Apple Cuts Vision Pro and Siri Jobs to Refocus on AI

Apple's public framing to Bloomberg was careful: the company said it will create new roles as part of this change even as it eliminates existing ones, describing a realignment rather than a retreat ^[1]. IDC analyst Francisco Jeronimo read the cuts the same way, arguing they reflect Apple rethinking its future product roadmap rather than any single team's failure - 'sometimes that's the way companies move forward' ^[2]. The roadmap in question is smart glasses: Apple reportedly lost its smart-glasses chief to OpenAI, and Meta already has an early lead with its Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta lines ^[2]. Bank of America's Wamsi Mohan expects incoming CEO John Ternus to keep growing Apple's device base and services while leaning harder on on-device AI and new hardware going forward ^[2]. Notably, the community reaction on Reddit converged on a similar read - discussion citing an AppleInsider report framed the cuts through the lens of incoming CEO John Ternus reportedly putting the spatial-computing category 'on ice.' X reaction leaned toward a market-and-investor framing, with posts treating the cuts - including the shutdown of the Vision Pro gaming team - as material news for Apple's stock and part of a broader shift toward AI and new devices, alongside relays of Bloomberg's initial break.

The most detailed diagnosis of what actually killed daily Vision Pro use didn't come from any news outlet - it came from the r/apple comment threads reacting to the layoffs. The dominant explanation there wasn't the $3,499 price tag but ergonomics: the friction of repeatedly putting the headset on and taking it off made it impractical for casual, frequent use. A separate and more pointed strand of that discussion argued Apple undermined its own gaming and content ecosystem before the market ever had a chance to judge it - pulling Xbox Cloud Gaming, Steam Link, Fortnite, and a popular third-party YouTube client (Juno) from the platform. In that reading, shutting down the in-house gaming team isn't Apple abandoning a failed bet so much as it is the tail end of a self-inflicted retreat from the third-party content that might have kept the device relevant.

Apple's official explanation is that the Siri reshuffling is tied to an upcoming AI-infused version of the assistant built on an entirely new technical architecture, which changes the expertise the team needs - and that logic extended to the Intelligent Systems Experience group, a software-engineering unit responsible for some on-device AI features, which was also cut ^[3]. Reddit's reaction split along a fault line worth noting: several commenters called the Siri cuts backwards, arguing the assistant needs more investment rather than less given how far behind it is perceived to be. Others floated an unconfirmed but internally consistent theory - that the cuts align with Apple licensing a more capable outside model (a Gemini-style deal) to underpin the new architecture, which would explain why Apple can shed in-house roles while still calling the effort an AI upgrade rather than a downgrade. One commenter framed it more bluntly, casting the move as Apple conceding its in-house Siri couldn't compete and choosing to license capability instead of keep funding it internally.

The layoffs follow, rather than trigger, a period of retreat that was already visible in Apple's spending. Each immersive-video episode reportedly costs millions of dollars to produce, a cost that has not paid off against Vision Pro's limited installed base, which is why Apple is shrinking in-house production in favor of third-party developers ^[4]. Apple had also cut its Vision Pro digital ad spend by more than 95% year-to-date in markets including the US and UK ^[5], and IDC projected only 45,000 new Vision Pro units would ship in the 2025 holiday quarter ^[6]. Read together, the layoffs formalize a pullback that was already underway in the budget rather than mark its beginning. Even so, Apple has not walked away from the category outright - Vision Pro and visionOS remain active, and the company is reportedly still weighing a new Vision Pro model around 2028 ^[4].