Apple has reportedly 'given up' on the Vision Pro headset and that doesn't seem like a good thing for VR, generally

If this report is true it's not exactly surprising, but it's still kind of shocking. Apple has reportedly "given up" on its Vision Pro VR headset.

According to Mac Rumours, the latest M5-powered revision of the Vision Pro has been a "flop". As a consequence, "Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple."

Mac Rumours claims that Apple plans to pivot to smart glasses, the first iteration of which will be similar to the Ray-Ban Meta glasses and lack any kind of display. Apple eventually hopes to integrate some kind augmented reality display into its smart glasses, but reportedly the technology just isn't there to do that with sufficient power efficiency.

This is still just a rumour and, to be clear, the Vision Pro can still be bought from the Apple website. Notably, in late 2024, the Vision Pro was said to be out of production, only for an updated headset with the M5 chip to be released in October last year. But sales of the $3,500 headset are widely reported to have been slow. Anecdotally, how many people do you know that have a Vision Pro? Quite.

As for what all this means for VR generally, it's hard to say beyond the fairly obvious. What with Meta more or less throwing the towel in on the Metaverse, suffice to say that the broader VR landscape, at least in terms of really major investment from the major tech entities, doesn't exactly look vibrant, does it?

We like the Steam Frame, but is it likely to be a big mainstream success? (Image credit: Future)

Put another way, if Apple can't make mainstream punters switch on to VR, who can? In terms of that mainstream adoption, the sticking point is surely the bulk, general poor ergonomics and questionable aesthetics involved with current technology. Who really wants to walk around wearing a massive headset with marginal battery life?

For purely gaming, of course, there's both much more immediate appeal and more going on, with a mini industry of gaming headsets and, most recently, Valve's new Steam Frame headset. But it's still a totally different ergonomic and use-case proposition to a conventional display and surely less versatile.

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If you upgrade your gaming monitor, in other words, likely it will be an upgrade for your general computing, too. But a VR headset bought for gaming is more likely to be restricted to that use case, maybe with some video consumption thrown in.

Personally, while I love the idea of VR, I've never been sufficiently blown away by available VR headset solutions and experiences to actually spend my own money. I'd want something that's somehow lighter, cheaper and higher resolution. Admittedly, I haven't tried the Steam Frame, but it seems more incremental than revolutionary to me, so I can't see it getting my money—if Valve ever prices the thing up.

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