The $3500 face-covering, world-isolating, anti-social, uncomfortably heavy 3D computer headset with clunky external battery, limited optical quality, awful text input, awful voice input, primitive pointer input, a locked-down OS, almost no software, almost no content, and no good way to share it with anyone else in the household was held back by… poor retail training!
Yeah, that's it.
https://www.macrumors.com/2026/04/07/vision-pro-troubled-launch-in-apple-stores/
New Book Details Vision Pro's Troubled Launch in Apple Stores
A new book by New York Times labor reporter Noam Scheiber argues that Apple's decade-long erosion of its retail workforce directly contributed to...
@marcoarment Can't decide if this was a failed technology or a failed product. Maybe there was an alternate universe where face wearable computers are thing but it just doesn't seem to be something the public wants. Not just from Apple, from anybody. Can't see Apple spending anymore time on this. It will be allowed to wither, and then be cancelled without ever receiving a price reduction.
@SwampYankee @marcoarment in my view, good technology and a failed product. Here’s my list of problems, nearly all self-inflicted, from a screed I put in a YouTube comment section
——-
In an effort to be different than the rest of the market, Apple kneecapped themselves with product decisions that 1) made the AVP too expensive, and 2) made it worse that competitors in many ways.
1/13ish
@SwampYankee @marcoarment Like [said in a YT video], Apple often is a follower in key technologies and product markets. However, when they do decide to enter a category, they always like to add some "Apple flair" to differentiate their product from existing products. Sometimes its new features that are exclusive to Apple, but sometimes it's just extra polish and attention to details, so while they did not "invent" a feature, Apple may "perfect" it.
2/13ish
Their desire to stand out from the crowd and make the AVP "different" was its undoing. Here's a partial list of features on AVP that made it a worse product, or made it unnecessarily expensive
4/13ish
1)The front-facing screens for "eye-sight", models of the wearer's eyes are displayed on outward-facing screens. This was their "oh, wow, only Apple could pull this off!" feature, and it's one of the dumbest features on any modern product. It's a triple whammy, because besides being a feature nobody asked for, nobody needs and nobody wants, it also just simply didn't work well enough and looks creepy as hell, and worst of all, adds additional screens and significant cost, for no good reason.5/13
2) The insistence on using pure aluminum and glass. This is another example of Apple being snobby and saying "we're not like those other companies who build garbage out of plastic. _We're_ making our headset out of polished aluminum, premium fabrics, and scratch resistant glass." This methodology has served them well in laptops and phones, where they can afford to sacrifice a little bit of weight to make a premium-looking and feeling product.
6/13
2) (cont) Yes, it looks beautiful, but that's worth nothing if it's too heavy to carry on your head. They simply can't lower themselves to, heaven forbid, using plastic for the housing, even if it would make the AVP significantly lighter, less expensive, and ironically, probably more durable and accident-proof.
7/13
3) The hands/gestures-only input... _Again_, just in an effort to do things "the Apple way", they tried to convince us that using only your fingers poking and pinching in the air while floating in front of you is all that's needed for sustained, precision input. They initially didn't support 3rd party hand controllers like on the Oculus or PlayStation, much less build one themselves.
8/13
3) (cont) They tried to pretend like typing on a floating keyboard was as good as adding a real keyboard accessory. Their marketing material and tech demos tried to gaslight us into thinking that we would all be sitting in plush couches, flicking our wrists and fingers while the AVP sensed the movement of every finger with sub-millimeter precision.
9/13
3) (cont) And _even if_ their software was good enough to accomplish this (which it isn't, and will never be if only due to the fact that using only face-mounted sensors you can _never_ capture a full range of motion from all your fingers and hands), it's still a shit-way to interact with a computer for more than a couple minutes.
10/13?
3) (cont) Surely there was people inside Apple who knew this, and if they spoke up, they must have been shouted down by mangers or designers who said pig-headedly "nope - No hand controllers, no keyboard, no attachments. The only thing in the box is the headset, and the sensors built into the headset itself is the only way users can and should interact with the OS". Just a terrible decision.
11/14?
----
Then there are other things like initially only shipping with the band that went around the back of your head, which wasn't strong enough to hold the AVP up. Why only this band and not an over-the-head band like all other headsets? I'm 100% sure it's simply because the over-the-head bands 1) look dorky as hell, and 2) mess up your hair.
12/15
And, apparently Apple would rather ship a product that looks good in promo videos but is unusable in real life than, god forbid, ship one that is usable but makes you look kind of stupid.
13/15
And that's not even touching on the OS or the software, which had plenty of other terrible decision that hamstrung users and developers.
14/15
All-in-all, a huge list of bad decisions by design, management and engineering, and a terrific example of hubris. It's a shame, because they undoubtedly have superior technology and put a ton of work into groundbreaking 3D interaction models that could have worked, if they had just allowed themselves to be more humble and meet the market where people were, instead of trying to create a whole new market with a thoroughly unsustainable product.
15/15
Marco Arment
SwampYankee
Joe Lion