Apple plans to launch an upgraded $3,499 Vision Pro headset as early as this year, focusing on enhancing performance and comfort for a device that has, to put it mildly, struggled to gain consumer traction. The upgraded Vision Pro will feature a faster processor, improved AI-compatible components, and a redesigned strap for better comfort during extended use, Bloomberg News reports citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”
Mark Gurman for Bloomberg News:
With the latest version, Apple is bolstering a product category that launched in February of last year — heralded then as the dawn of a new era for the company. The Vision Pro blended virtual and augmented reality in a novel way, but cumbersome hardware and a hefty price tag hurt its prospects.
Apple is working on a redesigned model for 2027 that significantly reduces the weight of the headset, the people said. The company’s plans could still change and the timing may shift, they added.
The initial upgrade will use an M4 processor currently offered in the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, iMac and other computers. That’s an improvement from the M2 chip in the current headset.
Apple is also testing versions of the new device that increase the number of cores inside of the neural engine — a component for processing artificial intelligence tasks. The neural engine in the current Vision Pro includes 16 cores, a measure of processing power.
The company is also prototyping new straps that are designed to reduce neck strain and head pain. Discomfort from the roughly 1.4-pound device has been one of the biggest complaints about the first Vision Pro. The hope is to address that problem without meaningfully reducing the weight of the hardware…
The Vision Pro also has suffered from a lack of compelling and exclusive apps. That’s all added up to a lackluster debut for the new product category… The company has only sold hundreds of thousands of units so far…
MacDailyNews Take: Doubling down on a non-selling DevKit is a classic move for Tim Cook’s shambolic Apple.
See also: Steve Jobs never meant for Tim Cook to still be Apple’s CEO in 2025 – MacDailyNews, July 9, 2025
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Several points:
1) The Vision Pro was never a “consumer device”. It should never have been marketed as such. It never was (and is not) a device for use in FaceTime or other VTC applications. Advertising it as that just made Apple look stupid.
2) The Vision Pro should have been less expensive. Apple should have priced it at zero net profit. The second or third generation could be a profit center.
3) The Vision Pro should have been extremely heavily marketed to companies like Autodesk–even giving huge discounts to get those companies to build software around the virtual reality the Vision Pro could support.
4) Apple should have done a much better job at telling everyone (not just the public) how the Vision Pro was better than the competition. Apple should have clearly and convincingly said why Apple was charging as much a three times what other headsets cost. The Apple logo is not worth such huge upcharges.
5) Apple should have sent teams with many Vision Pros and Mac Studios to the major tech universities (probably the top 50 or so) to get the students (both undergraduate and graduate) actively using the Vision Pro.
To my knowledge Apple did none of these things. Videos of dinosaurs coming at you in virtual reality may make people think VR is interesting, but they are NOT going to get people to buy a $3,500 device. Anyone at Apple who thought those videos would get people to buy a Vision Pro was (is?) divorced from reality.
Apple needs to drop the price by 20%.
Apple needs to cut the weight by 20%.
Apple needs to market the Vision Pro to the correct markets as mentioned above.
Apple needs to form close alliances with companies like Autodesk and get those companies to publicly state they are building software specifically around the Vision Pro.
Failing Apple doing all those things, the Vision Pro may be doomed as much as the Newton was.
I agree that a major problem with the Vision Pro has been marketing. As a Vision Pro owner I can attest to it being both amazing and frustrating at the same time. More than anything the “killer app” is the Mac Virtual Display, a productivity dream. Apple however didn’t release the wide and ultrawide settings at launch (though I’ve found the standard setting to be just fine) and marketed the device as a kind of AR/VR iPad when it fact it shines as a Mac companion. This use case doesn’t require a lot of the fancy, expensive eye tracking and other tech they included since you’re just using the keyboard, mouse or trackpad.
I don’t fault them for releasing it in it’s current state but I do fault them for marketing it as an ultimate, aspirational Apple product when, price aside, it’s not something most people are going to casually pick up and use like an iPhone. It’s an intentional device for people who want to get things done on a huge canvas or experience something amazing, not the doom scrolling, casual computing masses.
Apple needs to realize that there were problems with marketing and getting a critical mass of Vision Pros out in dev and consumer’s hands. And those problems are not remotely the chip nor the strap.