Apple Releases visionOS 26.3

Too expensive

The update is free. No charge 🤭

This story has been live for a while now, and it has just 4 comments. Tells you everything you need to know about Vision Pro.

Compare that to the newer MacRumors story about Siri, that has 300+ comments already.

Here's the thing. Virtual reality is a poisoned product category. Even Apple can't suck out the poison. And Apple is a company that creates entire product categories from scratch, steamrolling everything that went before.

No company has ever had mass market success with VR. And over the last few decades, so many have tried. So many failed products. Meta even renamed itself to try and create a VR product category, and has pumped hundreds of millions into it. They've received zero reward and are now pivoting away from it.

Before you comment, yes, VR is popular in gaming. But it remains a niche within that category. It is not mainstream. You will not find VR equipment in every kids' bedroom, or every household.

How about industrial uses? Well, again there's niche applications. But it's not being worn by every warehouse worker, or in every design studio.

The huge question becomes: Why? What's so wrong with VR/AR?

Is it just the clunky hardware? Is it that people don't understand the value proposition? Or is it that there simply isn't a value proposition? Famously, there isn't a killer app for the Vision Pro. It's just a series of impressive technical demos (which is a criticism you can also easily make about Apple's implementation of AI—whether this is a broader issue with Apple right now is a whole different discussion).

Or is there a deeper human reason that people don't want their reality being messed around with? Is our literal lived reality a hard line when it comes to handling over personal data to Zuckerberg and co—and that letting him take control of our reality is equally vomit-inducing? Nobody trusts Zuckerberg. I mean, he's one of the least trustworthy people on the planet. We simply put up with him because we get Insta and Facebook.

I personally think the failure of VR/AR is many of these things. Fundamentally, I think we all fear losing control of reality—which is the purpose of VR or AR. We fear illnesses like this, like brain damage. And VR/AR wants us to opt into it.

The concept of sitting in a location with other people, in my own reality separated from them, is genuinely anxiety inducing to me. I need to know what's happening around me. There cannot be any risk this is removed.

And I think it's also that there isn't a killer app. There's just no reason to use VR/AR for most of us. Furthermore, I don't think there ever will be a killer app because, if there was one, it would have arrived by now. Some very clever people have been thinking about VR/AR. And... nothing. Nada. Outside of gaming.

Bug fixes and security improvements, that's all? I really hope / can't wait until the tabletop game watching feature that is available for the NBA comes to the NFL and golf.