Apple's second swing at face-computing is dramatically lighter, lasts twice as long on a charge, and finally has a price most early adopters can stomach.
Apple took the wraps off Vision Pro 2 on Wednesday, leading with the two numbers nobody in the original's focus groups stopped complaining about: weight and battery life. The new headset is roughly 40% lighter than the first generation and ships with a battery rated for double the runtime.
On stage, Apple framed the device less as a "spatial computer" than a screen replacement that can also do AR. New optics fix the obvious gripes, the controllers are dramatically more refined, and the operating system finally has a credible answer for productivity multitasking.
Developers got the loudest cheer of the morning. Apple announced a refreshed SDK plus a tier of revenue splits that match its mobile App Store more closely than the original Vision Pro's setup. Several big publishers are committing day-one apps.
The price is still steep — but lower than version one. Apple is betting that lighter, longer, and a real software story can convert the people who tried Vision Pro 1, took it off after thirty minutes, and never put it back on.
