Apple CEO Tim Cook is keeping the faith in the Vision Pro, despite quietly sobering sales figures since its debut nearly 18 months ago. On the heels of Apple’s fiscal Q3 earnings call, Cook doubled down on the mixed-reality headset—highlighting the latest software enhancements, hinting at future hardware tweaks, and reaffirming Apple’s long-term vision for spatial computing.

Apple launched the Vision Pro in the United States on February 2, 2024, with an audacious $3,499 price tag and an all-new operating system, visionOS, that casts apps and content into the user’s physical space. Reviews praised the hardware’s stunning graphics and the promise of true spatial computing—yet market tracker IDC warned that the headset had yet to sell 100,000 units in any quarter and would sell fewer than 400,000 units in 2024 overall, comfortably under the 500,000-unit mark IDC had forecast for its first year. U.S. sales were pegged at about 80,000 in Q2 before a projected 75 percent quarter-over-quarter drop, offset only by Apple’s summer rollout in overseas markets.

Users who did take the plunge have sometimes lamented the heavy design—at roughly 1.4 pounds—as well as the steep investment for what remains, in Cook’s own words, “an early-adopter product.” Some buyers admit they barely wear the headset after unboxing it, while others note that finding compelling, regularly updated content is still a challenge.

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Rather than dwell on underwhelming unit sales, Cook used Thursday’s earnings call to spotlight Apple’s latest software advances. “I was thrilled with the release from the team on visionOS 26,” he told investors. “It includes many things in it, like Spatial Widgets to enable users to customize their digital space. The Personas took a huge increase, they’re much more lifelike. And of course there’s new enterprise APIs for companies as well.”

Apple’s “Spatial Widgets” let users pin live information—clocks, photos, or notes—onto walls or real-world surfaces, while the upgraded Personas offer far more natural facial expressions and gestures. Enterprise developers, Cook added, are already leveraging new tools to create immersive training modules and design workflows, a sign that Apple isn’t abandoning its lofty ambition to reimagine work alongside play.

While Cook demurred on detailing the hardware roadmap—“I don’t want to get into the roadmap on it, but this is an area that we really believe in”—Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has sketched out Apple’s immediate plans. According to his report, Apple aims to refresh the Vision Pro “as early as this year” with the faster M4 chip, already found in the latest iPad Pro and MacBook Pros, and a redesigned head strap to improve comfort during extended sessions.

Apple’s own guidance has been frank: at $3,500, the Vision Pro isn’t meant for the mainstream—yet. “Right now, it’s an early-adopter product. People who want to have tomorrow’s technology today—that’s who it’s for,” Cook said in a previous interview. “Fortunately, there’s enough people who are in that camp that it’s exciting.”

IDC analysts believe a more affordable model—rumored to cost roughly half as much—could rekindle interest when it arrives in 2025, potentially more than doubling annual sales if content and developer support catch up. But for the foreseeable future, Apple seems content to let the Vision Pro evolve at a deliberate pace, ironing out software kinks and building a base of high-value users.

Looking even farther down the road, supply chain guru Ming-Chi Kuo forecasts that Apple could introduce smart glasses without built-in displays—akin to Meta’s Ray-Bans—by mid-2027, enabling photo capture, video recording, and music playback with both touch and voice controls. Gurman and Kuo both expect “true” augmented-reality spectacles to follow, though likely years away.

In that light, the Vision Pro serves as a crucial stepping stone: a lab bench for Apple’s spatial computing ambitions, where hardware, software, and developer tools converge. While the early numbers haven’t matched the hype, Cook’s unwavering optimism—and Apple’s determination to iterate—suggest that Cupertino sees a future where head-mounted displays become as integral to daily life as the iPhone did two decades ago. Time—and sales charts—will tell whether that future arrives on Apple’s planned cadence, but for now, Tim Cook is betting on visionOS to keep the dream alive.