Sixteen months after the Vision Pro launched, the developer gold rush Apple promised has turned into a ghost town.
A recent scan of the headset's App Store shows the number of new spatial apps arriving each month has slowed to a trickle, and several high-profile studios have quietly stopped updating their Vision Pro titles altogether.
Apple has never published official counts, but third-party trackers that monitor App Store listings put native Vision Pro apps in the low thousands, a rounding error next to the millions available on iPhone.
Meanwhile, big names like Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify never built dedicated apps at all.
Users still watch through a browser window floating in virtual space, which is a strange experience for a device marketed as the future of entertainment.
Developers say the math simply doesn't work.
A spatial app takes months to build, requires learning Apple's new interface conventions, and reaches an installed base measured in the hundreds of thousands, not hundreds of millions.
One indie studio told reporters it earned less from its Vision Pro app in a year than it makes from a single week of ad revenue on its iPhone game.
When the audience is that small, passion projects dry up fast.
The headset was pitched as a tool for work, movies, and memory-making, but most buyers report using it a few times a month at best.
It sits in a case on a shelf while the phone in their pocket does everything.
That's not a hardware failure so much as a habit failure, and no app store can fix a device people don't reach for.
Apple's response has been to lean on ports rather than originals.
Many "new" Vision Pro apps are simply iPad apps running in compatibility mode, complete with touch-style buttons that feel wrong in midair.
It keeps the shelves from looking empty, but it also signals that the platform is a side project, not a priority.
For anyone considering a purchase, the practical advice is uncomfortable but clear.
The hardware is genuinely impressive, and watching a movie on a virtual IMAX screen still draws gasps.
But if you're buying it for the apps, you're paying premium prices for a store that feels like a mall with half its lights off.
Unless Apple finds a way to make development pay, the headset risks becoming the most expensive paperweight in tech.
The real story here isn't about one gadget.
It's about what happens when a company convinces itself that a product is inevitable and forgets that ecosystems are built by people who need a reason to show up.
Final Thoughts
Apple can subsidize developers, but it can't manufacture desire.