The Apple Vision Pro has been one of the most confusing Apple products in recent history. It’s designed to serve as the start of a whole new product category for Apple — and more importantly — the next generation of computing. And yet, it feels like a complete afterthought for the company.
With John Ternus at the helm, I’m a little hopeful that we can start to see the product’s full potential – although there are reasons to be skeptical.
Jack of all trades, master of none
Vision Pro does a lot of really cool stuff – but none of it is fully realized. Mac Virtual Display is awesome, but the headset is too heavy to be comfortable enough to use for long periods of time. Watching movies and shows is fantastic – but many streaming platforms don’t have native Vision Pro apps, and Apple hasn’t tried to encourage developers otherwise. Multitasking can be really productive, but typing is still a pain – and dictation lags far behind.
I could go on for a while. I haven’t written much about it yet, but I bought a used Vision Pro about 6 months ago – just after the M5 model went down, and even though I got it for a good price, I still don’t find myself very attracted to the product. Ultimately, whatever it is, it’s still uncomfortable, and the compromises don’t leave me wanting to use it for very long.
Some of the Vision Pro’s problems are hardware, but most of them are just a matter of improving the software and giving it more different use cases. With strong leadership and enough care, I think Apple can get there.
The elephant(s) in the room.
I think it’s pretty clear that Vision Pro is due to lack of confidence. Tim Cook has always been a big believer in AR, but the point is that Vision Pro is just one step in that direction. It is believed that Tim Cook was not always a product person and usually avoided he refused to make decisions alone and instead left them to the leaders around him. After all, many executives, including John Ternus, were skeptical of the Vision Pro from the start — at least in its $3,500 headphone form factor. That’s probably why everything about the Vision Pro feels so weak and lackluster.
It was John Ternus is said to be opposed early to Vision Pro, the second elephant in the room. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. It could just mean he wants to take the platform in a better direction. Finally, it’s hard to know exactly why he was against Vision Pro in the first place, as the report doesn’t make it clear.
This is the fact we know John Ternus is optimistic Vision for the future of Pro describes the current product as “in the early stages” and says the product has a lot of room for growth.
Wrap it up
I didn’t expect any rapid change anytime soon. Finally, John Ternus won’t be CEO until September, and visionOS 27 is already well underway. It is also reported that Apple’s cheaper and lighter headset, Vision Air, has been launched.
If there is going to be a Vision Pro renaissance under John Ternus, it likely won’t be until at least 2028. I really hope he gives the product the love and care it needs because I think the product has a lot of potential if it was good enough (and affordable) for a lot of people to own.
Shared experiences with friends and family that aren’t close to you are an incredible foundation, but it doesn’t matter if you don’t know everyone with a Vision headset, and that can’t change without strong leadership.
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