS itself is basically flawless and quite impressive for basically two years of updates, so no, that's not it either.

Apple has a developer relations problem. Whatever magic drove developers to pursue new platforms is now gone, and Apple Vision Pro being so niche makes it impossible for developers to pursue it within financial reason. There just isn't any incentive for them to make native software for the platform when they're likely to make a few dozen sales then never make another dollar from their effort.

I do believe the hardware and platform are more than capable of creating many impressive experiences. The concept of a killer app for the platform could also be easily met, but we're stuck in a chicken-and-egg problem.

Lower-priced software could help remedy this situation, which would drive consumer adoption, which in turn makes it more financially viable for developers to support. In the meantime, Apple is failing the platform by simply not releasing its own software on it.

Apple Creator Studio arrived, and there isn't even a mention of Apple Vision Pro. Sure, Pixelmator Pro is an excellent app reimagined for iPad Pro, but there isn't a spatial version of it, nor are there any native versions of the other pro apps.

Unless Apple starts some kind of evangelist program that rewards developers financially for supporting Apple Vision Pro, the only other way this problem is solved is if Apple makes the apps themselves. Meta just liquidated many of its exclusive VR game studios, so there is a lot of VR gaming talent ripe for hiring.

So, in short, the best thing Apple could do right now is, at a minimum, update its apps to run natively on the hardware, come up with a new spatial-only app, and release some in-house-developed or licensed VR game titles. Show users and developers what the platform is capable of and get them motivated to buy Apple Vision Pro and use it.

I don't think Apple Vision Pro is in any danger of being abandoned, nor do I believe Apple sees it as some kind of failed experiment. It seems that the product is in a weird transitory stage where it needed to be released to learn how to iterate the platform, but it doesn't yet have the support to make it fully viable.

Apple is focused on enhancing Apple Intelligence at the moment, and the company is famous for its inability to focus on more than one thing. So, let's hope that after the spring AI upgrades are here, that there is renewed attention on visionOS in time for WWDC 2026.

If another year goes by without Apple better supporting Apple Vision Pro and visionOS with native experiences, it would be a bad sign for this first model. At that point, the only thing we could do is wait for the true second-generation model in 2027 and hope something kicks the platform into gear.

That said, Apple has the power to prevent Apple Vision Pro from becoming a weird, forgotten relic in its history. It just has to do something, and soon.