Apple Vision Pro, One Year In: The Future Needs to Hurry Up
I stayed up late one night watching Wim Wenders' 2011 documentary Pina on the Apple Vision Pro, and it was magical. This beautiful 3D film, about the German dance theater pioneer Pina Bausch, made me feel like I was sitting in the theater with the performers.
A year after its release, moments of magic keep popping up with Apple's Vision Pro, but I have to look for them. And most of the magic occurs when watching movies, or when I turn the headset into a giant curved monitor for my Mac. The rest of the Vision Pro's potential remains unfulfilled.
Apple's $3,500 spatial computer is hardly an overnight success, but at that price it was never going to be. The Vision Pro remains a bleeding-edge tech showcase and the most advanced standalone VR/AR headset in existence. It provides a fascinating taste of the unbounded visual experiences of the future. And for certain professional zones – anyone interested in simulation, a display for looking at high-res 3D models, or a flexible iPadOS-based platform to build out some ideas – the Vision Pro can be a powerful tool.
In my life, however, it's mostly a movie screen and a super-fancy wearable monitor.
I do so much more "VR stuff," from games to video chat to exercise routines, on other headsets. There just aren't that many interesting Vision Pro apps, either from developers or from Apple itself. And that's just one of the problems that bugs me about Vision Pro, even after a whole year of using it pretty regularly at home.
There are absolutely areas where Apple has succeeded, and even paved the way for where headsets and glasses could go next. But not enough of them. Without addressing some other big missing pieces, the Vision Pro will never feel like it's leapt up to become a successor, or even a key extension, to my phone or my Mac. Here's my take on the successes and the missed opportunities for Vision Pro over the last year.
The eye and hand tracking quality on Vision Pro, and the ways they work together, really do make a lot of basic navigation pretty effortless. I've gotten spoiled by the simple ways I glance and slightly pinch or swipe my fingers to open apps or scroll windows. Having no controller for Vision Pro is mostly no problem at all, which in retrospect feels as bold a move as shipping the first iPhone without a keyboard.
Apple has added extra gestures and improved the shortcuts since the Vision Pro came out. I love tapping my fingers and tilting my hand to check the time and adjust volume. Yes, sometimes I have to recalibrate eye-tracking because it'll drift from where my eyes look. And tapping and grabbing some edges of windows or apps can still be fiddly. I'd prefer having more precision, with an optional wearable or accessory like the ring and pointer on Sony's pro-focused XR headset, but Apple has mostly proved its point.
As a big TV on my face, Vision Pro remains unbeaten. It's not perfect by any means: The field of view is still narrower than I'd want, and I see some reflective glare at times with prescription lenses inserted, but the experience with Apple's audio and video in Vision Pro makes me feel like I've got the best movie-screening device I've ever tried. It's my preferred way to see any movie or show if I know I can view it alone. Wicked in 3D? Stunning. I keep being wowed by it.
In the curved-screen monitor format, paired with a Mac, I feel like I have my own little wraparound work world. I'm using it right now. When I set it up, it's as satisfying for work as my personal cinema outings. The headset's awkward size has gotten better with improved straps from companies like Belkin and ResMed, too.
Apple's unique place here won't last forever. Other devices are getting micro OLED displays too. Samsung's Project Moohan, the first Android XR headset coming this year, looks very much like a Samsung/Google Vision Pro, and the display quality during a brief demo impressed me. Sony's headset also has micro OLED displays. And there are display glasses, including the Xreal One, that feature vivid (but smaller 1080p) displays that are good enough for watching movies, at a far lower price.
Apple made the Vision Pro feel like an iPad for your face, which was a big shift from previous AR and VR headsets that built up custom app stores and interfaces. This focus can make the Vision Pro seem a little pedestrian because a lot of its apps are things like Mail or Notes or Apple Music. On the other hand, that seamless flow between things I already use is what makes the whole thing feel like a natural computer. It's boring as hell, but it's a useful and previously missing part of the VR experience.
