Vision Pro Future Uncertain as All Headset Development Is Seemingly Paused

[Simmias]

Does Macrumors even read their own site?

Some Los Angeles Lakers Games Will Get 3D Live Streams on Vision Pro

A selection of Los Angeles Lakers games during the 2025-26 season will be live streamed in the Apple Immersive format on the Apple Vision Pro. The...

www.macrumors.com

Tim Cook: “Let’s invest millions in the rights and technology to do 3D live streams of NBA games and make a big public announcement about it. Also, cancel development of the only hardware that can display those streams.”

John Ternus: “Is that a good idea? I mean, we’ve made a long term 10-year bet on AR and spatial computing, even since we started to ship AR kit for the iPhone. We obviously never expected a $4,000 headset designed to showcase our vision for spatial computing to be a mainstream product.”

Tim Cook: “Absolutely. Did you see the new Meta glasses? Man, those are cool. Why didn’t we think of anything like that? Immediately divert all resources from our multi-decade R&D roadmap into copying a Meta product that no one can actual buy and is unlikely to see mainstream adoption, because it mainly does things that our Apple Watches and iPhonoes already do better.”

John Ternus: “Ok, if you say so.”

Tim Cook: “Sounds good. Check back next week when I’ll reverse course again. And make sure Mark Gurman is in the loop on all of this. He’s an honest and trusted news source without an agenda of his own to make us look bad.”

 

[krspkbl]

I'm gonna go against the grain and say that i think there is a place for a Vision Pro Headset. The size and form factor will allow for significantly more powerful hardware/specs. Obviously nobody is gonna rush out and buy one but it's a niche product. It's a Pro model.

Smart glasses is the way to go for now but it has its own challenges and limitations. There is only so much you can pack into a pair of glasses. The ones Facebook released are stupid big and look silly. Thankfully with Apple's renewed obsession with thinness we might actually get glasses that don't look silly.

It's easier to sell glasses as a fashion accessory than a headset. You already get people wearing glasses with no prescription just for the looks. Smart glasses makes sense. I never wore a watch in my life until I got an Apple Watch.

Unfortunately, I'm as blind as a bat so have to wear glasses so for me it's no problem moving to smart glasses. I hate glasses and if I could get smart glasses it'd make me so much happier.

I'm just curious how much battery you can put in a pair of glasses and just how good the display will be. I know the first release isn't gonna have a display .... we're going to have to deal with Siri. Eventually there will be glasses that have a build in display though.

Glasses can mostly do everything the headset can do and maybe better. Except maybe battery and performance. We're already struggling to shrink processors down any further. It's one thing putting brand new tech into a smartphone but glasses? They need to go much smaller and please Apple for the love of god please please please don't make a camera bump/notch for glasses

The glasses can be called the Vision Air/Vision. We might not need a new Vision Pro model but I would like to see the Pro model be a headset instead of glasses. They should definitely rethink their approach to headsets though. If Apple can get their Vision (glasses) line up and running to create an app store that developers want to build then they can transition that over to the new Pro model whenever that comes.

Any future Pro model needs to be lighter (cheaper) and maybe more of a visor than a headset. Again, it needs redesigned to fit in with whatever they are working on with the glasses.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

The main issue with Vision Pro is that it’s a proof of concept, not a product. It needs to be considerably light, smaller, and cheaper before the mass market is going to take it seriously.

 

[MrGimper]

Eh, except Apple Maps really isn’t a disaster now. What you mean by “disaster” is that development was just slower than you would have liked.

No, it’s was a disaster when it launched. That’s the fact.

 

[BelgianChoklit]

Just before the arrival of the usual uninformed flock of comments about how "nobody wants a VR headset", remember that Meta sold more Quest 3 headsets last year at Christmas than Xbox's AND Playstations combined.

While VR headsets sales will never get to iPhone-like levels of popularity for now , who wouldn't want to achieve Xbox/Playstation level of sales ? The only thing that is killing the Vision is the insanely crazy price , and the weight.

