Apple hasn’t known what to do with them for two years

When I reviewed the Vision Pro more than a year agoI wrote that they were “incredible potential in an imperfect product.” Today Apple presented the Vision Pro with the new M5 chip and the feeling is the same, only more uncomfortable.

The imperfection persists. The potential is still there. But something has changed: Apple seems to have lost faith in its own vision.

This “second generation” is not a great evolution (it only changes the chip, minor details of the panels and a new optional tape), it is a tacit confession. When Apple updates a product by changing only the processor, it is sending a signal: This device is in maintenance mode.

It’s not something eternal, sometimes it’s just a phase. It’s what they did with the Mac mini before redesigning it or with the AirPods before the Pro, but also with products that they keep alive without really investing in them. At some point new versions and real updates will arrive, but this stage is becoming entrenched.

It’s been 28 months since the original advertisementin June 2023. Tim Cook spoke of the “beginning of a new era of spatial computing,” with grandiloquence reserved for historic moments.

But this new era seems to have stayed stuck in its first act:

• Presence in nine countries, none new since summer 2024.
• Catalog of contents that advances at glacial speed.
• Immutable price: $3,500 plus taxes (4,000 euros including taxes in Germany).

The big problem with the Vision Pro for Apple is twofold:

• He can’t kill them because it would be publicly admitting that he was wrong.
• He also can’t push them because he clearly doesn’t know how.

Apple has plans for more mixed or augmented reality productsbut they will not arrive in the short term. and the result is this strange limbo. A product that receives enough updates to seem alive, but not enough to thrive. A pantomime of normality that poorly hides the internal perplexity.

Apple’s own website prioritizes today’s two other launches on its cover (MacBook Pro, iPad Pro) and even iPhone 17 Pro Max announced five weeks ago. The space of the new Vision Pro is in a corner.

Apple website in the United States after today’s triple announcement. The Vision Pro, relegated in priority. Image: Apple.

The change from M2 to M5 chip provides half an hour more battery life and an additional 20 Hz to the refresh rate. They are marginal improvements that any iPhone receives every year.

For a product that Apple presented as revolutionary, it is an implicit recognition that the revolution has stalled. The real problems—weight, social isolation, lack of clear use cases, price—remain intact. Apple is bandaiding a wound that requires surgery.

In Xataka | I’ve tried the $200 Chinese Vision Pro, a fraction of what Apple’s ones cost. I have been surprised

Featured image | Apple