Apple Vision Pro

What I learned

The "Vision Pro is dead" crowd just got clowned on r/VisionPro

The r/VisionPro victory-lap thread "Pour one out for the 'Vision Pro is dead' crowd 💀🍹" pulled 191 upvotes and 104 comments, and the energy is real - a separate r/VisionPro "day one user - I'm in gaming heaven now" post hit 191 upvotes too. The counter-narrative has legs even as the sales numbers crater.

Native game emulation turned the headset into a VR console overnight

The biggest on-platform story is gaming: "GTA V running natively on Apple Vision Pro, in real stereo VR" hit 430 upvotes on r/VisionPro, "Zelda TOTK running natively" grabbed 245, and the open-source AVP Play Mac app (367 upvotes) installs Quest games you already own natively, no streaming. r/apple chimed in with Half-Life: Alyx from your Steam library (194 upvotes), and over on Hacker News, "Way to Play Super Mario 64: On Apple Vision Pro" pulled 233 points and 100 comments. None of this runs through the official App Store, which is part of the appeal, developers are routing around Apple's locked-down distribution entirely to get Quest-caliber libraries onto the Reality Headset. Worth noting this sidestep exists because Apple never fully opened the front door: Apple's own App Review Guidelines only permit "retro game console and PC emulator apps," a carve-out confirmed back in April 2024 and detailed further on the Apple Developer news page, but modern titles like GTA V, Zelda TOTK, and Half-Life: Alyx fall well outside that "retro" window, which is exactly why the community has built an entire sideloaded ecosystem instead of waiting on Cupertino.

Apple dropped "Remnants," its first immersive horror film, Oct 16

Director Ti West plus stars Lucy Boynton and Ralph Ineson take you inside Woldmere Castle - the behind-the-scenes reel on @apple hit 414,229 views and 36,146 likes, and @appletv's reaction cut pulled 157,191 views on TikTok. A separate Official Reaction Trailer clip and a behind-the-scenes repost from smaller accounts kept recirculating the same footage, underscoring how hard Apple is pushing this Immersive Horror Movie as proof the hardware can do something nothing else can. It even landed on Hacker News via bloody-disgusting.

Sales reportedly cratered to one unit a month at some stores

MacObserver ran the anecdotal retail-employee claim (via Mark Gurman's Power On), dated Sep 28, 2026, and Axis Intelligence estimates the Vision Pro Revenue Weight fell 63.1%, from 3.71% of Apple's Wearables net sales in 2024 to 1.37% last quarter - IDC pegs 2024 shipments near 390K units (via Financial Times) dropping to ~45K for Q4 2025. @FutureIsOrangeX put it bluntly: "Apple Vision Pro Flopped hard on its face." Even the hardware framing is getting messier: Apple still markets this as the Apple Vision Pro Mixed reality headset, now starting at $3,699 after a June 2026 price increase according to The Word 360, and a TikTok from @5bay65 asking "The Future is Clunky? Trying Out the Apple Vision Pro" captured the ambivalence in two words.

The Mac Virtual Display is the killer app people actually use daily

spatialinsider's walkthrough of the Mac Virtual Display widget on visionOS 27 racked up 63,248 views and 2,398 likes, and the real-world testimony backs it - a commenter on Andrew Clare's "M5 Review, But I Respect Your Time" said he's removed all his monitors at home and the office. A TikTok from @thestutzy lists the daily rotation as soccer in a personal theater, video editing, and working from home, basically the Mac Virtual Display plus media consumption loop everyone keeps describing. But it's not all smooth: @nonya1753234 called their $4K Vision Pro "a $4K paperweight" after it powers off at random during Mac Virtual Display on visionOS 27.0.1, a confirmed known issue with no fix.

The complaints are consistent: too heavy, locked-down APIs, "lost the sauce."

@soundvuitex tied the Vision Pro's ergonomics to a broader "apple might've lost the sauce" rant (34 likes), while @bcardarella - a self-described lover of the device - said Apple "nerfed the potential by locking common sense API access." @LucianoiGalvez agreed weight and locked-down API access are "the two things holding vision pro back." Even @markgurman got a dig in (5,450 likes, 314,764 views): the real problem with the Face ID-less iPhone Duo is "you can't buy a Vision Pro with it."

A true Vision Pro 2 now looks years away, if it ships at all

The roadmap news only got grimmer since the first pass: PCMag UK reports analyst Ming-Chi Kuo saying Apple's incoming CEO has cancelled both Vision Pro 2 and Vision Air outright, leaving just two smart glasses launches (2027 and 2029) on the headset-adjacent roadmap. The Word 360 cites Mark Gurman reporting on Sep 27, 2026 that a true successor "likely won't arrive before late 2028 or early" the following year, while iTechGuides and PhoneArena both confirm Apple has announced no Vision Pro 2, no feature list, and no price, with the latter noting an upgraded M6 chip and visionOS 27 with Apple Intelligence remain the "standing assumption if the product moves forward" rather than a confirmed plan. That "if" is doing a lot of work, and it lines up with Polymarket's skepticism below.