> Across several stores, salespeople reported doing dozens of demos without closing a single sale. “We sell maybe one a week,” Barrett said in late May, two weeks after the union had voted to authorize a strike in order to make a final push for a contract.

> “Uh, none a week,” Billy Jarboe, a coworker, corrected her. “If we do a return, we’re negative.”

I don’t know that sales training alone could save the Vision Pro. After the device is sold, people still have to want to use it.

I bought one a couple months ago. During the in-store demo things seemed fine and the new head strap seemed like a big improvement. However, the demo is still very guided and doesn’t necessarily cover real-world usage. Most other devices in the store are simply available for people to play with, so they can try whatever they want.

Once I got it home I couldn’t deep dive as much as I would with other products, because the eye fatigue was very real. Day 2 I didn’t even use it, because my eyes were still tired from day 1. What I did try wasn’t a smooth experience. Window management was tedious and finicky, widgets didn’t persist between sessions like they were supposed to, clarity was a problem where some things seemed tack sharp while other things seemed blurry, and I would rather just plug it into the wall as the battery pack was more annoying than useful. By day 4 or 5 the novelty had already worn off. By day 6 I was ready to return it. I didn’t even keep it for the full return windows to maximize the things I could try. I had no desire to put it on and had to work up the motivation to put it I just to do the factory reset.

When I went in for the return the employee processing the return seemed genuinely thankful that I was returning it, as she said so many people were getting stuck with them. I was all ready to give my feedback on why I was returning it, and instead the reception was more like, “of course you’re returning this, everyone should.”

I once read when the iPhone was being developed that they brought a version in for Jobs to review and after using it for a few minutes he calmly said, “this isn’t a product yet.” I guess the lack of his signature anger spoke volumes and scared them more than the yelling. This was how I felt about the Vision Pro. It’s not a product yet. It doesn’t know what it wants to be and doesn’t feel like something I want to use. Even just for watching a movie, it was tedious to get going and unpleasant to sit there for several hours locked in.