Apple's $3,500 face computer has been on shelves for a while now, and the app situation is getting strange in the best possible way.
Sure, you can watch movies on a virtual IMAX screen, but that's the boring stuff.
The real entertainment is watching developers figure out what to do with a device that tracks your eyes and hands while strapping a screen to your skull.
Take the productivity crowd, who swear by virtual monitors that make your MacBook feel like it's running a six-display setup.
Then there's the other camp, the one building apps where you conduct an orchestra with a pinched finger or sort through floating memories in your living room.
It's equal parts genius and "who asked for this." The sleeper hit category seems to be spatial versions of stuff you already do on your phone, but now it hovers menacingly in your kitchen.
Recipe apps that pin instructions to your cabinets.
Meditation apps that drop you onto a digital beach while your actual apartment remains a disaster.
There's even a growing pile of games that use your room as the level, which is great until your roommate walks through your boss fight.
Apple hasn't exactly flooded the zone with killer exclusives, which is the polite way of saying the launch lineup was thinner than a Vision Pro battery cable.
Most of the interesting stuff comes from indie devs and companies you've never heard of, all betting that spatial computing is the next big thing rather than a very expensive hobby for early adopters.
The awkward part is that plenty of these apps cost real money, and some of them are basically tech demos wearing a nice coat.
You'll drop fifteen bucks on something that wows you for ten minutes and then never opens again.
It's the App Store's early iPhone era all over again, except now the entry fee is the price of a used sedan.
If you already own the headset, the app store is finally getting enough weird little experiments to justify dusting it off.
If you don't own one, nothing here is going to make you sprint to the Apple Store.
The killer app is still "showing your friends the dinosaur demo," and that's been true since day one.
The real takeaway is that the Vision Pro app scene is exactly what you'd expect from a first-generation product with a luxury price tag.
It's a sandbox full of clever people guessing at the future, and a few of those guesses are genuinely fun.
Final Thoughts
Just don't buy the headset for the apps, because right now the apps are mostly buying the headset for you.