Apple's $3,500 face computer has spent the last year getting dragged for being a very expensive way to watch a movie alone.
But a handful of new apps are quietly making the case that strapping a screen to your skull isn't completely unhinged.
The headset's app catalog is still a ghost town compared to the iPhone, but the stuff that's landing now is genuinely strange in the best way.
Developers have stopped trying to reinvent the desktop and started building for the one thing Vision Pro actually does well: making you feel like you're somewhere you're not.
Users are reporting that watching old family clips shot on an iPhone 15 Pro in 3D is the closest thing to time travel they've experienced without a DeLorean.
It's the kind of feature nobody asked for and now a small, weepy cult swears by it.
Your dad crying at a birthday video from 2019, except now it's floating in his living room.
Then there's the productivity crowd, who insist the headset is a legit workstation.
The pitch is that you can surround yourself with virtual monitors and finally escape the tyranny of a 13-inch laptop screen.
In practice, you're wearing ski goggles while typing, which is a look.
But the people doing it say the floating window setup is addictive once your neck gets used to the weight.
The weirdest corner might be the immersive experience apps.
Instead of watching a nature documentary, you're standing in the middle of it, dodging virtual dinosaurs or floating through the International Space Station.
A few users describe it as the first time the headset felt like the future instead of a developer kit with a nice box.
Of course, none of this fixes the fundamentals.
The battery still needs a leash, the thing still costs more than a used car, and there still isn't a killer app everybody agrees on.
Apple keeps promising more, developers keep tinkering, and early adopters keep explaining to their spouses why this was a business expense.
A year ago the Vision Pro was a punchline.
Now there's a small, defensive, oddly passionate community building around specific apps that don't exist anywhere else.
Our take: the Vision Pro still isn't worth buying for most people, and no app is going to change that math today.
But if you're the kind of person who buys gen-one hardware just to see what happens, this is the moment the library finally gets interesting.
Final Thoughts
Everyone else can wait for the price drop and the fourth-gen version that actually fits normal humans.