Apple's Vision Pro launched with roughly 600 apps optimized for it, a number that sounds impressive until you realize most of them are just iPad apps wearing a fancy hat.
Six months later, developers have responded with the energy of a group project where three people did everything and the rest just put their names on it.
The headset's killer app remains "taking it off after 40 minutes because your face hurts." Everything else is a work in progress, and that progress is being tracked with the intensity of a NASA mission.
Let's start with the genuinely cool stuff.
Spatial computing apps like JigSpace let you pull apart a 3D engine in your living room, which is objectively neat and objectively something you'll show exactly two friends before it joins the drawer.
Medical and industrial training apps are quietly doing real work, because apparently the future of mixed reality is helping surgeons practice rather than letting you watch Netflix on a floating screen.
Then there's the entertainment category, which is where things get weird.
Streaming apps arrived, sure, but the experience is basically "watch TV on a screen that exists slightly closer to your face." Congratulations, you've invented a television that costs 70 times more than a television.
The productivity crowd got Microsoft Office and a few virtual desktop tools, which work fine if you enjoy typing on a floating keyboard while your neck slowly files a formal complaint.
Developers keep promising a spatial computing revolution, but right now the revolution mostly looks like a guy in his basement gesturing at nothing while his wife asks who he's waving at.
Gaming is the elephant in the room, or more accurately, the absence of one.
Apple keeps touting the potential, but the actual games are thin on the ground.
You can play some titles, but the library feels less like a launch lineup and more like the snacks aisle at a gas station, technically options exist and none of them are what you actually wanted.
What's genuinely interesting is the niche stuff nobody saw coming.
There are apps for 3D modelers, apps for musicians who want floating synthesizers, and at least one app that lets you arrange virtual furniture in a real room so you can discover your apartment is too small for the couch you already bought.
The bigger problem is the chicken-and-egg situation every new platform faces.
Developers don't want to build for a device with a small user base, and users don't want to buy a device with no apps.
Apple is trying to break the cycle by throwing money at the problem, which is the tech industry equivalent of solving a math equation by writing a bigger number at the bottom.
For now, the Vision Pro app situation is best described as "promising, expensive, and slightly lonely." Early adopters are basically beta testers who paid full price and got a cool demo reel for their trouble.
If you own one, you've probably already shown off the dinosaur app to everyone you know and are now waiting for something to actually do with the thing.
Our take: the Vision Pro is a genuinely impressive piece of hardware searching for a reason to exist beyond the novelty phase.
The apps are getting better, but "getting better" and "worth $3,500" are two very different sentences.
Final Thoughts
Give it another year, let the developers cook, and maybe the face computer will finally have something to do besides collecting dust on a shelf next to your Meta Quest.