Apple's $3,500 face computer has been on the market for a while now, and the app situation is... something.
The Vision Pro launched with a promise of spatial computing that would change everything, and what did we actually get?
A bunch of floating screens and apps that make you look like you're conducting an orchestra while checking your email.
The App Store for visionOS has quietly become a graveyard of ambition mixed with a few genuinely cool experiments.
You've got your expected stuff—Disney+ letting you watch movies on a virtual screen the size of a billboard, Zoom calls where you're a floating head in a conference room.
Apps that let you meditate inside a virtual forest.
Apps that turn your living room into a Star Wars shooting range.
Apps that exist purely because some developer thought, "What if I could make someone pay $20 to look at a 3D model of a dinosaur?" Here's the thing nobody wants to admit: the Vision Pro's best apps are the ones that don't try to justify the hardware's existence.
There's a virtual aquarium app that's basically a screensaver, and people are obsessed with it.
There's a piano app that projects keys onto your actual table, and it's genuinely useful if you squint and ignore the fact that you're wearing ski goggles indoors.
The productivity apps are where things get bleak.
You can have multiple windows floating in your space, which sounds incredible until you realize you're just doing spreadsheets in a more expensive way.
Microsoft Office on a virtual monitor doesn't make you more productive.
It makes you a guy in an office who looks like he's cosplaying as a cyborg.
The visionOS version of Slack is just Slack, but now you can see your notifications floating in the air while you're washing dishes and can't do anything about them.
What's wild is that developers are still showing up.
Every week there's some new indie app that does something clever—a virtual workspace that syncs with your Mac, a meditation app that adjusts based on your breathing, a game that turns your room into a miniature golf course.
None of these justify the price tag, but they do make the Vision Pro feel less like a prototype and more like a toy that might eventually become something.
The company keeps pushing the Vision Pro as a productivity device, which is like marketing a motorcycle as a family car.
It's a weird, wonderful, isolating experience that you use alone in a room while everyone else wonders what's wrong with you.
The apps that lean into that—the immersive games, the art apps, the ones that make you feel like you're somewhere else—are the ones that actually work.
But for the small percentage of weirdos who bought one anyway, the app ecosystem is slowly becoming something worth checking out.
Just don't expect it to replace your laptop.
Or your social life. **The Verdict:** The Vision Pro's app library is a beautiful mess of half-baked ideas and occasional genius.
It's not a reason to buy the headset, but if you already have one, there's more to do than you think.
Final Thoughts
Just maybe don't tell your friends you spent the weekend in a virtual aquarium.