It was only this month that incoming Apple CEO John Ternus said of the Vision Pro, “I think we’re still very much in the early innings of spatial computing. We’re super excited about it.”

Now, we’re hearing Apple has stopped working on the headset following lackluster sales of the only slightly upgraded M5 chip-powered model introduced in October, which retained its hefty $3,499 price and shipped with a more comfortable head strap. 

MacRumors claims Apple has “given up” on the Vision Pro as a response to soft sales of the upgraded model, distributing the product engineering team elsewhere across the company. It also seems to be focused on Meta-devouring AR glasses in near term, which we knew. 

What this really seems to be about is building Vision Pro’s successor.

The next generation

This might or might not be the sunglasses-style form factor everyone is speculating about. And it might or might not include the cutting-edge features provided in the Pro. (CitiGroup predicts sales of items in this category could reach $40 billion by 2030.)

Given the recent introduction of the A18-powered MacBook Neo, it seems the plan could eventually involve a lower-cost Pro-style model equipped with two or more cheaper A-series chips. I don’t see that as a realistic possibility until at least 2028 — once Apple hits 1nm chips.

It makes sense, then, that Apple is diverting engineering resources from those projects toward Siri and its artificial intelligence work; it’s existentially important for the company to deliver big improvements to Apple Intelligence, Siri, and AI on its platforms in time for WWDC in June. Recent delays have damaged the company’s reputation, and while many believe it will win in the end, it’s going to take a little longer for everyone else to see it.

When he spoke, Ternus was positive about the current headset, saying, “The Vision Pro is an extraordinary product…, it’s like we reached into the future and pulled it into the present.” 

It’s also hardware that has a place in some specific enterprise deployments. “People are continuing to find exciting new use cases for it. There’s a lot of compelling stuff in enterprise and medicine and other areas, and that’s going to continue to grow. It’s fun. We’re at the beginning of the journey.”

Grabbing the future and building it

Apple seems to know it’s a beginning, too. The company has been tweaking the operating system regularly with updates (major or minor) every couple of months and a raft of entertainment and enterprise software that continues to appear at a steady clip.

At its price, Vision Pro was never intended to be a mass market product akin to the iPhone, but a highly experimental solution to help determine the future of this part of the industry. Apple’s outgoing CEO, Tim Cook, has consistently described the product as “tomorrow’s engineering, today,” and it remains that.

The lessons Apple has learned will now be deployed in successor products, including smart eyeglasses to compete with Meta’s offerings. For the most part, these solutions will likely be connected accessories that use the chip inside your iPhone, iPad, or Mac for their advanced functions. But as processor designs continue to shrink, it’s only a matter of time before standalone devices appear.

These won’t offer everything we get now in the Vision Pro, which requires more processor and battery power than can be crammed inside smaller devices. Once the tech of the future catches up with Apple’s vision, as it were, I’ve little doubt that a Vision Pro successor will appear at a not-so-prohibitive cost. 

Apple already built the future. Now, as it did with the Newton, it just needs to wait for reality to catch up. Meanwhile, those enterprise use cases for the existing headset remain, which strongly suggest there’s real-world, but limited demand.

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