Apple spent years hyping the Vision Pro as the future of computing.
Reviewers marveled at the floating 4K displays, the eye-tracking wizardry, the sheer audacity of strapping a Mac to your face.
Then the early adopters got their units home, opened the App Store, and found something strange: a ghost town.
The headset launched with a respectable-sounding 600+ apps built for visionOS.
Sounds impressive until you realize the iPad launched with 3,000 and the iPhone opened its App Store with 500 that actually worked.
A year in, developers aren't racing to build for the platform.
Here's the dot most people are missing: Apple's own policies may be strangling the ecosystem before it can breathe.
Developers have complained that visionOS tools are clunky, the review process is opaque, and the economics don't add up.
Why spend months building a spatial app for a device that sold maybe a few hundred thousand units when you could ship a forgettable mobile game and reach a billion iPhones overnight?
Which raises an uncomfortable question: was the Vision Pro ever meant to be a mainstream product, or is it a Trojan horse designed to get spatial computing into the culture before a cheaper model arrives?
Meanwhile, the apps that do exist tell a story.
Netflix, YouTube, and Spotify never built native apps.
You have to use them in a browser window like it's 2009.
Those companies looked at the install base and decided it wasn't worth the engineering hours.
When the biggest streaming services in America shrug at your platform, that's a signal.
Some developers are finding creative workarounds, building immersive experiences that feel genuinely new.
These are the use cases that could justify the price of admission, but they're scattered and inconsistent, not a coherent ecosystem.
Apple's playbook has always been patience.
The Apple Watch launched to lukewarm reviews and became a juggernaut.
But those devices had something the Vision Pro lacks: a clear reason for regular people to care.
A headset that costs as much as a used car and makes you look like a ski goggle enthusiast?
If Apple announces a cheaper Vision headset and developers still don't show up, the writing is on the wall.
If a killer app emerges that makes spatial computing feel essential, everything changes.
Right now, we're watching a platform fight for its life in slow motion. **Our take:** Apple has the cash to keep the Vision Pro alive for years, but cash can't manufacture developer enthusiasm.
The company needs to either drop the price dramatically or prove there's a reason to build for it.
Final Thoughts
Until then, buyers are paying premium prices for a device that's still waiting for its moment.