Apple spent years promising that the Vision Pro would redefine how we live, work, and play.
But walk into any Apple Store today and ask a specialist to name five apps you absolutely need, and watch the room get quiet fast.
The device launched with a splash, surrounded by glowing reviews of its eye-tracking and immersive video.
Months later, the App Store catalog for visionOS still looks like a ghost town compared to the iPhone's millions of titles.
They're watching from the sidelines, and their hesitation says more about the product's future than any keynote ever could.
Here's the uncomfortable reality: building for the Vision Pro is expensive.
You need specialized skills, a headset that costs more than most people's rent, and a user base that remains a rounding error.
Why would a studio pour months into an app when the potential audience is measured in the low hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of millions?
The math simply doesn't work for most teams.
The apps that do exist fall into a few predictable buckets.
There are streaming experiences that let you watch movies on a virtual mega-screen, which is undeniably cool the first three times.
There are productivity tools that mirror your Mac display in the air.
And there are a handful of immersive games and demos that feel like tech showcases rather than things you'd genuinely reach for on a Tuesday night.
No reason your friends would buy one to hang out with you.
No daily habit that makes the headset indispensable.
The iPhone had texting, maps, and the camera roll.
The Vision Pro has a very expensive way to watch Netflix alone on your couch, which most of us can already do for free.
Apple loyalists will argue this is early-days thinking, the same skepticism the iPhone faced in 2007.
That comparison collapses under scrutiny.
The original iPhone cost $499 and fit in your pocket.
The Vision Pro costs seven times that and solves problems most people didn't know they had, while strapping a warm computer to their face.
There's a deeper cultural issue here too.
Americans are exhausted, overscheduled, and increasingly wary of screens colonizing every corner of life.
We already fight with our phones for attention.
Asking families to strap on goggles and retreat further into isolation isn't a hard sell because the tech is bad.
It's a hard sell because the moment feels wrong.
None of this means the underlying technology is doomed.
Spatial computing may well matter someday, the way touchscreens eventually did.
But the app ecosystem is the lifeblood of any platform, and right now that blood isn't flowing.
Developers follow users, users follow usefulness, and usefulness requires apps worth opening more than once.
What it can't do is force a thriving economy of software into existence by wishful thinking.
Until someone builds the Vision Pro equivalent of a must-have app, the headset remains a beautiful, lonely island with a very small population.
So here's the honest take: if you're considering a Vision Pro, buy it for what it does today, not for the apps you hope arrive tomorrow.
And if you're waiting for the moment it becomes essential, keep waiting.
Final Thoughts
The app store will tell you when that day comes, and right now, it's still mostly silent.