I don’t mind the headset itself, although, as many reviewers have pointed out, it’s too heavy to wear comfortably for long stretches. (My longest Vision Pro session was three hours, and I felt slightly stuck afterward.) But there are plenty of other nagging hardware issues. Carrying around an external battery is a pain, it doesn’t work well in dark or dimly lit rooms, and there’s no good way to enter text — so if you want to use the Vision Pro for any kind of text work, you need to use a Bluetooth keyboard.
The Vision Pro also lacks some key features. You can’t make or receive phone calls with it like iPhone users can with Mac and iPad. The Vision Pro is only compatible with Apple’s Magic Trackpad, not Bluetooth mice. And guest mode – the way you show the Vision Pro to your friends when they ask to try it out for themselves – is a mess. (This week, Apple announced that the next version of Vision Pro’s operating system, arriving this year, will have improved mouse support and a better guest experience.)
But the biggest disappointment with Vision Pro is how few good apps there are. Several months after its debut, there’s still no native YouTube or Netflix app. No Spotify, Instagram, DoorDash. (You can still use some of these services in a web browser or use unofficial third-party apps, but it’s a worse experience.)
Some of these apps are missing due to corporate infighting. (Google and Meta, for example, have their own VR ambitions and apparently don’t want to push Apple’s product by making apps for it.) But others equate it to a lack of confidence. Developers don’t want to make apps for platforms no one uses, and their reluctance so far — only about 2,000 apps have been developed for the Vision Pro, Apple said Monday — says something about the device’s lukewarm reception.
Apple has also been slow to update its own Vision Pro offerings, including a series of “immersive videos,” shot on special 3-D cameras and released through Apple TV. These videos — which included a film of a prehistoric nature and a “rehearsal room” video of Alicia Keys and her band performing a song — were designed to showcase the Vision Pro’s high-definition graphics and its “spatial sound” capability. is one of the best things you can do with a Vision Pro.
