Gurman: Apple's N224 Vision Successor 'On Life Support'

Mark Gurman's Sunday newsletter opens on a flat verdict: hardware work on Apple's next Vision Pro, codenamed N224, is on 'life support,' and he does not expect a device to ship before late 2028 or early 2029, if one ships at all. Bloomberg reports the Vision team under CEO John Ternus is exploring about four concepts, one that keeps the familiar all-in-one form but sheds weight through plastic, titanium and new alloys, and another that moves all the computing into an external puck, mirroring the approach Meta just took.

That is the awkward part of the timing. Four days earlier, on Sept. 23 at Connect, Meta unveiled a $1,299 pair of VR Glasses that weigh about 100 grams, run a 5K display with full-color passthrough, and last about three hours off a tethered pack holding the processor, cooling fan and battery. They ship in spring 2027 at less than half the Vision Pro's starting price.

Inside Apple, the puck idea is not settled. Some senior decision-makers, per Gurman, 'see that external puck as a poor user experience' and want the company to hold to a self-contained design. Which of the four concepts wins is what decides whether the successor looks like Vision Pro or like the thing Meta just launched.

Meanwhile, the engineering center of gravity has moved. Apple's attention is on displayless smart glasses aimed for release in some form by the end of 2027, a separate project from N224 and the one the company appears to actually believe in. It has been a busy stretch for the Apple team we've been tracking, between the ChatGPT-in-Siri deal reportedly underperforming and this Vision reset.