When Apple unveiled the Vision Pro in June 2023, it called the $3,499 headset “the most advanced personal electronics device ever made.” Tim Cook stood on stage and described it as the beginning of a new era in spatial computing – the kind of grand moment the company has built its reputation on. But nearly two years after its February 2024 launch, that era appears to have quietly ended. Apple has reportedly scaled back its Vision Pro team, and the M5 refresh that was supposed to save the product ended up being its final chapter.

The device never really found its footing. Since launch, Apple has sold a total of around 600,000 Vision Pro units across all versions – a number that sounds meaningful until you remember that Apple moves hundreds of millions of iPhones every single year. For a product the company hyped as a paradigm shift, 600,000 units over its entire lifespan is a number that would barely register in Apple’s quarterly earnings call. Even more telling: Apple reportedly received an unusually high volume of returns – far exceeding the return rate of any other modern Apple product. People were buying it, getting it home, and sending it back.

The reasons were straightforward. The Vision Pro weighed 1.3 pounds and was deeply uncomfortable to wear for extended periods. Even with a specialized headband designed to redistribute the weight, users consistently reported fatigue after just 30 to 45 minutes of use. Then there was the price. At $3,499, it cost more than most laptops, more than some used cars, and there was no obvious answer to the question every potential buyer was asking: what do I actually do with this? Apple had the hardware, but the software ecosystem never materialized in a meaningful way. Developers weren’t building for it. Businesses weren’t deploying it. And everyday consumers had no good reason to spend that kind of money.

Apple tried to course-correct in October 2025 with the M5 refresh. The updated headset brought a 120Hz display refresh rate, about 10 percent more rendered pixels, and roughly 30 extra minutes of battery life thanks to the more efficient chip. Apple also introduced a redesigned Dual Knit Band to address the persistent comfort complaints. But the $3,499 price tag stayed exactly where it was. There were no major new software experiences, no dramatic interface overhaul, no killer app that suddenly made the device feel essential. It was an incremental update to a product that needed a reinvention – and the market responded accordingly.

By Q4 2025, Apple was reportedly only selling around 45,000 Vision Pro units per quarter. That is a strikingly small number for a company that treats product launches as cultural events. Around the same time, reports emerged that Apple had already slashed marketing spending on the Vision Pro by more than 95 percent. The company was quietly reducing its commitment to the product long before officially winding anything down. Earlier, plans for a lower-cost “Vision Air” model – which could have brought the headset to a broader audience at a more accessible price – were also shelved, with Apple reportedly choosing to redirect those resources toward smart glasses instead.

Now, according to a report from MacRumors, Apple has gone one step further. The team that built and maintained the Vision Pro has been redistributed across other software and hardware groups within the company. Some of those engineers are now working on Siri – which makes some sense, given that Mike Rockwell, the executive who led the Vision Pro project, moved over to head Apple’s Siri efforts back in March 2025. It is a notable reshuffling. Rockwell spent years building the spatial computing vision, and now the team he led is working on the voice assistant that Apple has been trying to revamp with AI capabilities.

Apple has not officially discontinued the Vision Pro. The M5 model is still available through Apple’s retail stores and online. But according to the MacRumors report, the company currently has no plans to release a new version of the headset. There is a meaningful difference between a product that is discontinued and a product that has simply been forgotten – and right now, the Vision Pro appears to be drifting toward the latter.

What comes next is genuinely interesting. Apple is not retreating from wearables or mixed reality entirely – it is just rethinking what form that technology should take. The company is reportedly working on smart glasses, internally codenamed N50, that are meant to compete directly with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses rather than offer full augmented reality displays. These would be lighter, camera-equipped glasses that sync with an iPhone, support photos and video capture, and give users access to Siri and notifications – the kinds of everyday tasks that make sense for a wearable you could actually keep on your face all day. Apple is reportedly testing at least four different frame styles and could reveal the product as soon as late 2026, with a wider release targeted for 2027.

The high-resolution display technology Apple developed for the Vision Pro – one of the most impressive engineering achievements in the headset – has reportedly proven too power-hungry to be crammed into a lightweight glasses form factor. That is a real constraint, and it partly explains why Apple is starting with a simpler product rather than trying to deliver full AR from day one. Building the chip architecture for next-generation smart glasses is already underway, with TSMC expected to begin production on a dedicated chip around 2027. The smarter AR glasses with actual display overlays remain a longer-term goal.

There is a broader lesson in the Vision Pro story that goes beyond one product. Apple has occasionally launched hardware that the world wasn’t ready for – and the Vision Pro may simply have been a decade ahead of where the technology and the use cases needed to be. The display quality was remarkable. The eye-tracking and hand gesture inputs were genuinely novel. But remarkable technology alone doesn’t move product at $3,499 when there’s no compelling reason to buy it. The iPhone succeeded in 2007 not just because it was technically impressive, but because it replaced something people already did every day – making calls, sending messages, browsing the web – and did it dramatically better. The Vision Pro never had that anchor. It was a solution looking for a problem.

For now, Apple is moving on. The engineers who spent years imagining what spatial computing could be are now working on Siri and other projects. The headset that was supposed to usher in a new era of personal computing is still technically available, but the company that built it has, for all intents and purposes, moved on. Whether Apple comes back to the big spatial computing idea in five or ten years with a lighter device, a better ecosystem, and a world that has had time to catch up – that remains to be seen. But for the Vision Pro, the story appears to be over.