Apple’s Vision Pro headset, despite being the most advanced XR gear of its kind, wasn’t quite the roaring success the company may have expected. An asking price worth $3,500 was certainly a deterrent for enthusiasts, but the lack of a full-fledged computing ecosystem built around it was also a lackluster show.
The company has, however, no intention of giving up. On the contrary, Apple is working on a more affordable, watered-down version, and it could arrive sooner than expected. According to Bloomberg, there’s a chance the headset might make an appearance later this year, possibly around the same window as the iPhone 17 series.
A few analysts had recently predicted that Apple’s new XR headset with toned-down hardware could take a couple of years, at the very least, before it lands on the market. It seems the white-hot competition has inspired Apple to pick up the pace.
When can we expect Apple’s next XR headset?
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends
“All signs point to the lighter model arriving between the end of this year and the first half of 2026,” says the Bloomberg report. In the past, we’ve come across rumors of an alleged “Vision One” model being in development, so there’s that.
The report, however, sheds light on an interesting conundrum.
Will Apple retire the Vision Pro, or keep it on the shelves alongside the lower-cost version? “The main uncertainty is whether the lighter version will be considered a replacement for the Vision Pro or a cheaper alternative,” it adds.
As far as the cheaper Vision-series headset is concerned, Bloomberg has previously reported that it could come equipped with the upcoming M5 silicon. Apple is expected to launch Mac gear and a new iPad Pro powered by the same processor later this year.
The biggest change is going to be the size and bulk profiles. It is expected to be lighter and might tip the scales at less than a pound. As far as the pricing is concerned, it could go for around $1,500 to $2,500. For comparison, the Vision Pro carries a sticker price worth $3,500.
To go with the lower asking price on its affordable XR headset, Apple will reportedly equip it with a lower-resolution display unit. Details about just how Apple is reducing the weight, and if there’s going to be any major design change, remain under wraps.
But if the Vision Pro is anything to go by, Apple needs to do more than just shed some weight. Wearing the current-gen Vision Pro is an uncomfortable experience. It would be interesting to see how Apple fixes that ergonomic situation on its upcoming low-cost headset.
Interestingly, Apple also lost the market edge in the wearable XR segment. The company’s first foray was the Vision Pro, an uber-expensive technical marvel that failed to create the same kind of buzz as the company may have expected.
A price tag worth $3,500 is certainly a deterrent, but the lack of immersive productivity scenarios and a vibrant app ecosystem are also to blame. VisionOS is definitely promising, but once again, accessing it requires spending a fortune.
Photo by Tracey Truly / Digital Trends
The gulf of spatial computing for Mac users has surprisingly been filled by much smaller labels. The likes of Xreal, RayNeo, and Viture have not only offered fantastic AR/VR glasses, but have also created fairly rewarding productivity software, as well.
Comfort, not cumbersome
My first brush using macOS in an immersive space came courtesy of the Xreal Air 2. Armed with a pair of 0.55-inch Micro-OLED display units that push a 1080p resolution per eye and support a 120Hz refresh rate, these glasses offered a supremely easy plug-and-play approach to spatial computing, though not without some faults.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
My current setup includes the Viture One smart glasses, which also come with a tint-changing electrochromic film atop the glass lens for maximum immersion. You can choose to see your surroundings or dim them out based on external lighting conditions.
Apple does something similar via a complex camera-display route called Passthrough on the Vision Pro headset. Now, there is a crucial difference here. Immersing yourself in VR/AR content easily leads to sensory fatigue and can quickly get overwhelming. And if the hardware is cumbersome, it gets even harder to engage meaningfully.
The Vision Pro is heavy, uncomfortable, and looks tacky. You definitely don’t want to wear it in public spaces. “I’m not sure I’d want to wear this for an extended period, as I even had small markings on my face after just 25 minutes,” wrote Digital Trends’ Christine Romero-Chan after trying the Apple headset.
Christine Romero-Chan / Digital Trends
Digital Trends’ gaming lead, Giovanni Colantonio, also mentioned how the Vision Pro felt like it was squeezing his face. “I felt hard materials squeezing down on my temple the entire demo. When my 30 minutes were up, I was relieved to pull it off,” he wrote.
A pair of smart glasses solves that problem, and quite handsomely. The Viture One, for example, looks pretty close to a pair of Wayfarers and doesn’t put any unbearable load on your skull. They weigh 78 grams, while the plug-and-play approach means you don’t have to carry any peripherals or bulky bags, either.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
I could wear the glasses for 2-3 hours with ease, before I realized a sense of vision and sensory fatigue. Thankfully, I just have to take them off like a pair of glasses, instead of dealing with cumbersome straps and tethered cables.
