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

Will it survive the new leadership

Opinion By Lance Ulanoff published 1 May 2026

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Rumor has it, Apple's pricey Vision Pro is headed for the scrap heap of failed tech gadgets. Rumor also has it that it's fine and will see either further upgrades or iterations. Rumor further has it that even if the Vision Pro doesn't get significant upgrades, it will stand as the progenitor of Apple AR glasses, the wearable everyone will probably want.

By now, you should know that no one knows anything about the future of the woebegone spatial computer except for Apple, which, for the moment, is busy celebrating a significant Vision Pro win: eye surgery completed via a surgeon wearing the headset.

That news is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it's a fist-pumping validation of Vision Pro's potential as a life-altering piece of wearable technology for enterprise. On the other hand, consumers may see it as yet another sign that the Vision Pro was never intended for them in the first place.

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It's been almost three years now since Apple unveiled Vision Pro at WWDC 2023 and gave a small group of attendees, including me, the chance to try it out. As I wrote back then:

Perhaps it was the moment a virtual butterfly effortlessly landed on my extended finger, or maybe it was the dinosaur's snaggle-toothed maw that came within inches of my face, or even the mountaineer who balanced barefoot on a thin cable pulled taut across a vast ravine. In truth, it was all of those experiences with Apple's stunning Apple Vision Pro spatial computing headset that convinced me I'd just experienced the true future of VR.

To this day, I do not think this was hyperbole. I had never in decades of using technology and even trying VR (going all the way back to the mid 1990s) and AR tech for the last two decades, experienced anything like it.

As most people know, the Vision Pro arrives with a hefty price tag of $3,499. If you held, wore, and experienced the spatial computer, you could understand, if not justify, the price, but between the sometimes uncomfortable nature of wearing the 1-pound device on your face and the instant out-of-reach for average consumer price, the Vision Pro was a hamstrung consumer product from the get-go.

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