Apple's $3,500 face computer launched with a lot of hype and roughly 600 native apps.
A year later, the number has reportedly tripled, which sounds impressive until you remember that the install base is basically three guys named Chad who live near an Apple Store in Cupertino.
The apps themselves are a fascinating museum of solutions in search of a problem.
There's a meditation app where you sit inside a virtual cave.
There's a productivity suite that lets you arrange floating windows in a room that looks like a Scandinavian airport lounge.
There's a sports app that puts a tiny basketball court on your coffee table, which is great if your coffee table is the size of a coffee table.
Spatial video is the one feature that genuinely lands.
Watching a birthday party recorded in 3D on a giant virtual screen hits different, and Apple knows it.
That's why every demo at the store is a person quietly crying at a video of their own kid.
It's the most emotionally manipulative tech demo since Google showed us a guy proposing to his girlfriend through a Pixel.
Most Vision Pro apps feel like someone ported a 2014 iPad game into a wind tunnel.
Developers, being rational people who enjoy eating, have mostly stopped building for it.
Why spend six months on a spatial computing breakthrough when you can ship a $2.99 flashlight app to 2 billion iPhones and retire?
Apple's answer has been to quietly pivot the pitch from "fun consumer gadget" to "enterprise tool." Translation: the only people who bought this are dentists who want to show patients their own molars in 3D.
The app selection does have some bright spots.
NBA games on a virtual jumbotron are legitimately awesome.
Spatial editing in Final Cut feels like the future.
And there's a demo where you can stand on the surface of the moon, which is neat for about four minutes before you remember you're standing in your living room in socks.
But here's the tell: the most popular Vision Pro app is probably still the one that makes a giant screen appear in front of your face.
A $3,500 monitor that you can't share with anyone and that gives you a headache after 90 minutes.
Compare that to the iPhone, which had the App Store firing on all cylinders within a year.
Or the Apple Watch, which found its footing as a fitness tracker.
The Vision Pro is still looking for its "oh, that's why" moment, and the apps aren't delivering it.
They're mostly delivering floating PDFs and a virtual Bora Bora.
And in five years, we'll either get a $999 version that actually sells, or we'll get a quiet discontinuation and a Genius Bar employee explaining to a confused dad that no, we don't service those anymore. **The Verdict** If you already own one, congratulations on your very expensive Netflix machine.
If you're thinking about buying one for the apps, save your money and buy a Quest 3 plus a nice dinner.
Final Thoughts
The spatial computing revolution is coming—it's just taking a really, really long lunch break.