Apple's $3,500 face computer launched with a lot of sizzle and a whole lot of spreadsheet demos.
Floating Safari windows, a dinosaur video that made everyone go "whoa," and roughly forty apps that all looked like they were built during a weekend hackathon.
The reality was a very expensive way to watch a movie alone in your living room.
Fast forward to now, and the app situation has taken a turn.
Not necessarily a good turn, mind you, but definitely a turn.
Developers who couldn't get a meeting with Apple's AR team a year ago are now shipping stuff that ranges from genuinely useful to "why does this exist and who approved the budget." Which, honestly, is how every new platform finds its footing.
The iPhone app store started with a flashlight and a beer drinking game.
The latest wave includes spatial versions of apps you already tolerate on your phone, plus a handful of originals that only make sense on a headset.
There's a meditation app that puts you inside a slowly rotating geometric void, which sounds relaxing until you remember you paid rent-level money to stare at polygons.
There's a cooking app that floats recipe steps next to your stove, assuming your kitchen has the square footage of a minor airport lounge.
And there's at least one app that lets you pet a virtual cat, which is either the future of companionship or a cry for help.
Early Vision Pro apps tried to justify the hardware's price tag with serious-sounding enterprise features.
Now developers seem to have accepted that most owners are just bored dudes with disposable income and a curiosity problem.
Weird is what sells when the hardware itself is still a solution looking for a problem.
Does any of this make the headset worth buying?
Depends on your tolerance for being an early adopter with a very public learning curve.
The apps are getting better, but "better" is relative when the baseline was "a floating Notes window and a dream." If you already own one, you've got fresh reasons to dust it off.
If you don't, watching other people wave their hands at invisible menus is still free on YouTube.
The real test is whether any of these apps survive the novelty window.
A few will stick, get polished, and become the reason people eventually buy version three or four.
That's the Apple playbook, and it's worked before.
Just don't expect it to work overnight, and definitely don't expect the cat-petting thing to be the killer app. **The Verdict:** The Vision Pro app scene is finally interesting, which is not the same as essential.
Buy the headset because you love gadgets, not because some developer just solved spatial computing with a virtual feline.
Final Thoughts
Your wallet will thank you, and your neck will too.