Meta, by comparison, is still struggling to find enough truly everyday work apps that can run usefully on the Quest. Meta has games galore, but none of Horizon OS is naturally Android or iOS compatible. Google's Android XR is coming this year with full support for Google Play onboard, and Vision Pro can run tons of iOS apps. Meta's caught in the middle.
It's been a whole year and I still find myself browsing what feels like a random scattering of games, immersive experiences, occasional productivity apps and Apple's every-once-in-a-while drop of new Vision Pro immersive-format 3D short films. The immersive videos are well-made, and some – like The Weeknd's jaw-dropping music video, or Edward Berger's Submerged – are some of the best I've seen. But it's not enough, and the video releases don't come frequently enough to justify getting a Vision Pro.
There are lots of apps you can browse through on the Vision Pro but that doesn't mean there are many meaningful ones. On Meta's Quest headset, I feel like I can always find a new game or two to catch my eye. The Vision Pro doesn't make it easy to know what's good, or what I should be using it for. And Apple doesn't seem to have invested much into drawing big stunning experiences in, either. Even the Vision Pro games on Apple Arcade are largely ports or casual, simpler stuff.
And why hasn't Apple itself made some of these killer apps? There are still tons of obvious missing pieces. Maps – an app that already showcases detailed 3D landscapes and cities – would have been an amazing Vision Pro showcase. (Google is already showing off its Maps app for Android XR.) GarageBand could have been adapted with spatial musical instruments, something third-party developers have already dabbled in. Apple has no spatial creative apps of its own – no Vision Pro-ified Final Cut, or drawing/sketching/sculpting apps. If you don't dream them up, they won't exist -- and the Vision Pro needs new dreams.
Fitness is still a missing piece of Apple's vision, even though working out has become my favorite thing to do on Meta's Quests. If the Vision Pro could double as a virtual Peloton, then maybe that would help absorb its price. But it doesn't, not yet. And the current Vision Pro's heavier design and dangling battery pack make it a weird fitness fit, although the Apple Arcade game Synth Riders shows off what Apple could do with active gaming on a lighter, more affordable headset.
A huge missing piece, for me, is something I thought Apple would have had on day one of Vision Pro: An ability to work with iPhones, Apple Watches and iPads as well as Macs. The Vision Pro is standalone, but it still works with Macs to act as an extended monitor and feel like a connected part of the computer you already use. It should work that way with the iPhone, literally a device everyone has in their pocket. As a handheld controller, a way to extend connected apps, take calls, use the iPhone to camera to 3D scan things that could instantly be synced to Vision Pro, to help remote-control demos for friends trying your Vision Pro. I don't understand why it's not already set up to work.
Similarly, the Apple Watch could be used for gestures, as an input shortcut, for haptics, or to collect and sync health data into some apps (like heart rate for meditation and active games). And the iPad should be able to work as a portable keyboard/touchscreen part of Vision Pro, extending displays the same way Macs do.
The most obvious miss is the Vision Pro's price. Sure, it's really an early-adopter, developer kit type of computer. And, for the pros that might need it – say, for medical simulations – $3,500 isn't much more than previous business-targeted XR headsets like the Hololens 2 (and it's less expensive than industrial headsets like Varjo's XR-4).
But that price will never appeal to any regular person I know. It's hard enough to convince someone to get a $500 Quest 3. To make the Vision Pro feel remotely appealing, it needs to get into the range of what an iPhone or iPad Pro costs. Otherwise, Apple needs to work even harder to justify what else this high-end thing could be used for.
The Vision Pro has wowed me, and it still continues to wow me. But not enough, especially at $3,500. It feels like a first stab at a greater idea, but there's no second stab in sight. Apple apparently canceled plans for smaller AR glasses, but it could still make a smaller, lighter and easier to use Vision non-Pro in the next few years as another step toward, perhaps, glasses.
Getting Vision on more faces for less with the capability of doing more with what you already own is a difficult bridge to cross. But with Google's Android XR and Meta's headsets -- and possibly other competition from Valve and elsewhere -- it's what Apple still needs to overcome as it figures out how the Vision Pro something that's not just… well, for pros.
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