Apple’s recent Vision Pro layoffs reached further across the company than initially disclosed, according to Bloomberg News’ Mark Gurman.

Last month, Gurman reported that Apple cut about 100 jobs from the Vision Products Group, largely by shutting down the headset’s gaming team and shrinking the unit that produces immersive video. Combined with reductions on Siri and related software teams, the changes affected more than 200 people. Apple said it was realigning teams to focus on new devices and AI, while creating some new roles and offering affected employees a chance to apply elsewhere.

Gurman now says the cuts also hit Vision Pro-related staff in other parts of Apple, including device security, audio engineering, Siri integration, testing, and visionOS. Because visionOS is expected to underpin upcoming smart glasses as well as the headset, the broader reductions affect shared software rather than Vision Pro hardware alone.

According to Gurman, the company has told employees that Vision Pro and visionOS are not going away. A redesigned successor, internally known as N224, is still not expected before late 2028. Near-term emphasis has shifted to AI wearables, including smart glasses code-named N50 that remain on track for next year. Those glasses are not expected to support the same immersive video or advanced gaming experiences as the current headset.

The moves follow the June departure of Paul Meade, who led Vision Pro and smart glasses work before leaving for OpenAI. People inside the Vision organization have spent months urging new CEO John Ternus to keep investing in the platform even as sales lag, Gurman reports. Colleagues who have discussed the headset with Ternus say he was skeptical from the start that a bulky, expensive enclosed device could reach a mass market. He is still said to support the glasses project, but Gurman reports he would consider walking away from head-worn devices as a category if they fail to catch on.

Apple has described the changes as limited and tied to evolving product priorities. Vision Pro launched in 2024 as the company’s spatial-computing flagship but never became a high-volume product, constrained by price and form factor. In-house immersive videos can cost millions to produce and have not proven cost-effective given relatively small active use. Apple now plans fewer internal productions and more third-party content.
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MacDailyNews Take: Vision Pro should never have shipped in its initial or present form and it never would have shipped under Steve Jobs or, it sounds like, under John Ternus.

[This] is exactly what you’d expect to occur when a product is released too early to average users… Apple Vision Pro is a devkit for developers, not for average users, and should have been released as a devkit for developers. – MacDailyNews, March 26, 2024

As we wrote on March 22nd:

There are a lot of people inside and outside of Apple who think the company should have waited on the Vision Pro, but it’s fairly easy today to see why Tim Cook released this beta (alpha?) devkit: He likely knew last year, or had a strong inkling, that Project Titan was a goner and there wasn’t much excitement in Apple’s pipeline. He’d need something to point to as “innovation” while he continued on his seemingly unending quest to iterate and monetize products invented by Steve Jobs’ Apple (a very different place) while continuing Apple’s retail store buildout. He also needed something to energize developers and, who knows, they might come up with a killer visionOS app while Apple toils on the long road to real lightweight spatial computing glasses and beyond.

More importantly, Apple last year had already come to the sad realization that they’d missed the generative artificial intelligence revolution and would need a distraction while they feverishly scrambled to catch up (the fruits of which — alongside what sound like disappointing partnerships which hopefully, somehow, preserve user privacy — we’ll hopefully begin to see at WWDC this June).

You have to feel for Cook. After a decade plus of being able to iterate and monetize Jobs’ inspired products and services and continue adding retail stores around the world to spectacular effect, and being lauded for it, he now finds himself in a place that requires actual vision to be able to see which path to take. And he’s not the guy. Even the guy who put him in the position knew it.

Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs

See also:
• Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs knew about Apple Watch – February 13, 2023
• Work on Apple Vision Pro began under Steve Jobs – August 23, 2023

Beyond the fact that Cook can’t even execute a compelling live keynote address, his big send off, the “Apple Car,” [the idea of which was also germinated under Jobs] fizzled in ignominious failure.

See also:
• Scrapped Apple Car ‘a massive disappointment that will alter the course of the company’s history, perhaps for decades to come’ – Gurman – March 11, 2024
• Apple employees referred to doomed Apple Car project as ‘The Titanic Disaster’ – February 29, 2024

So, despite myriad misgivings and protestations inside Apple, Cook pulled the trigger early on the Vision Pro. He had to have something to point to that would buy him some time. Even Apple’s rubber-stamping board of lackeys would wake up and start asking questions otherwise.

While Cook is hemming and hawing when faced with shareholders (virtually, of course, never again in person for as long as Cook remains), Apple is currently in scramble mode trying to catch up to rivals in generative AI, a technology the company seems to have completely missed while focusing instead on the not-ready-for-primetime Apple Vision Pro, visionOS, its now-canceled decade-long multi-billion-dollar electric vehicle boondoggle, replacing leather in iPhone cases and Apple Watch bands with overpriced junk in a quest to “save the planet,” forcing employees to endure a constant barrage of time-wasting zero-productivity DEI sessions, and myriad other various and sundry “initiatives” which Cook deems of import. – MacDailyNews, February 28, 2024

When you lose your visionary CEO and replace him with a caretaker CEO, this is the type of aimless, late, bureaucratic dithering that ensues. – MacDailyNews, November 21, 2017

Thankfully, blessedly, today is finally a Brand New Day for Apple!

