Apple's Vision Pro launched with the usual reality-distortion field humming at full power.
Reviewers called it magical, revolutionary, and a glimpse of the future.
Then they took it off and went back to their laptops, which is basically the whole story in one sentence.
Six months in, the app situation is looking less like the next iPhone moment and more like the Apple Watch's first year, minus the fitness angle that eventually saved it.
Remember when every developer rushed to build for the Watch, then quietly abandoned ship when nobody was actually using anything?
That, but with a device that costs more than a used Honda Civic.
Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify all skipped the party, which tells you plenty.
Microsoft brought Office, Zoom built a version, and a handful of studios made some genuinely cool spatial demos.
But "cool demo" and "thing I open every day" are very different zip codes.
What's actually getting traction is stranger than anyone predicted.
Some users swear by using it as a giant virtual monitor for their Mac, which is a $3,500 screen extender.
Others load up the immersive dinosaur and meditation apps, use them twice, and then the headset joins the Peloton in the graveyard of expensive intentions.
They watched the install base stay tiny, did the math on a device that costs more than most people's rent, and decided to wait for the cheaper model.
Apple reportedly has a budget version cooking, but "budget Vision Pro" is a phrase that should probably come with a laugh track.
The apps that do exist mostly fall into three buckets: ports of iPad apps with a floating window slapped on top, immersive video experiences you watch once, and productivity tools that work fine on a laptop you already own.
None of these are the "why" that sells a $3,500 purchase to a normal human being.
Compare this to the iPhone's early days, when the App Store turned a phone into a flashlight, a guitar tuner, a banking portal, and a dating service within two years.
The Vision Pro needs its own version of that moment.
Right now it's got a really impressive tech demo and a lot of developers checking their watches.
The hardware itself is legitimately wild.
The eye tracking, the passthrough, the spatial audio—Apple nailed the engineering.
The problem is that engineering a brilliant device and giving people a reason to strap it to their face every day are two completely different jobs, and so far Cupertino has only finished one of them. **Our take:** The Vision Pro is a spectacular answer to a question almost nobody was asking.
Until a must-have app shows up that you genuinely can't get anywhere else, this thing is a developer kit wearing a consumer price tag.
Final Thoughts
Apple's playing a long game, sure—but long games have a nasty habit of outlasting the patience of both buyers and the studios building for them.