Apple's Vision Pro arrived with the usual keynote fireworks, a promise that spatial computing would change everything, and a price tag that could cover a used Honda Civic.
Six months later, the headset is sitting in a lot of closets, and the app store tells the real story.
The most talked-about apps are still the same handful that launched on day one.
Everything else is mostly ports of software you already have on your phone, wearing a very expensive costume.
Walk through the catalog and a pattern emerges.
There are gorgeous tech demos that impress for eleven minutes and never get opened again.
There are 2D iPad apps floating in a virtual void, which is less "the future of computing" and more "watching YouTube on a screen strapped to your face." And there are the inevitable AI wrappers, chatbots rendered as glowing orbs, as if attaching a personality to a language model solves the fact that you're wearing ski goggles indoors.
The genuinely interesting apps are the quiet ones.
A few developers have built spatial tools for surgeons reviewing scans, architects walking clients through unbuilt rooms, and mechanics pulling up repair diagrams over an engine.
That's real value, but it's a business-to-business value, purchased by companies with expense accounts, not by regular Americans deciding between a headset and a vacation.
Meanwhile, the consumer apps that could justify the price, live sports in true spatial view, shared movie nights with faraway family, barely exist, and the ones that do feel like beta tests.
This mirrors a broader pattern in American gadget culture.
We keep buying the promise and inheriting the homework.
The early adopters did the work, built the vocabulary, and then watched the platform stall while Apple pushed a cheaper model and everyone waited for the software to catch up.
It's the same arc as the smart home: a decade of gadgets that mostly control your lights and occasionally forget your Wi-Fi password.
The ethical question underneath is simple.
When a company sells a $3,500 device as a new way of living, and the ecosystem that would justify it never quite materializes, who absorbs the loss?
The customer, who was told the apps were coming.
Most aren't, because building for a small install base is a bad bet for a small studio, and the studios with money would rather port something safe than invent something risky.
There's a lesson here for every gadget purchase in your future.
Hardware is a bet on software that doesn't exist yet.
Buy the device you can use today, not the one described in a keynote about next year.
The Vision Pro is a remarkable piece of engineering wrapped around a library that's still mostly empty shelves.
It makes it a $3,500 bet on someone else's roadmap, and you don't get to see the roadmap before you pay.
Final Thoughts
But patience shouldn't cost this much, and "eventually" is a rough way to describe a purchase you already made.