“The original Macintosh in 1984 was $2,500 — inflation adjusted that's like $7,200 today. It sold so poorly it was the impetus for driving Jobs out of the company. And yet. The Mac was the right idea for the future of personal computing. It needed at least four or five years before you're like holy shit this is a thriving platform.”

Vision Pro follows the 1984 Mac playbook: expensive first version building toward a mass platform

Apple's Vision Pro is not the iPhone — it is closer to the 1984 Mac: an expensive enthusiast device building a platform ecosystem years before the mass-market hardware is ready. The 1984 Mac was considered a flop; the press called the GUI a gimmick. Apple's patient pattern of replaying this arc means Vision Pro's weak early sales do not signal failure — they signal phase one of a long arc that developers building for the platform today can get ahead of.