Three-Year Gap Between Vision Pro 1 and 2?

Mark Gurman:

The good news for Meta is it could have plenty of time to pursue that goal. Apple’s latest Vision Pro road map doesn’t currently call for a second-generation model until the end of 2026, though the company is trying to figure out a way to bring a cheaper version to market before then. Apple is still flummoxed by how exactly to bring down the cost, I’m told.

If true this seems utterly bizarre. That would be close to a three-year gap between today’s first-generation Vision Pro and a second-gen model. Think about the iPad Pro. The ones on sale today, which we all presume will be replaced four days from now, were released in October 2022. That’s 18 months. And the general consensus is that the iPad Pro has gone a long time between updates.

“Late 2026” would presumably mean October or November 2026. That’d be 33 or 34 months after the release of the first-gen Vision Pro. So imagine the Vision Pro being as long-in-the-tooth as the iPad Pros are today and still being almost a year away from an update. That makes no sense. To everyone outside Apple it would, quite reasonably, look like an abandoned platform. They kind of did exactly that with the HomePod, but Vision was introduced as a major new platform, not a peripheral. Why wouldn’t there be at least a speed bump from the M2 to M3 or something between now and late 2026? Waiting until the end of 2025 would be a long (nearly two-year) gap; the end of 2026 might as well be forever from now.

A yearslong gap until the next Vision Pro might make sense if there were a, say, Vision Air on the roadmap for 2025, but Gurman says Apple doesn’t know how to make such a thing yet.

★ Friday, 3 May 2024