Apple's $3,499 face computer has officially entered its "what is this actually for" era, and the answers coming back from the app store are... something.
Six months after launch, the Vision Pro's most-downloaded apps reportedly lean heavily toward productivity tools, virtual desktops, and yes, spreadsheets floating in your living room like a haunted Excel ghost.
The pitch was always immersive entertainment and spatial computing magic.
The reality, according to users posting their setups online, is a guy named Dave in Ohio projecting three monitors onto his kitchen wall so he can answer Slack messages while his coffee gets cold.
To be fair, the productivity angle makes a certain grim sense.
If you're dropping mortgage-payment money on a headset, you'd better be getting some work out of it.
Apps like virtual display tools let you mirror your Mac into a giant floating canvas, which is genuinely useful if you hate your actual desk.
The problem is you're still doing the same job, just with a neck strain and a battery pack clipped to your belt like a very expensive fanny pack.
Gaming and entertainment apps exist, but the catalog is thin enough that early adopters keep begging for more.
A few standout immersive experiences get hyped every few weeks, then everyone remembers they can only watch one 3D dinosaur demo so many times before the novelty curdles.
Meanwhile, the social apps that were supposed to make spatial computing feel futuristic mostly feel like empty conference rooms with nicer carpet.
The weirdest part is how normal the whole thing has become.
Reddit threads that used to be full of "this changes everything" energy now read like a support group for people trying to justify a purchase to themselves. "I use it every day for work," someone writes, followed by a paragraph that describes using it as a monitor.
You bought a $3,500 monitor you wear on your face.
Apple keeps pushing software updates, and developers keep shipping experiments, so the story isn't over.
But the gap between what the Vision Pro was sold as and what people actually do with it is now wide enough to fly a virtual spaceship through.
Whether that's a temporary awkward phase or the permanent shape of the product is the multibillion-dollar question Apple probably doesn't want to answer out loud yet.
If you already own one, you're probably nodding along while pretending you're not.
If you don't, the apps currently available are not going to be the thing that finally convinces you.
The Vision Pro might still find its killer app, but right now it's mostly finding people who really, really like having multiple windows open.
Final Thoughts
That's not nothing, but it's also not the future anyone demoed on a stage.