Accessibility, far away from Apple’s realm
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
One of the biggest challenges with XR wearables is vision accessibility. If you wear prescription glasses, wearing AR or VR devices quickly becomes a challenge. Unless you wear lenses, donning them over a pair of glasses is the only option. It technically works, but the whole make-shift contraption is terribly wonky.
The only option left is to get prescription inserts. This is where things get interesting, in a promising way. The Vision Pro requires $149 ZEISS prescription inserts. For my RayNeo Air 2S AR glasses, my local optical store made prescription inserts at just $12 for me based on the dummy insert format that came in the retail package.
But inserts are still a logistics hassle, and only add to the cost of ownership. The Viture One glasses ingeniously solve that hassle. Atop each lens sits a dial that adjusts the display unit to accommodate each person’s unique vision range.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Viture focuses on Myopia (or nearsightedness), and allows for adjustments covering zero to negative 5.0D prescription value. And it actually works. I wear prescription glasses, and it was such a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to wear contact lenses or glass inserts just to be able to use my smart glasses and get work done.
It’s not the complete solution, as it doesn’t cover the whole spectrum of hyperopia (farsightedness) and myopia conditions. But it’s a great start and a fantastic example of how engineering can not only make AR/VR wearables more comfortable, but also end the cost burden for vision correction accessories.
Somehow, Apple doesn’t win at productivity software
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
One of the biggest advantages of Vision Pro is its very own operating system that is deeply rooted within the Apple ecosystem. As far as spatial computing goes, its gesture-based control system is arguably the best out there. The gaze tracking and visual clarity are also leagues apart.
All those advantages are undone, however, by a couple of fundamental issues. First, to access visionOS, you need to spend $3,500 on a headset. There is no other way around it. Second, it is locked in its own unique way, where it isn’t quite natively handling macOS despite packing powerful hardware.
Just look at this massive spatial canvas for app windows.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
A pair of smart glasses, such as the Viture One, takes a much more versatile and rewarding approach to spatial computing. To start, it’s essentially a large monitor that it hidden within a pair of stylish Wayfarers. In this case, you get access to a massive 120-inch canvas with a 1080p resolution per eye. In case you are concerned with 3D, they can output 3D SBS content at 3840×1080 resolution.
It’s fantastic to move beyond the cramped layout on a laptop’s 13-inch screen and move to a multi-screen setup seemingly floating in front of your eyes. A 120-inch canvas makes it a lot easier to handle multiple app windows without relegating them to the background or using Stage Manager, which itself is a resource hog.
A view of the two floating screens stacked at an angle.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The nicest part is that this expansive large-screen experience is not bound by any OS limitations. Connecting the Viture One with my iPad Pro automatically launched Stage Manager and went into extended display mode, though there’s an option to enable screen mirroring, too.
The real fun of spatial computing begins with the SpaceWalker app. It lets you pick between half a dozen multi-screen layouts. There are plenty of window orientation, distance adjustment, and resizing options on the table. You can choose to anchor the virtual macOS window, or have it follow it follow your head movements.
There are plenty of floating window and movement control tools in the Space Walker app.Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The app also offers options to lock vertical and horizontal movements of the virtual screen relative to the head motion. Tracking can occasiomally be janky, but it gets the job done. Cursor movement is smooth and macOS shortcuts also work just fine.
This is a crucial lesson for Apple.
Overall, it’s pretty surprising to see that a pair of smart glasses that cost nearly one-seventh of the Vision Pro can get serious computing work done with a Mac, without giving them hell with ergonomics or looking downright dumb.
Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
The company will never make an OS that runs beyond its own hardware. But if third-party software such as Spacewalker and Nebula is anything to go by, it should at least give them a streamlined route to get the best out of a Mac’s firepower, without actually concerning itself with the spatial computing gear they offer.
The chances of that happening are slim. But if real AR computing is what you seek, you can save a lot of money (and cranial discomfort) by going with a pair of AR smart glasses like the Viture One. It definitely helps that the XR community has built some really cool apps that make life easier.
It’d be interesting to see what Apple eventually offers on its rumored AR smart glasses kit in the coming years.
Apple’s Vision Pro headset is undoubtedly an engineering marvel, but it failed to create a market upheaval that the company may have expected. As per industry analysts, a sky-high asking price of $3,500 and a lack of diverse software experiences cooled down the hype around it.
It seems Apple is going to fix the core mistakes with its next attempt. In fact, the company is reportedly working on two new headsets. One of them will focus on bringing the price down, while the other headset will fill a crucial computing gap.
It was previously rumored that the more affordable headset would shift to a mobile processor, but the new report indicates that Apple will arm it with the upcoming M5 processor. This silicon will make an appearance inside iPads and Macs later this year.
Aside from lowering the asking price, the upcoming headset might also shed some weight. Apple’s engineers are reportedly eyeing a weight profile that falls under a pound. That could be a major draw, considering the Vision Pro’s reputation as a rather bulky and uncomfortable device.
