Apple is still working on successors to the Vision Pro, but the effort is far from a priority, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman in his weekly "Power On" newsletter. He reports that four concepts are under study, with nothing decided and no guarantee that any of them will reach the market. A launch, he writes, is unlikely before late 2028 or early 2029.
The most ambitious candidate carries the internal codename N224 and would be a fundamental rework of the headset. One of the four designs keeps the current egg-shaped form; others explore weight reduction using plastic, titanium and other metals. Apple would prefer to eliminate the external battery puck that currently hangs off a cable, and leading managers are said to consider the puck a poor user experience, favouring an all-in-one design. One option retains the puck but adds computing components to it, offloading work from the wearer's head.
Gurman characterises the programme as running on "life support" — in Star Trek terms, the bare minimum. That reading fits the public record of the past year. Three earlier successor projects were cancelled: N107, a tethered glasses concept that would have pushed compute onto a Mac or another device; N100, a lighter "Vision Air"-style headset reportedly paused about a year ago; and N109, a lighter, cheaper Vision Pro. Apple also cut the Vision Pro's advertising budget by more than 95% and reduced the development team — at least 60 layoffs in the Vision Products Group, followed by reports of more than 200 cuts across the wider organisation. Attention has shifted toward smart glasses and camera-equipped AirPods.
There is a counterweight inside the company. New CEO John Ternus was long regarded as a sceptic of the headset, whose sales have reportedly been weak, but he recently struck a more conciliatory tone, saying the device has a bright future.
Why it matters: the Vision Pro was Apple's bid to define spatial computing, and it arrived to a market that Meta has since re-energised with lighter, glasses-like headsets. If Gurman's sourcing holds, Apple's next attempt is a long-horizon research effort rather than a product on the near roadmap — a signal that the company is hedging between an expensive all-in-one headset and the smart-glasses form factor it has been staffing up for.
