Apple Unveils $3,500 Vision Pro VR Headset: Can Tech Giant Finally Push Virtual Reality Into the Mainstream?

Apple took the wraps off Vision Pro, an expensive pair of goggles the company promises will unlock a new universe of magical new virtual- and augmented-reality apps.

The headset will be priced starting at $3,499, available starting in early 2024 in the U.S. (with other countries later in the year). Apple announced the years-in-development headset Monday at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.

“I believe that augmented reality is a profound technology,” said CEO Tim Cook, saying that Apple’s introduction of Vision Pro will introduce people to new forms of “spatial computing” and comparing the product introduction to the way iPhone introduced smartphones to millions of people.

“Built upon decades of Apple innovation, Vision Pro is years ahead and unlike anything created before — with a revolutionary new input system and thousands of groundbreaking innovations,” Cook said. “It unlocks incredible experiences for our users and exciting new opportunities for our developers.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger made an appearance during Apple’s Vision Pro launch, calling it a “revolutionary” platform, saying it will let the company create “deeply immersive” stories in ways that were “previously impossible.” Disney’s sizzle reel for Vision Pro showed various concepts the media company is working on for the device, “to bring you real-life magic,” Iger said. Disney+ will be available on Vision Pro on “day one,” he added.

Apple’s Vision Pro uses eye movements and hand movements for navigation — with no external controllers — and also employs voice input. (Individual app developers, however, cannot access a user’s exact eye location or other personal info.) Vision Pro uses a feature Apple calls EyeSight that shows other people a wearer’s eyes if they’re in augmented-reality mode to help “users stay connected with those around them”; the screen turns opaque to the outside world if the wearer is in fully immersive VR mode. The headset also includes Apple’s first 3D camera, for capturing spatial video and photos and can serve as a “personal movie theater” (with a screen “that feels 100 feet wide”) with support for Apple TV+, Apple Arcade games and other Apple services.

Vision Pro provides ultra high resolution, with more pixels for each eye than a 4K TV — with 23 million pixels across two displays — and provides a newly designed spatial-audio system, according to Apple. Vision Pro will change “the way users interact with their favorite apps, capture and relive memories, enjoy stunning TV shows and movies, and connect with others in FaceTime,” the company said.

For all of Apple’s razzle-dazzle, there remains the question of whether the long-awaited VR headset can finally help establish virtual reality as a popular mainstream technology — or whether, despite the heft of Apple’s investment and stellar global brand, it’s essentially a high-priced tech toy.

The tech giant’s VR and mixed-reality headset reportedly has been in development for seven years, and marks the first new product category entry for Apple since it launched Apple Watch in 2015. The company has projected selling 900,000 VR headsets in the first year, Bloomberg reported last month.

The VR headset runs visionOS, an operating system Apple said was “designed from the ground up to support the low-latency requirements of spatial computing.” Apple said it gave some developers access to Vision Pro to create apps for the headset, including Microsoft’s Word and Excel and the Sky Guide planetarium app. At launch, Vision Pro will support hundreds of thousands of existing iPhone and iPad apps; in addition, Apple’s Vision Pro supports the Unity game engine to bring 3D apps developed using Unity to the platform.

Just days prior to Apple’s VR announcement, Meta announced the next generation of its own VR headset, the Meta Quest 3, priced at $500 and slated to ship in the fall of 2023.

To date, VR has mostly gained traction in the gaming space. In 2022, VR and AR headset unit sales sank 21%, falling from 11.2 million to 8.8 million units, according to market research firm IDC, with Meta’s Quest holding roughly 80% market share. IDC cited the “limited number of vendors in the market, a challenging macro-economic environment and a lack of mass market adoption from consumers” for the year-over-year drop.

Other announcements during the 2023 WWDC keynote presentation: