Apple’s smart glasses are now the Cupertino firm’s sole priority in the Vision domain. On June 3, 2026, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that John Ternus had canceled any successor to the Vision Pro and reduced the roadmap to two products.
This reshuffling is not a simple calendar update. It is a profound strategic break that erases several years of development in one fell swoop and repositions Apple in a radically different segment. And the fact that it was decided by a leader who has not yet officially taken office makes it all the more significant.
Ternus, already in charge before September 1, 2026
John Ternus will officially take over as Apple’s CEO on September 1, 2026, when Tim Cook will move to Executive Chairman. However, according to information published by Ming-Chi Kuo, it was Ternus who approved this in-depth overhaul of the Vision roadmap, and has been doing so for some time already.
« The major overhaul was signed off by Apple’s next CEO, John Ternus. This shift actually happened a while back. I’m just late updating the chart, » Ming-Chi Kuo wrote in a post on X.
Ternus is no stranger to this matter. For the past two years, he has led the Vision Products Group (VPG), Apple’s internal department responsible for developing augmented reality headsets and glasses. His decision to abandon successors to the Vision Pro is therefore not that of a newcomer: it is an arbitration based on direct operational knowledge of ongoing projects, their technical constraints, and their commercial potential.
A roadmap reduced to only two products
In June 2025, Ming-Chi Kuo had established a roadmap forecasting at least seven mixed-reality wearable devices under development at Apple, including three Vision series products and four smart glasses variants. Since then, the M5 chip-powered Vision Pro has entered the market. But according to the update published by Kuo on June 3, 2026, the rest of the program has undergone a radical transformation.
« The Apple XR headset and smart glasses roadmap I put together about a year ago is no longer a useful reference. For now, only two smart glasses products remain visible in the roadmap, » Kuo wrote in this post on X.
These two products are as follows:
- AI glasses without a screen, direct competitors to the Ray-Ban Meta, scheduled for release in 2027.
- AR/XR glasses equipped with a display based on optical waveguide technology, whose release has been postponed to 2029.
https://x.com/mingchikuo/status/2062216902609695054?s=20
The first product clearly targets the general public. It is an everyday wearable accessory, with embedded artificial intelligence capabilities and a voice interface, modeled on what Meta has offered with its Ray-Bans. The second relies on a much more ambitious, but also much more difficult-to-miniaturize, display technology. Optical waveguide technology, which allows information to be projected directly into the wearer’s field of vision, is still at a stage where large-scale production remains a major industrial challenge. This partly explains the shift in its schedule to 2029.
The Vision Pro line officially abandoned
The most direct consequence of this reshuffling is the discontinuation of any successor to the Vision Pro. The spatial computing headset sold for $3,499 will have no follow-up in Apple’s current plans according to Kuo, neither a more compact version nor a lower-priced Vision Air model.
Kuo stands by this direction and clearly justifies it. « I think removing the Vision Pro line was the right call, as Apple shifts resources toward smart glasses with greater mass-market potential, » he wrote on X.
The industrial logic behind this decision is difficult to challenge. The Vision Pro is a device for a very select audience due to its price and bulkiness. Meta, on the other hand, has sold millions of Ray-Ban units per year since their redesign in 2023. Apple has sold only a few hundred thousand Vision Pros since its launch, and the cost-benefit ratio of developing a successor versus the potential of a consumer glasses range clearly justifies the shift.
A notable disagreement with Mark Gurman’s information
Kuo’s publication, however, is in direct tension with other recent information. On May 31, 2026, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg reported that Apple was still working on a thinner and lighter headset to succeed the Vision Pro, a device internally referred to by some sources as the Vision Air. Gurman did not foresee a launch before 2028 or 2029, but affirmed the existence of such a project within the company.
This divergence is not necessarily irreconcilable. Two hypotheses coexist. Either Kuo’s information is partially outdated at the time of its publication, which he himself acknowledges by admitting a delay in his update. Or the Vision Pro successor project still exists, but in such a preliminary stage of development that it leaves no trace on the supply chain radars, which are Kuo’s main source. Gurman himself had previously indicated that Apple had prioritized smart glasses and had no active plans for a Vision Pro successor.
On the AI glasses timeline, however, the two sources converge. Gurman had reported that these glasses, codenamed N50 internally, had been pushed back from a late 2026 announcement and early 2027 launch to a release in late 2027. This shift is perfectly consistent with the 2027 timeline mentioned by Kuo, which reinforces the credibility of both sources on this specific point.
WWDC 2026: One week to learn more
The coming days will be decisive for clarity. Apple’s WWDC 2026 conference opens next week, along with the presentation of visionOS 27. Software announcements for the M5 Vision Pro will send a strong signal about Apple’s commitment to its spatial computing platform, even if no new hardware is expected in the short term.
John Ternus’s overhaul of the Vision roadmap reflects a simple conviction: consumers will not massively adopt a $3,500 virtual reality headset, but they might adopt affordable smart glasses integrating artificial intelligence into their daily lives. This is Apple’s bet for the next decade, and WWDC 2026 should outline its initial software contours.