When Digital Trends’ Giovanni Colantonio tried it, he wrote that the Vision Pro squeezes the head, and it wasn’t a device you want to wear for a long time. This is what another colleague wrote after trying the headset:
“Even when it was properly on my face, I could feel the weight of it, and it always felt like I had pressure on my face with the light seal. I’m not sure I’d want to wear this for an extended period, as I even had small markings on my face after just 25 minutes.”
As mentioned above, Apple is working on not one, but two headsets. The second one is reportedly targeted at enterprise users, or workflows where one needs to run resource-intensive software. For such scenarios, you don’t only need a fast processor, but also a fast input-output interface.
Zeke Jones / Digital Trends
In a nutshell, a wireless connection can only take you so far with its latency woes. To overcome that hassle, Apple is said to be developing another Vision Pro model that will directly plug into your Mac. The approach is not too different from gaming-focused VR devices that connect directly with a PC.
“The idea is to create an ultra-low-latency system for streaming a user’s Mac display or for connecting to high-end enterprise applications,” adds the Bloomberg report. For folks who dream of serious computing, a wired interface is the way to go.
Over the past couple of years, I have tried my fair share of smart glasses and loved the connected computing experience on an expansive immersive screen. RayNeo, Viture, and Xreal offer their own flavor of a computing environment that can handle Windows, macOS, and even iPadOS with a lag-free output.
View inside the AR environment of the Nebula app for the Xreal Air 2 glasses. It’s pretty smooth and cool to interact with. It’s spread across a giant curved canvas with scope for multiple floating windows. pic.twitter.com/25WLjBYEh8
Xreal’s Nebula app is one of the finest examples of connected spatial computing on smart glasses. It lets you work across multiple floating macOS windows. You can even adjust their perceived distance from the eyes, resize them, or adjust the relative angle of each app window.
I am hoping Apple wants to decouple its next-gen XR headset from the concerns of latency and data throughput. For demanding users — and enterprise clients who are willing to pay for it — a wired connection to the Mac is the right approach.
Machines like the Mac Studio offer plenty of firepower already. Apple just has to tap into all that raw firepower with the right spatial computing hardware. A next-gen Vision Pro that connects directly to a Mac and offers a computing view atop its cutting-edge optical hardware sounds like a desirable approach.
Apple dropped a big batch of medium-size software updates for nearly all of its products this afternoon. The iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, macOS 15.4, tvOS 18.4, and visionOS 2.4 updates are all currently available to download, and each adds a small handful of new features for their respective platforms.
A watchOS 11.4 update was also published briefly, but it’s currently unavailable.
For iPhones and iPads that support Apple Intelligence, the flagship feature in 18.4 is Priority Notifications, which attempts to separate time-sensitive or potentially important notifications from the rest of them so you can see them more easily. The update also brings along the handful of new Unicode 16.0 emoji, a separate app for managing a Vision Pro headset (similar to the companion app for the Apple Watch), and a grab bag of other fixes and minor enhancements.
Apple’s Vision Pro is the technology of the future, according to Palmer Luckey and Tim Cook.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
Palmer Luckey discusses Apple’s Vision Pro, noting its high standard and niche market.
The $3,500 mixed reality headset has had low demand, aligning with Luckey’s predictions.
Apple’s Vision Pro is for future tech enthusiasts, not the mass market, per Tim Cook.
It seems like Palmer Luckey gets where Tim Cook is trying to go with the Apple Vision Pro.
The Oculus founder and Anduril CEO shared his analysis of Apple’s foray into mixed-reality headsets during an episode of the “What’s News” podcast. Luckey said he’s been “consistent” in his stance on the future of the pricey device since before it launched.
“I was telling people, ‘Listen, you have to realize that what Apple’s doing here is not trying to, with their first release, try to make something that is for everybody,’” Luckey said.
Instead, he said, Apple is “trying to set a very high standard” with the $3,500 mixed reality headset.
The low demand for the Vision Pro since its release in February 2023 has reflected Luckey’s assertion that the device doesn’t seem to be catching on with non-tech enthusiasts.
“‘They are trying to drag something out of the future that really shouldn’t exist until 2026, 2027, and drag it into the present by making it ludicrously expensive,’” the billionaire said.
His stance isn’t far from Cook’s own words about his product, which is pricier than competing headsets yet lacks a killer app to attract more customers. The Vision Pro isn’t “a mass-market product,” but rather for “people who want to have tomorrow’s technology today,” the Apple CEO told The Wall Street Journal in October 2024.
Luckey got his big break in VR when Meta, then Facebook, bought Oculus in 2014 for $2 billion in cash, and he maintained his optimism about the industry.
“You’re going to see major players launching productivity applications, gaming applications, entertainment applications,” Luckey said during the interview.
Representatives for Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
