I don't know if Vision Pro is alive or dead, but it is still the most sophisticated, powerful, and coolest hardware Apple ever built — and we can surely thank it for the glasses that will follow | Tech Radar

Overview

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets

Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more

Details

Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards.

Unlock instant access to exclusive member features.

Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.

I don't know if Vision Pro is alive or dead, but it is still the most sophisticated, powerful, and coolest hardware Apple ever built — and we can surely thank it for the glasses that will follow

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.

Rumor has it, Apple's pricey Vision Pro is headed for the scrap heap of failed tech gadgets. Rumor also has it that it's fine and will see either further upgrades or iterations. Rumor further has it that even if the Vision Pro doesn't get significant upgrades, it will stand as the progenitor of Apple AR glasses, the wearable everyone will probably want.

By now, you should know that no one knows anything about the future of the woebegone spatial computer except for Apple, which, for the moment, is busy celebrating a significant Vision Pro win: eye surgery completed via a surgeon wearing the headset.

That news is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a fist-pumping validation of Vision Pro's potential as a life-altering piece of wearable technology for enterprise. On the other hand, consumers may see it as yet another sign that the Vision Pro was never intended for them in the first place.

This world-first surgery shows the Apple Vision Pro's healthcare potential

VR's golden age is over, and there wasn't much gold there

The Logitech Muse for Apple Vision Pro might be the perfect 3D drawing tool

It's been almost three years now since Apple unveiled Vision Pro at WWDC 2023 and gave a small group of attendees, including me, the chance to try it out. As I wrote back then:

Perhaps it was the moment a virtual butterfly effortlessly landed on my extended finger, or maybe it was the dinosaur's snaggle-toothed maw that came within inches of my face, or even the mountaineer who balanced barefoot on a thin cable pulled taut across a vast ravine. In truth, it was all of those experiences with Apple's stunning Apple Vision Pro spatial computing headset that convinced me I'd just experienced the true future of VR.

To this day, I do not think this was hyperbole. I had never in decades of using technology and even trying VR (going all the way back to the mid 1990s) and AR tech for the last two decades, experienced anything like it.

As most people know, the Vision Pro arrives with a hefty price tag of $3,499. If you held, wore, and experienced the spatial computer, you could understand, if not justify, the price, but between the sometimes uncomfortable nature of wearing the 1-pound device on your face and the instant out-of-reach for average consumer price, the Vision Pro was a hamstrung consumer product from the get-go.

Over the last year or so, Apple has done what it could to attract consumers, like integrating more entertainment and experiences, letting people turn any photo into a spatial image, updating the processor to the M5 chip, and radically improving the headstraps to finally make the Vision Pro truly comfortable to wear for hours at a time.

But there has always been a disconnect. Even aside from the price, consumers showed little interest in being cut off from family, friends, and coworkers. Because that's what Vision Pro was asking of you: dive into a 3D movie while your family does something else. Work at a massive virtual desktop while your coworkers sit nearby, staring at you incredulously.

The latest software lets you bring other coworkers into your virtual space, and it's a wild experience, but it requires that they also wear a Vision Pro headset. It's overkill for remote work, where Zoom will probably suffice.

Apple’s rumored Meta Ray-Bans rivals could tempt me to switch — here's why

Apple reportedly working on AI smart glasses, an AI pin, and Air Pods that can see

7 mythical Apple products that never saw the light of day

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Vision Pro is not the breakout consumer hit Apple imagined. I don't see the headsets in offices, and I do not get questions about them from consumers.

Apple will still point to the goggles as a point of pride. In a recent discussion with Tom's Guide, John Ternus called them "an extraordinary product."

The vote of confidence is important because Ternus is now just months away from stepping into the Apple CEO role. It sounds like he likes Vision Pro. On the other hand, now is not the time to tear down products championed by Tim Cook, his soon-to-be former boss and predecessor. It would be the height of bad form.

Perhaps it's Ternus's recent appointment that's recharged the rumor mill here, but fresh reports indicate Apple's failure to ignite widespread consumer adoption with the Vision Pro M5 upgrade may have doomed the product. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has claimed in the past that Ternus was not necessarily a fan, but more recently said that he may have killed a lower-cost Vision Pro product project.

Apple has no public statements to support any of this conjecture, but anyone with a brain knows that a product struggling at this level will at least need solid repositioning. The closest Apple has come to admitting that it's not a consumer hit is Tim Cook mentioning Vision Pro's big enterprise potential. I do think the Vision Pro could have a long-term future with the corporate set. On the other hand, Microsoft (Holo Lens) and Google (Google Glass) both followed that path only to eventually shelve their wearable AR products.

More certain is that everything Apple and John Ternus learned from Vision Pro about spatial computing will be poured into Apple Glass, i Glass, or whatever Apple calls its lightweight, affordable mixed-reality glasses that draw most of their intelligence from the i Phone in your pocket.

For as much as Ternus may have disliked the Vision Pro project, he will look to the glasses — and maybe the folding i Phone — to be his signature products, the ones people talk about when he steps aside 15 years from now.

No matter what happens to Vision Pro, nothing can diminish the accomplishment. Apple's spatial computer remains the apex product in the category (yes, outdoing the Galaxy XR headset for now) and marked a turning point in wearable hardware. Sure, it's been overshadowed by AI and Apple's failure to deliver a more powerful Siri, but I will encourage you to head over to an Apple Store and put on a Vision Pro headset, just so you can someday tell your grandkids about it.

Follow Tech Radar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.

A 38-year industry veteran and award-winning journalist, Lance has covered technology since PCs were the size of suitcases and “on line” meant “waiting.” He’s a former Lifewire Editor-in-Chief, Mashable Editor-in-Chief, and, before that, Editor in Chief of PCMag.com and Senior Vice President of Content for Ziff Davis, Inc. He also wrote a popular, weekly tech column for Medium called The Upgrade.

Lance Ulanoff makes frequent appearances on national, international, and local news programs including Live with Kelly and Mark, the Today Show, Good Morning America, CNBC, CNN, and the BBC.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

1'Tens of millions of Graviton cores': AWS scores huge coup as Meta 'buys' hundreds of thousands of CPUs and infrastructure, confirming Jeff Bezos' hyperscaler as the essential backbone of the agentic AI Era in a major blow to AMD and Intel ambitions

2 Definitely not your usual EV: China begins sea trial for world's largest electric ship — Ning Yuan Dian Kun is longer than a football field, weighs 10,000 tons, and uses 10 container batteries with a total 19MWh capacity

3'An accomplished smart speaker that ticks a lot of the right boxes' — the Echo Show 11 falls to a record-low price at Amazon

4 Redditor builds a PC inside an old CRT monitor — it looks like an ancient i Mac, but runs Cyberpunk 2077 at 100fps in 1440p

5'Exactly one photon': European scientists have built the first block of a truly unhackable global quantum internet that can run on existing fiber networks — breaking what was once thought to be an impossible barrier to transmit identical light particles

Tech Radar is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.

Key Takeaways

News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards
Unlock instant access to exclusive member features
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards