Apple's $3,500 headset landed with the usual fanfare, a wave of glossy launch titles, and a promise that spatial computing would change everything.
Six months in, the App Store tells a different story.
A quiet wave of developers has stopped updating their Vision Pro apps entirely, and some have pulled them without a word.
Here's the pattern that should raise eyebrows.
The apps that got the big Apple keynote moments were mostly ports — streaming apps, a few games, the same experiences you can get on a TV or an iPad.
The genuinely native apps, the ones built from scratch for spatial computing, are the ones vanishing.
That's backwards from how a new platform is supposed to mature.
Dig into developer forums and the same complaints surface.
The user base is small, the revenue is negligible, and the headset's isolation design means you can't easily demo your app to a room full of people.
One developer described building for Vision Pro as "writing checks to a bank that won't cash them for years" — if ever.
Meanwhile, Apple keeps pushing the hardware narrative.
New immersive content drops, a VisionOS update, whispers of a cheaper model.
But hardware without a thriving app ecosystem is just an expensive demo unit.
Ask anyone who bought a 3D TV in 2010 how that worked out.
The uncomfortable question: is Apple protecting a small circle of favored developers while the long tail starves?
Some indie devs say they were told to build for the platform, then left to figure out monetization alone.
That's not a conspiracy — that's just business.
But it explains why so many creators are quietly walking away.
Search the Vision Pro App Store today and you'll find a graveyard of abandoned listings, apps last updated at launch, ratings frozen in time.
A platform's health isn't measured by its launch lineup.
It's measured by what's still being built a year later.
None of this means the Vision Pro is dead.
Apple has deep pockets and a history of outlasting skeptics — the iPhone looked like a toy in 2007 too.
But the company can't buy developer loyalty forever, and it can't fake an ecosystem.
If the apps don't come, the headset becomes a very fancy paperweight. **The take:** Apple sold us a future where spatial computing is inevitable.
The developers building that future are telling a quieter, messier story — one where the math doesn't work yet.
Final Thoughts
Watch what gets updated, not what gets announced.