See also: Time to Think Different: Tim Cook’s leadership has run its course at Apple – MacDailyNews, June 20, 2025

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The post Apple’s Vision Pro job cuts were broader than first reported appeared first on MacDailyNews.

Juli Clover:

In addition to cutting dozens of Vision Pro employees who worked on features like immersive video and gaming, Apple is laying off people who worked on Siri and AI, reports Bloomberg.

Apple is “largely shutting down” the Vision Pro team focused on gaming, and it is paring down the team that makes immersive video content. Approximately 100 employees who were part of the Vision Products Group have been laid off, with Apple also cutting 100 people from its Siri and software groups.

[…]

Despite the cuts to the Vision Products Group, employees were told that the Vision Pro and visionOS operating system are not being eliminated.

Alexei Oreskovic:

Apple told Bloomberg that it was realigning some teams in order to “evolve” the business to provide the best experience for users. “While we will create new roles as part of this change, it will also impact a limited number of existing roles,” Apple said.

The job cuts are tiny in relation to the overall company, which had 166,000 full time employees in September 2025 (the last time Apple disclosed its headcount). But as John Ternus prepares to take the CEO job just over one week from now, the timing seems designed to get some unpleasant work out of the way and let the new boss come in with clean hands.

It’s hard to find good people, Apple has plenty of work that needs doing, and it just reported a record quarter. Maybe they don’t need more immersive video content, but it’s not clear to me why the other employees couldn’t be reassigned. And I’m really wondering what’s going on with the general software group, where they’re getting rid of legends like Keith Stattenfield:

So, I posted yesterday on an another place that I had been just laid off at Apple after 37 years. ( Surprise! I got laid off. It was unexpected. I am still coming to terms with it. Yes, I will be ok. ) And I mentioned some of the things I’d done, and mused that I’d thought I’d finish out my career in a few years having passed along the knowledge to younger engineers. Alas, that’s going to get left unfinished.

Jim Luther:

I felt much the same way, because I’d also hoped to slowly ease into retirement instead of being given options that led me to retire a few years early.

Chris Hanson:

Laying off anyone working on anything related to Apple Vision Pro is a gross strategic blunder, because it signals a lack of confidence in the product. Put them to work fixing bug backlogs if you don’t want them working on what they were doing, but don’t lay them off and let that show up in the press, that’s fucking amateur hour shit.

[…]

And the same goes for the Software Engineering layoffs, which don’t seem to be reported much upon because the layoffs have been described as “Apple Vision Pro, Siri, and software” where perhaps people don’t get that the latter is how Apple refers to the Software Engineering (SWE) org. There are so many bugs that should be fixed, that users encounter in their everyday lives, just reassign people to work on them. It’s stupid to lay people off when they could do that.

Plus, maybe retaining that institutional knowledge would help forestall future bugs.

Previously:

• Apple’s Q3 2026 Results
• Giving Up on the Vision Pro
• John Ternus Replaces Tim Cook
• AI Layoffs
• Why Apple Still Hasn’t Cracked AI
• Apple Shifts Siri From Giannandrea to Rockwell
• Apple Books Layoffs
• Apple Cancels Car Project
• Thank You, Sal

Update (2026-08-25): Louie Mantia:

Laying off employees who were working on a product that largely “failed” in the market is extremely hurtful to those employees, because the product’s failure is not their fault. They were directed to do that work. Apple should find new places for every single one of the employees who worked on Vision Pro. They owe it to the people who they directed to work toward the goal of making and maintaining Vision Pro. They can afford to do that.

Steven Huang:

Apple didn’t even work that hard to take care of the iPod employees who were once half the company’s revenue. In the end they basically gave Nest a free engineering team.

Update (2026-08-28): See also: ArsTechnica.

Update (2026-09-02): Hartley Charlton:

Recent layoffs of Apple employees working on the Vision Pro were broader than previously thought, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.

[…]

Gurman reports that people inside the Vision Pro group have spent months lobbying new CEO John Ternus to stay the course on the platform even as sales continue to underwhelm. Colleagues who have discussed the headset with Ternus say he was skeptical of it from the start, seeing it as too bulky and too costly to reach a mass audience.

Interestingly, since visionOS apparently runs on Apple’s upcoming smart glasses, the wider layoffs impact software shared across both product lines rather than the headset alone.

Marko Crnković (tweet):

I was recently informed that I am being laid off from my position at Apple. It was unexpected, especially coming right after WWDC, where several of the projects I led and features I contributed to were announced.

[…]

You can find my resume here.

Previously:

• John Ternus Is CEO