Apple Has Given Up on the Vision Pro After M5 Refresh Flop

A lot of comments on this talking about how an AR/VR product would never make it but I think a lot of people fail to understand just how badly Apple failed to meet existing VR/AR developers where they are. Apple told us all to learn Swift and port our projects or pay thousands of dollars in Unity licensing costs to ship our existing projects to the new platform. Was incredibly heartbreaking to realize I simply can't afford the fees to put my XR projects in the App Store despite having iOS & XR experience and already being part of the developer program.

I like to think the Vision Pro was ahead of its time. Just because it's such a cool product. Just not practical yet for every day use cases

The AVP is an incredible device, but it's too restrictive and the 3D spectacle doesn't offset the myriad of issues that I've run into:

- If I want to watch movies, I'll typically do so with my wife, on my 4K smart TV. The AVP is not a shared experience unless you purchase an additional unit.

- The virtual display can't be used with arbitrary devices (e.g. PS5, PC, Raspberry PI) via direct HDMI, only over network streaming, which has latency/quality constraints.

- The passthrough quality is not good enough to do anything non-trivial.

- The native Vision Pro apps tend to be neutered compared to the MacOS equivalent.

- When flying, it's a bit too bulky to take as carry-on, unless you dedicate your entire backpack to it or carry by hand.

From a development standpoint, I found that the SDK was quite shallow and didn't provide as much hardware access as I would have liked– particularly the raw camera feed. Apparently there's now an enterprise program that unlocks access, but you have to jump through some hoops and get manually approved, which is too much friction. Additionally, the market is quite weak. I had my app get featured in the App Store a year ago and hardly made enough profit to justify further time investment.

If there was a Linux equivalent to the Vision Pro that didn't require a social media account, I'd be more receptive. The biggest issue across modern AR/VR devices is the tendency towards closed ecosystems and lack of integration with external devices. For now, my AVP is largely collecting dust on the shelf until I get bored on a random Sunday afternoon and decide to see what's new.

Anyone could have explained that people don’t want to wear a Super Nintendo on their head. It seemed more like a “best we can do right now” technology testbed, or supply chain resource, than a real product. I assume they learned everything there was to know about building it and what it turned out to be good for.

I volunteered to help evaluate the HoloLens at one point. My feedback was that whatever the dream was (checklists in your field of vision, etc), you can do that yourself and get all the value, and the headset didn’t add anything.

surprisingly, the people I saw getting the most use out the Apple Vision Pro has been healthcare workers (even though that's already incredibly rare to see). There was a doctor I used to talk to at my old job that swore by it. He would pin EPIC app windows in individual patient rooms and would use the built-in microphones for doing speech dictation on patient charts.

I thought it sounded a little goofy when he was explaining it to me, but hey that's at least a more productive use case than watching YouTube videos on the couch.

That price always made it seem like a tech demo. I suspect that they would have sold like crazy at (the unfeasible price point of) $500.

This article is an opinion piece. It doesn’t have any substantive claims, even from insiders that this is the case. It’s most credible claim is that people are moving about to new projects which is not irregular in the least.

Apple has really dropped the ball recently, as someone who was a die-hard apple fan 10 years ago now I've started moving off the ecosystem.

I believe it flopped because people simply dont want this kind of device. Maybe because it's seen as recreational (I'd never accept to try to do any work on it) and also because of the high cost. Most people are ok with just a phone.

It's never even been available to buy here in Spain lol. And it was really just way too expensive, and they've never really demonstrated a good usecase. I don't think the size and weight were even the biggest issue.

But I'm probably an outlier, I use my meta quests several hours per week.

Did they ever got some controllers for it ? Not sure how useful would it be without them if you need to move in VR environment like VRChat & don't have a warehouse as you play space.

To me the most amazing things about AVP are things that I would enjoy socially and not alone with goggles on. I compared it to:

- The most amazing movie theatre experience in the world - but you have to go there alone

- The most amazing arcade you have ever seen - but you have to go there alone

- The most amazing restaurant in the world - but you have to dine alone

- ...

It is like everything that is great about it is (for me at least), is 100% social thing which I cannot enjoy alone with the goggles on.

I feel pretty vindicated saying this product had zero chance of success. AR headsets have very little utility beyond some tiny niches. It's never going to produce a consumer product. VR hasn't really gotten past gaming and arguably hasn't gotten past Beat Saber. It's been decades at this point and the market just isn't expanding past enthusiasts and a handful of industrial niches.

Someone more skilled than me start killedbyapple.com

Most companies don’t have the attention span for the sustained burn needed to develop a new hardware and software platform. These days Apple is just another company. Valve will show them how it’s done.