Apple's Vision Pro launched with a splashy demo reel and roughly the app selection of a 2008 BlackBerry.
Six months later, developers have responded with the enthusiasm of people who just realized the rent is due.
The headset's app store now boasts a few thousand titles, which sounds impressive until you remember that's roughly 0.3% of what the iPhone offers.
Most of them are ports of iPad apps that basically say "hey, look, we exist in 3D now," because nothing says innovation like stretching a spreadsheet across your field of vision.
There's a meditation app that puts a giant breathing orb in your living room, a virtual cinema that makes your $12 streaming subscription feel like a $12 streaming subscription in a slightly bigger room, and at least four apps that let you pretend to be on the moon.
Meanwhile, the productivity apps that Apple promised would revolutionize work are mostly just floating windows that follow you around like a needy golden retriever.
Developers aren't exactly sprinting to build for the platform.
When your install base is somewhere between "a rounding error" and "the number of people who own a Cybertruck," the math on spending six figures on visionOS development gets ugly fast.
Several high-profile studios have quietly shelved their headsets projects, which is corporate speak for "we saw the sales numbers and noped out." The genuinely interesting stuff is coming from indie devs who treat the $3,500 price tag as a filter for whales.
One team built a spatial puzzle game that uses your actual room as the level, which is either brilliant or a sign you need to clean your apartment.
Another created a virtual pet that follows you around and judges your posture, which honestly feels like the most honest use of the technology yet.
Apple keeps insisting the killer app is coming, the same way a guy who's been single for a decade insists his soulmate is just around the corner.
WWDC brought promises of better developer tools and new APIs, but promises don't pay the bills, and neither does a headset that most Americans would need to finance like a used Honda Civic.
It's that nobody has figured out why you'd wear ski goggles to check your email when you own a perfectly good laptop.
Until that changes, the Vision Pro's app library will keep growing sideways, filling up with novelties and tech demos while the actual must-have experience remains as elusive as a sober uncle at Thanksgiving.
Maybe it's a $3,500 developer kit masquerading as a consumer product.
Either way, if you're waiting for a reason to buy one, keep waiting.
Our take: the Vision Pro is a fascinating piece of engineering wrapped around a software ecosystem that's still figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up.
If you bought one at launch, you're either a developer, a tech reviewer, or someone with more money than patience.
Final Thoughts
The rest of us can comfortably wait for gen two, or gen three, or whenever Apple finally ships an app that justifies the goggles.