How the Vision Pro Rollout Inflamed Tensions at Apple

To deploy With its new mixed reality headset, the Vision Pro, Apple has designed a plan almost as complex as the device itself.

In January 2024, Apple summoned hundreds of retail employees to its Cupertino campus to train them on the Vision Pro’s features. The company asked them to sign nondisclosure agreements committing them to secrecy about the device, and even the location in Cupertino where the training was taking place. On the Apple campus, they had to place their phones in GPS-blocking Faraday bags. Employees who had completed a day or two of training were not allowed to describe their experience to other retail employees who were about to receive their first demo, so as not to step on the new thing.

All this intensified the romance when the workers finally tried on the helmet. Company officials showed how the device could transport them to an assortment of landscapes, seascapes and moonscapes, or recreate the feeling of watching movies on the big screen.

“Coming back from Cupertino, it was honestly the coolest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” said Megen Leigh, a longtime Apple employee in Columbus, Ohio, who flew to California for the training. “I can’t express enough how incredibly brilliant this device is.”

It fell to trainers like Leigh to run four-hour workshops for salespeople when they returned to their home stores. After that, salespeople would get an hour of company time to rehearse the demo and master the scenario, as well as two opportunities to practice with their colleagues.

On paper, the plan seemed airtight. In practice, the deployment of Vision Pro has proven to be a fiasco in many stores.

The demos revolved around a certain number of details that the collaborators often had difficulty mastering. Before a customer could start using the device, employees had to scan their face, choose from about 25 sizes of light seals and affix them correctly so that unwanted light wouldn’t compromise the images. Users controlled the device with their eyes and fingers, using subtle movements that might at first be counterintuitive. The script that the company composed for the demos was broadcast on more than a dozen screens.

Further complicating the rollout was the way Apple stores had changed their hiring and staffing over the years. Under Steve Jobs, Apple prided itself on having stores well staffed with highly trained staff. However, in the years following his death, Apple had reduced its store staff and relied on a more temporary workforce.

At the time of Vision Pro’s launch in early 2024, many Apple salespeople had only recently become permanent employees after being hired as temps in the fall. They had little experience with launching an Apple product. “It was the first time a lot of people had to learn a script,” said Kevin Gallagher, a longtime Apple Store employee in Towson, Maryland. “They didn’t have the capacity to do it.”

And because the stores were understaffed, many employees did not benefit from the training and practice time provided by the Apple company. “I had a 20-minute demo. I had maybe 30 minutes to go over the script, I did a demo on a person who had gone to Cupertino and was kicked out of the nest,” said Sam Hernandez, a longtime salesman at a flagship Apple Store in Chicago. (Apple declined to comment for this story.)

Ultimately, estimates indicate that Apple sold fewer than 500,000 Vision Pros in 2024, compared to about 10 million Apple Watches in their first year and more than 200 million iPhones sold each year.

The reasons for this disappointment go well beyond trial and error at points of sale. Weighing around 1.5 pounds, the device was too heavy to carry for hours, making it less than ideal as a work tool. It offered only a small number of apps compared to other Apple products and was bad for video calls because it couldn’t broadcast the user’s face like a phone camera could. Instead, it generated a zombie-like “character” that sometimes bore little resemblance to the user. And, of course, there was the hefty price tag: $3,500 for the base version and closer to $4,000 once you add common accessories, like prescription eye inserts and a travel case.