Vision Pro Shakeup
- Apple moved Mike Rockwell out of Vision Pro leadership after weak headset sales and product performance. - John Ternus is slated to lead a rethink of Apple's spatial computing efforts. - The change follows criticism of the $3,499 headset's sales and signals internal strategy recalibration (x.com).
Apple has pulled Mike Rockwell out of Vision Pro leadership and handed oversight of the headset effort to hardware chief John Ternus as it rethinks its spatial computing plans. (macrumors.com) Rockwell led the team that built Vision Pro, then moved in March 2025 to run Siri engineering after Apple shifted responsibility for the assistant away from John Giannandrea. Bloomberg reported at the time that Paul Meade, a Vision Pro hardware executive, would take over day-to-day leadership of the headset group. (bloomberg.com) Ternus is Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering and was named the company’s next chief executive on April 20, 2026, with Tim Cook set to become executive chairman on September 1. That puts the Vision Pro reset under the executive already responsible for Apple’s core device lineup. (bloomberg.com) Vision Pro is Apple’s mixed-reality headset, a face-worn computer that places apps and video in the user’s field of view. Apple introduced it in June 2023 and started U.S. sales on February 2, 2024, at $3,499. (apple.com) Apple expanded Vision Pro beyond the United States on June 28, 2024, adding China mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. The broader rollout did not stop questions about demand for a device priced far above Meta’s consumer headsets and most premium laptops. (apple.com) By October 2024, The Information reported that Apple had sharply reduced Vision Pro production and was preparing to stop making the first-generation model by the end of that year. Apple did not publicly confirm that report, but the production cut became a marker of how far the launch had fallen short of early expectations. (techcrunch.com) Fresh shipment estimates pointed the same way in early 2026. PCMag, citing International Data Corporation, reported Apple shipped about 45,000 Vision Pro units in the fourth quarter of 2025. (pcmag.com) Apple is still selling the headset and now markets it with an M5 chip on its online store, which shows the company has not abandoned the category outright. The question inside Apple appears to be what shape the category takes next, and Ternus now owns that answer. (apple.com)
