The Vision Pro turns 2
Did you know the Apple Vision Pro celebrated its second birthday a bit over a week ago? I didn’t. I’m sure there were a couple posts on some Apple news sites noting the occasion, but I wouldn’t exactly say there were widespread celebrations for how much more is happening with the product now than it was when it was released.
In fact, I feel relatively confident in saying this might be the only Apple product where, two years into its life, most of its early adopters actually use the product less than they did when it was new. I know that’s true for me. I tried using it for travel, as a virtual display for my Mac, for widgets, all manner of apps, and every spatial video I could get my hands on, and at the end of the day, it turns out I actually prefer doing literally all of those things on a Mac, iPad, and iPhone. And not to name names (I’ll let them write their own posts and make their own videos), but among early adopters and people predisposed to loving all new tech Apple makes, this experience is remarkably consistent.
Say this sort of thing on a Vision Pro-centric forum, and you’ll surely get responses rewriting history to say this was never meant to be a consumer product, it was a developer device, of course. Normal people getting these to do work, to watch movies, and to enjoy photos of their family? Never happened! And hey, if Apple’s goal was to make a niche product that was less popular than Meta’s gaming-focused headset, then I can’t argue that they’ve achieved that. But if their goal, which was very clear when they announced it, was to bring this to the mainstream, to make it serious, to be their next big thing, well, I think they’ve come up woefully short.
For me, the Vision Pro is currently a paperweight that I occasionally glance at and wonder what I could have done with those $4,000 that would have brought me more joy. We’re in sunk-cost territory now, so I’ve got the damn thing and hope it gets something that really wins me over, but I remain at a loss as to what that thing is.
