Apple's Vision Pro rips off the HoloLens, seven years later

What's new here? Microsoft's HoloLens already did a lot of what the Vision Pro does, seven years ago

- JARED NEWMAN

Pinnable windows floating in midair. Three-dimensional dinosaurs. Video calls. 3D castles emerging from the ground. No, I’m not talking about the capabilities of Apple’s new Vision Pro VR/AR headset. These are all things Microsoft’s HoloLens could do when it launched roughly seven years ago.

Apple has a reputation for reinventing technology—and boy, was that underscored by the launch of the Vision Pro at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

For months behind-the-scenes reporting has indicated that even Apple employees have questioned the launch of the Vision Pro, an AR/VR headset that executives said was in the works for years. But what it actually is still isn’t as clear as we’d like. Detailed spec pages accompanied Apple’s launch of the Mac Studio and the new 15-inch MacBook Air. Not the Vision Pro: We know it supplies more than 12 million pixels per eye, but at an unknown refresh rate. And Apple carefully hid the cable running from the headset to the battery pack—which allows for only two hours of battery life, anyway.

To be fair, the most egregious Appleesque extravagance, the Vision Pro’s price, wasn’t that far off the mark. Microsoft originally launched the HoloLens for a whopping $3,000, as a developer device. Apple didn’t say so, but the Vision Pro’s $3,500 price tag isn’t aimed at even a typical Mac consumer.