Conclusion

Trying to sum up visionOS 26 is difficult because it’s doing a lot of different things at once. It’s elevating the day-to-day experience of using Vision Pro with quality-of-life improvements. It’s adopting features Apple fans already love like widgets and making the system work more seamlessly with the company’s other devices. It’s introducing new ways to enjoy photos and videos with more immersion than ever. And it’s taking big swings and setting the stage for the future with features like spatial browsing, in-person experience sharing, and spatial accessory integration. There’s a lot happening in this release.

Now in its third major version, visionOS still feels like a platform that’s just getting started. It’s growing by leaps and bounds year over year, it has a ton of momentum behind it, and there’s still so much more ground left for it to cover. It’s still very much early days for spatial computing, and it’s an exciting time.

This update does offer us some hints about where Apple sees the platform currently and the direction that it’s headed in. visionOS 26 includes several new enterprise APIs that aren’t relevant for everyday users but make Vision Pro even more appealing to companies, many of which are adopting the device to improve how their employees collaborate and get work done. Features like shared in-person experiences and the easy transfer of user setup data from one Vision Pro to another feel custom-made for corporations issuing fleets of Vision Pros to their workforces. There’s a lot of interest in spatial computing coming from the enterprise world, and Apple is working to meet those special needs and grow the platform’s base in that area.

Gaming, obviously, is another realm that the company is trying to push visionOS further into with the addition of spatial controllers. It will be interesting to see how the gaming landscape changes on the platform over the next year. Will developers of popular AR and VR games port their titles over to visionOS now that it has a more standard input mechanism? Will there be a significant audience for those games that depend on an accessory that doesn’t come included with the device? Could gaming on visionOS become a significant source of revenue for developers and Apple alike the way iOS gaming has been for a very long time? We’ll have to wait and see.

The expansion of video formats that can be enjoyed on the device is also telling. Rather than insisting on spatial and immersive video being the only way forward, Apple has chosen to collaborate with existing players in the wide field-of-view market to the benefit of users and creatives alike. There are so many interesting ways to tell stories in emerging video formats now, using equipment that’s more accessible to up-and-coming filmmakers than ever, and the Vision Pro has the potential to be the go-to place to see all of it. I think we’ll see Apple continue to push these unique video experiences as a key part of the visionOS experience, and I hope the company will keep working on partnerships to make these videos even easier to access and create.

And then there’s the computing part of spatial computing. Vision Pro is about more than just entertainment, after all; it’s a tool for learning, expressing creativity, and getting work done. Platform features like widgets and new web standards that push the Internet into the spatial age are important progressions on this front, but there’s still more work to be done. There are a lot of apps missing on Vision Pro, not only first-party apps that need to come over from Apple’s other platforms, but third-party tools that developers have yet to bring over themselves.

For visionOS to thrive, it needs a healthy third-party app ecosystem not just for spatial experiences but also for productivity, utility, and creativity. Apple is always taking steps to introduce new tools that empower developers – this year including enhancements to make volumes more flexible and the ability to project Remote Immersive Spaces from macOS apps – but the company must also continue to do the work of getting developers onboard with and excited for the, well, vision of spatial computing and all it can be.

On the user experience front, the Control Center redesign is an excellent improvement, and there are other areas of the operating system that I’d like to see revisited in the same way. Multitasking is still more difficult than it needs to be, with no way to save groups of windows for future use or quickly access frequently-used apps without invoking the Home View. The notification system needs an overhaul to make notifications more informative and actionable. And where are Focus filters on visionOS? If there’s one device I have that lends itself towards total focus, it’s my Vision Pro (in the Jupiter environment, of course); I should be able to contextually limit interruptions on the device the same way I can on my phone, tablet, and laptop.

There’s plenty of time to solve all of these problems, though. visionOS is by no means finished; in fact, it feels like it’s just beginning. The team behind the platform has done an incredible job of further defining what spatial computing is and moving it forward in so many ways this year, and I fully trust that they have more wonderful things in the works to show us soon. A really interesting change in Apple’s software marketing strategy this year is that everything announced for visionOS at WWDC is shipping in version 26.0. That means we have almost no idea what’s in store for its mid-cycle updates between now and next June, which makes me very excited.

As it starts its third major cycle, visionOS is in a great place. It’s come so far from where it started just a year and a half ago, and it’s still chock full of potential and hope for what spatial computing could be. It’s no secret that I’m a believer, and with every improvement, every additional link to the broader ecosystem, and every new unique experience that’s offered, the platform only expands its appeal further and further. We haven’t reached a point where spatial computing is something everyday users are ready to embrace yet, but we’re moving in that direction. And in the meantime, I’m having a ton of fun seeing this new way of computing take shape before my very eyes.