I have a Quest 3, vastly inferior tech, but almost 8 times cheaper, and quite a bit lighter than the VP.

It's also made by MetaFacebook, one of the most horrible companies on the planet, and the Quest basically exists to harvest even more intimate and private personal data to sell it to the highest bidder. Just this fact makes me want Apple to persist in releasing the Vision Air faster so that I can get rid of the Quest.

The VR market shouldn't be a monopoly left to a surveillance company.

It's not only price and weight which is making this product unattractive. It's also that there's no real use cases for it. It's only some cool things you can do with it for fun but no real use for it.

 

[turbineseaplane]

As an iPhone Mini user, I realize how frustrating this is for fans of the Vision Pro.

This is how Apple kills stuff ... they let it slowly wither in public while they've already moved on internally.

 

[krspkbl]

As an iPhone Mini user, I realize how frustrating this is for fans of the Vision Pro.

This is how Apple kills stuff ... they let it slowly wither in public while they've already moved on internally.

View attachment 2566603

Just like the vision pro the mini iphone is a stupid product nobody asked for and that apple didn't put much thought into. When nobody buys it then they kill it off.

You can't even be mad.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Make it $1799 and youll 10x the sales, $999 and it will 100x.

Im an Apple fanboy and even I find $3499 hard to stomach. I did try the demo at the store twice and it was amazing, at the lower price points it would be a no brainer.

I am sure it doesnt contain more than $500-$700 worth of actual components.

The problem with some of these price ideas is that they might be selling them at a loss at that point.

Maybe I'm in the minority, at least here on the forum. I just don't want to wear a computer on my nose for extended periods of time. There is a place for VR/AR in some applications of course. I just don't see it taking off as a mass market product.

You’re not alone in terms of the general public.

Basically all VR headsets demo well and have great niche use cases, but they are not at all a mainstream product and they are never going to be.

 

[terminator-jq]

Glasses are the real product, headsets are a stepping stone.

Makes sense to shift all their work into glasses if they think the technology is there to make them work - they will replace headsets eventually anyway. Maybe they're closer than we think.

Doesn't seem like any cause for alarm.

This.

I really don’t see why more people aren’t picking this up… especially since Tim Cook eluded to this many times after the official Vision Pro reveal and leading up to its initial release.

The Vision Pro is really a way for Apple to build their AR platform on the software side while they wait for hardware to catch up. As soon as Meta revealed the Ray Bans with display, the writing was already on the wall for Vision Product development. At this point it makes perfect sense for Apple to shift direction so they can catch up.

IMO this is GOOD news for Vision OS as a platform. It means the wait for true AR glasses will be shorter than anticipated. The first glasses will be a highly trimmed down version of Vision OS but I don’t think we will have to wait too long for a true Vision OS experience in the frame of glasses (with some sort of tinting feature for fully immersive experiences).

No matter which way you cut it, Vision Pro was NEVER supposed to be a mainstream product. Sony couldn’t make enough displays even if it did gain mass appeal.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Just like the vision pro the mini iphone is a stupid product nobody asked for and that apple didn't put much thought into. When nobody buys it then they kill it off.

You can't even be mad.

There’s a couple key differences there

First of all iPhones used to be very small so it’s not like there’s no precedent for small phones.

Secondly, the iPhone line sells so many zillions of units that I would argue It’s OK to have different sizes to cater to different niches. The important part with iPhones is to have something for everybody so you keep them in the ecosystem.

The iPhone is a tool that is nearly a requirement of daily modern life (or at least a smart phone of some kind). Nothing like that can be said for a VR headset.

 

[flybass]

this photo (and the video where this guy is in), is where i think apple went astray.
no one in the current world could a person, wearing an extraterrestrial non-see through lens goggle, ever be thought to actually be participating in the event. he is a voyeur.
there is a world where spatial computing might have a future. maybe 15 years from now.
apple should have outrightly stated that it was not launching a product. it was providing devices capabie of showing what a future product might look like. there is a special place in Dante's Inferno for companies that deceive its customers like this.
apple was just throwing marketing spaghetti up to the ceiling and seeing what would stick.
a Product without Vision.
View attachment 2566540

This man is probably enjoying some explicit content in front of his family.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Meta doing something ≠ "the future"

We’re all about to be in wearable hell

I’m rapidly running out of body parts to do my job.

www.theverge.com

I think Apple should make some glasses, yes.

