The first iPhone also had a lot of criticism for major missing features. I am confident that Apple will address a lot of it in the 2nd version. Then I predict that the 3rd iteration will start to make inroads to the masses.
First, when I got my first iPhone, I was amazed by it. I used it all the time. Yes, there were missing features and shortcomings, but many/most of those missing features were obvious, and it was actually pretty delightful that with every new software update I'd cross some of those missing features off the list.
None of that dynamic exists with the Apple Vision Pro. Even big Apple fanboys end up leaving it unused after the novelty wears off because it's fundamentally a solution looking for a problem. People aren't leaving it untouched in a drawer because there are just a couple missing features they want.
Now, all that said, as much as I would dread having this computer strapped to my face as a "normal" person, I think the use case given in this article makes perfect sense. The surgeon is doing a specific task, and the Vision Pro helps with that specific task. While I believe the Vision Pro will fail as a general consumer product, I hope it can live on for these niche use cases, although I don't know if the economics will make sense for such a relatively small market.
If you gave me an Apple Vision Pro, I literally have no idea what I would do with it. I would really love to get into something new like this but I literally can't think of what I would do with it. It is a technology that seems unreasonably useless. It seems like there should be many more use cases than there is.
TBH the dynamic you're describing would have been Meta's glasses if they also release a viable version of Orion as the second product. But at this point nobody's in a place to make it a reality, the fact that Apple actually released the Vision Pro is the most telling sign that they don't see themselves reaching that level anytime soon.
Meta hasn't sold tons but 700k for a device that needs to get past people's privacy concerns is decent and then Meta showing off Orion .. where Ray Bans are headed in a few years i think is pretty cool.
The elephant in the room is that we're already really good at human-computer interfaces. VR not only isn't an upgrade, it's a downgrade.
The precision of tapping in 3D space is much lower than on a screen or a keyboard. Typing in VR becomes 10x harder. Voice isn't a solution either, because talking is always slower than typing. And for gestures, swiping on a phone is already really fast. Swiping in 3D isn't any faster.
The most precise and fastest is, of course, keyboard and mouse. Touchscreens are a step-down, but one we took for the advantage of super tiny devices you always have on you.
VR is certainly not tiny. And, even if it can be and you can just wear it whenever - what's the benefit? Going from a laptop to a phone is obvious, but a phone is already very small and already always on you. What do you gain then from a VR device? I think probably next to nothing.
I think iterations of Vision Pro will take years and the final cost will not be what it is today. What everyone sees today is a developer toolkit that also serves as a public demo. It is not a consumer product that can be scaled (yet).