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
Rumor has it that Apple’s pricey Vision Pro is headed to the scrap heap of failed tech gadgets. Rumor also has it that all is well and there will be further upgrades or iterations. It’s further rumored that even if the Vision Pro doesn’t get any significant upgrades, it will be the granddaddy of Apple AR glasses, the wearable that everyone will probably want.
Right now, know that no one knows anything about the future of the crumbling space computer except Apple, which, at the moment, is celebrating a significant Vision Pro victory: eye surgery performed via a surgeon wearing the headset.
Article continues below
Maybe it was the moment a virtual butterfly landed effortlessly on my outstretched finger, or maybe it was the toothed maw of the dinosaur that came within inches of my face, or even the mountain climber balancing barefoot on a thin cable stretched across a vast ravine. In truth, it was all these experiences with AppleThe stunning Apple Vision Pro spatial computing headset from , which convinced me that I had just discovered the true future of virtual reality.
To this day, I don’t think that’s hyperbole. I had never experienced anything like this in decades using technology and even trying out VR (dating back to the mid-1990s) and AR technology in the last two decades.
As most people know, the Vision Pro comes with a hefty price tag of $3,499. If you held, wore, and experienced the space computer, you could understand, or even justify, the price, but between the sometimes uncomfortable nature of wearing the 1-pound device on your face and the instant out of reach of the average consumer price, the Vision Pro was a crippled consumer product from the start.
Apple did not convince consumers
Over the past year, Apple has done what it can to attract consumers, such as integrating more entertainment and experiences, allowing people to turn any photo into a spatial image, updating the processor to the M5 chip, and radically improving the headbands to finally make the Vision Pro truly comfortable to wear for hours.
But there has always been a disconnect. Even aside from price, consumers have shown little interest in being cut off from family, friends and co-workers. Because that’s what Vision Pro wanted: immerse yourself in a 3D movie while your family does something else. Work on a huge virtual desktop while your colleagues sit nearby and stare at you in disbelief.
The latest software lets you bring other colleagues into your virtual space, and it’s a crazy experience, but it requires them to also wear a Vision Pro headset. This is overkill for remote work, where Zoom will probably suffice.
The Ternus factor
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the Vision Pro isn’t the mainstream success Apple imagined. I don’t see headsets in offices and consumers don’t ask me about them.
There is little to no interest in the stories about their use and the mind-blowing experiences you can find (like the spatial vision in U2 singer Bono’s documentary).
Apple will always highlight the glasses as a point of pride. In a recent chat with Tom’s Guide, John Ternus called them “an extraordinary product.”
The vote of confidence is important because Ternus is just months away from becoming Apple CEO. Looks like he likes Vision Pro. On the other hand, now is not the time to demolish the products defended by Tim Cook, his future former boss and predecessor. That would be the height of bad form.
It may have been the recent appointment of Ternus that reignited the rumor mill here, but new reports indicate that Apple’s failure to drive 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 isn’t necessarily a fan, but recently said he may have killed a proposed Vision Pro product on the cheap.
Apple hasn’t made any public statements to support this assumption, but any intelligent person knows that a product struggling at this level will at least need a solid repositioning. The closest Apple has come to admitting that it’s not a hit with consumers is Tim Cook mentioning Vision Pro’s big business potential. I think the Vision Pro could have a long-term future with the corporate world. On the other hand, Microsoft (HoloLens) and Google (Google Glass) both followed this path, eventually abandoning their wearable AR products.
What’s more certain is that everything Apple and John Ternus learned from Vision Pro about spatial computing will be baked into Apple Glass, iGlass, or whatever Apple calls its lightweight, affordable mixed reality glasses that get most of their intelligence from the iPhone in your pocket.
While Ternus may not have liked the Vision Pro project, he will look to glasses — and perhaps the foldable iPhone — as his flagship products, the ones people will be talking about when he retires in 15 years.
No matter what happens to Vision Pro, nothing can diminish this accomplishment. Apple’s space computer remains the flagship product in the category (yes, surpassing 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 come up with a more powerful Siri, but I’ll encourage you to go to an Apple Store and put on a Vision Pro headset, just so you can tell your grandkids about it one day.
Follow TechRadar on Google News And add us as your favorite source to get our news, reviews and expert opinions in your feeds.
