Apple sold the Vision Pro as the future of computing.
Walk into any Apple Store and an employee will happily strap one to your face for a demo that genuinely dazzles.
Then you go home, and the trouble starts.
The headset costs $3,499, and the apps that justify that price largely don't exist yet.
Spend an evening scrolling the App Store's visionOS section and a pattern emerges.
There are gorgeous tech demos, a handful of streaming apps, and a graveyard of ports that technically run but feel like a browser window floating in space.
Very little of it gives you a reason to wear a heavy device on your head instead of picking up the phone already in your pocket.
Developers who once raced to build for the iPhone and the Apple Watch have been conspicuously slow this time.
When a new platform arrives, the early adopters usually flood in, chasing novelty and a land grab.
With visionOS, many of them looked at the install base, looked at the cost of building spatial software, and quietly went back to their regular jobs.
You need 3D artists, new interaction models, and testing on hardware most studios don't own.
If only a small number of people own the device, the math simply doesn't work.
A developer who spends six months on a Vision Pro app is gambling on a platform that might never reach critical mass.
Apple's answer has been to lean on familiar comforts.
You can mirror your Mac display, watch a movie on a virtual screen, and run iPad apps in floating windows.
But it's also an admission that the killer app for a $3,500 headset is, functionally, the stuff you already owned.
Meanwhile, the people who did buy in are left in an awkward spot.
They're early adopters being asked to be patient while the ecosystem catches up, except nobody can say with confidence that it will.
Gadget history is littered with impressive hardware that died waiting for software that never came.
They were also supposed to change everything.
To be fair, this is how platforms often start.
The iPhone launched with no App Store at all, and the first apps were crude.
The difference is that the iPhone was a phone, something everyone already needed.
The Vision Pro is a luxury, and luxuries need to be irresistible to survive.
The hardware is remarkable, the experience is occasionally magical, and the app library is a ghost town dressed in nice lighting.
It's a warning about buying a promise instead of a product.
The real test comes in the next year or two.
If developers show up with something you can't get anywhere else, the headset earns its place.
If they don't, Apple will have built a beautiful monument to a future that arrived too early.
Our take: the Vision Pro is a bet, not a purchase.
Until the apps arrive in force, you're paying premium prices to be a beta tester for Apple's most expensive experiment.
Final Thoughts
That's a fine hobby for some and a waste of money for everyone else.