Apple sold the Vision Pro as the future of computing, a $3,500 headset that would change how Americans work, watch, and live.
Six months in, the App Store for visionOS tells a different story.
The catalog is thin, the updates are slow, and some of the biggest names in tech have quietly walked away.
Users are left streaming through Safari in a floating browser window, which works, but hardly feels like the revolution Apple promised.
When companies worth billions decide your platform isn't worth a developer's time, that's not a launch hiccup.
The apps that do exist tend to be ports of iPad apps with a few 3D flourishes.
Productivity tools feel like spreadsheets pinned to your face.
Games are mostly lightweight puzzles and meditation apps, not the immersive experiences early adopters were promised.
The killer app, the one that makes the headset essential, hasn't arrived.
Families spent mortgage-payment money on a device marketed as transformative, and now many of them say it sits in a drawer.
They're out the trust they placed in a company that usually ships polished, finished products.
That erosion matters in a country where household budgets are already stretched thin.
Developers, meanwhile, are doing the math.
Building for visionOS means learning new spatial frameworks for a user base measured in the hundreds of thousands, not the billions who own iPhones.
Venture money isn't chasing headset apps.
The incentives simply aren't there, and no amount of Apple marketing changes an ROI spreadsheet.
This is what a platform failure looks like in slow motion.
Not a dramatic crash, but a quiet emptying out.
Fewer updates, fewer headlines, fewer reasons to put the thing on.
Apple has the cash to keep pushing, and a cheaper model may revive interest.
But ecosystems are built by third parties, and third parties go where the users are.
We keep buying into the next big thing before it's finished, trusting that the apps and the community will follow.
Often they don't, and the gadget becomes a monument to hype we paid for ourselves.
The Vision Pro may yet find its footing, but right now it's a reminder that a screen on your face is only as good as what you can do with it.
The real test isn't whether Apple can sell more headsets.
Final Thoughts
It's whether anyone can give buyers a reason to keep wearing the one they already own.