Apple has essentially abandoned the Apple Vision Pro after the M5 refresh failed to spark renewed interest in the device, MacRumors reports. The company updated the headset in October 2025 with a faster M5 chip and a more comfortable headband, but made no other hardware changes—and consumers still weren’t interested.
The Vision Pro has been criticized for its high price tag and its uncomfortable weight. The device is over 1.3 pounds, and even with the more comfortable Dual Knit Band that Apple added to redistribute weight, it continues to be hard to wear for long periods of time.
The Vision Pro has been unpopular since it first launched, and Apple only sold around 600,000 units in total. Insider sources told MacRumors that Apple has received an unusually high percentage of returns, far exceeding any other modern Apple product.
Apple has apparently stopped work on the Vision Pro and the Vision Pro team has been redistributed to other teams within Apple. Some former Vision Pro team members are working on Siri, which is not a surprise as Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell has been leading the Siri team since March 2025.
If Apple finds a way to create a much cheaper, more comfortable VR headset in the future, the Vision Pro line could be revived, but right now, the company has no plans to launch a new model. Apple has not discontinued the Vision Pro and is continuing to sell the M5 model.
The other factors are that Mike Rockwell, who created the Vision Pro, is weighing his future and that new CEO John Ternus has long been against the Vision Pro as a product. He killed the cheaper/lighter revamp last year and the Mac AR display glasses. https://t.co/r7QyDhkFbL https://t.co/3Hc4AyQI4M
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) April 29, 2026
MacDailyNews Take: Shocker.
[This] is exactly what you’d expect to occur when a product is released too early to average users… Apple Vision Pro is a devkit for developers, not for average users, and should have been released as a devkit for developers. – MacDailyNews, March 26, 2024
There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.
More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).
You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs
See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” [the idea of which was also germinated under Jobs] fizzled in ignominious failure.
See also:
• Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman – March 11, 2024
• Apple employees referred to doomed Apple Car project as ‘The Titanic Disaster’ – February 29, 2024So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.
While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024
When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017
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One doesn’t have to be on the C-level, or have a an engineering degree from Cal Poly, or MIT, or to be the greatest innovator at the company…to know something wasn’t right.
All that’s needed is one with the past experience wearing a shoe with a “hot spot”, a glove that’s too constricting, or a hat that falls over the eyes…to know this fine piece of engineering couldn’t be worn for long because its weight caused pain.
It’s unimaginable it was released with the serious ergonomic problem and with a presumptuous price.
this report is not accurate.
the Vision Pro – more of a prototype than a product for mass consumption – got the ball rolling for a new category and there’s been some shuffling around, but it’s not at all true that “apple has essentially abandoned it.”
Correct. Gurman did a follow-up post
https://x.com/markgurman/status/2049661212577931748?s=20
Aaaaaand…..THIS is why many people will not invest in a high-dollar product from Apple.
“Let’s get into the school market, ok let’s give up on it.
Let’s do home routers…..no, never mind.
I know, Rack servers that are bulletproof!!!
Naaaah, we’ll just leave them hanging.
Got it now!! $10,000 pro computer/ monitor/ wheel combos!!!
Oh, screw that we’ll just make a headset for 2 years so Tim will quit…”
-Apple
Who wants to spend $4k on something from the most valuable company in the world (on average) only to find out they are more interested in shuffling employees around to save money rather than keep making a product better??
Yes, AAPL has LONG had a problem creating uncertainty by being product-fickle.
More irritating than materially problematic; AAPL’s ports, plugs and cable change-ups.
I mean, what people want is a cheaper Vision product and hopefully this year (or next) we’ll get one. Again, nothing was learned from ‘trying to sell a $3500 goggle with barely any software’, but the OS they built will be recalibrated for the next version of the glasses.
We do not need an ‘outside in’ product like Vision Pro. We need ‘inside out’ products. Like glasses. like Holodecks that generates holograms bigger than the room. I see holograms every day but they are million-dollar holograms. I want a Hologram generator which finally sells for $1,000.
When a Vision Pro weighs the same as my sunglasses, I’ll buy it.