When Apple launched the Vision Pro, the pitch was simple: this is the future of computing, and the apps will follow.
Eighteen months later, the apps mostly haven't.
A recent scan of the headset's App Store shows a catalog that's thin, strange, and heavily dependent on a handful of early believers.
For a device that costs more than a used car, that's not a small footnote.
Talk to people who actually own one and the pattern repeats.
They marvel at the hardware for a week, show it to friends, then quietly shelve it.
The killer app everyone assumed was coming never arrived.
Instead, there's a rotating cast of meditation experiences, 3D movie players, and a few productivity tools that feel like iPad apps wearing a costume.
Useful, occasionally, but not $3,500 useful.
Developers build for audiences, and the Vision Pro audience is tiny.
Why spend months learning spatial design for a user base that fits in a few city blocks?
Every hour a studio spends on visionOS is an hour not spent on the iPhone, where the actual money is.
Apple can't wave that math away with a keynote.
This is the same trap that swallowed early smart speakers and 3D TVs, and it's playing out in slow motion on a headset that Apple keeps insisting is a breakthrough.
They need people who can't stop using them.
Spatial video of your own kids, shot on an iPhone, hits differently when it's life-sized in your living room.
A handful of medical and training apps show what's possible when someone actually commits.
But these are exceptions that prove the rule.
The rule is that most owners are paying a premium to beta test someone else's roadmap.
Meanwhile, the broader culture is getting louder about screen time, not quieter.
Asking Americans to strap a screen to their face and call it wellness is a harder sell than Apple anticipated.
The company that once sold us on "there's an app for that" is now selling a device where, often, there isn't.
So here's the uncomfortable truth for anyone eyeing one.
You're buying a bet on a future that may or may not arrive, funded entirely by you.
That can be thrilling if you love being early.
It's a poor deal if you just want something that works today.
None of this means the Vision Pro is doomed.
Apple has patience and cash, and the second or third generation could look nothing like this one.
But patience is a company's virtue, not a customer's.
Final Thoughts
We keep letting tech giants sell us the promise and bill us for the prototype, and then we act surprised when the shelves stay empty.