I'm not at all convinced we are all going to wear them all day.
(speaking as an RX glasses wearer myself)

 

[Momento_Mori]

Glasses are the real product, headsets are a stepping stone.

Makes sense to shift all their work into glasses if they think the technology is there to make them work - they will replace headsets eventually anyway. Maybe they're closer than we think.

Doesn't seem like any cause for alarm.

Since I own a VP it would make sense to continue development of both. Apple is a trillion dollar company who certainly has the resources to do so.

 

[Happy_John]

No, it’s was a disaster when it launched. That’s the fact.

And now it’s not. The disaster was temporary.

So, are you saying the VP is a temporary distater like Maps, where it will evolve to be a preset good product, like Maps, or a permanent disaster, and so not like Maps?

I don’t know what you’re trying to say.

 

[aevan]

I seriously doubt they won't update the model with new chips regularly. Maybe we won't see new design for a while.

 

[Happy_John]

Since I own a VP it would make sense to continue development of both. Apple is a trillion dollar company who certainly has the resources to do so.

Saying “I own..” isn’t a great argument. Apple won’t develop and improve a product for a single user.

 

[aevan]

No, it’s was a disaster when it launched. That’s the fact.

And now it's really good. Things take time.

 

[ricketysquire]

You could say the Vision Pro, lacks a vision.

I'll see myself out.

 

[needsomecoffee]

Glasses are the real product, headsets are a stepping stone.

This.

Apple has (had??) developed -- as a source of competitive advantage -- the ability to design and build state-of-the-art hardware with great engineering & design. The VP -- if looked at as a means to ensure the SOTA-advantage continues -- is a good investment imho even if it is not a profit-center. Pretty sure the glasses which will become the "next platform" imho have been well-aided by VP work to date. If not, then sure can it. But great engineering is hard to develop, and as we are imho seeing in Apple Software can be lost. Not sure sure a long-term brand/engineering investment, though, makes it past the "what will the share price be next quarter" hurdle. Courage Tim. HTH, NSC.

 

[maflynn]

Apple is a trillion dollar company who certainly has the resources to do so.

No question, but they got to being a trillion dollar company by making good decisions. They have discontinued products/services when it was fairly evident they'll not get a return on their investment.

In a sense, you could make that very argument on apple producing a car - they have trillions of dollars, they could do it, but should they?

 

[maflynn]

And now it's really good. Things take time.

But

• Is it $3,500 good?
• Is it good at solving an existing problem or short coming in business or for the consumer?
• Is it good at enhancing one's productivity and/or creativity where a Mac/iPad cannot?

Or

• is it largely a toy for those with more money to burn
• Is it a product that allows rich people to flex and show off
• Is it a product only the most dedicated/ardent apple fans will support simply because it has a fruit logo?

 

[joeblow7777]

we all agree that its biggest problem is the price, right?
If it wasn’t a fortune, it could have sold in huge numbers.

And apple could afford to bring its price down for a couple of years, just to give AVP momentum…

Just imagine, this device for <1000$

Price is part of the problem, but I honestly don't think that people are very interested in wearing a headset and having a screen strapped to their faces.

 

[joshwithachance]

Too pricy and too bulky. Meta has proven that the product people REALLY want is glasses, not a headset.

 

[maflynn]

Price is part of the problem

With the tariffs, and potential more tariffs landing, this could be a bigger problem - It seems for US buyers, the AVP could be more expensive.

 

[joeblow7777]

With the tariffs, and potential more tariffs landing, this could be a bigger problem - It seems for US buyers, the AVP could be more expensive.

Sure, but the point that I was making is that I don't think that this is a product a lot of people are interested in, regardless of the price. That's just my feeling based on anecdotal observations though.