Apple Vision Pro Content Update Fuels Speculation of Removed Feature After User Spot

Apple Vision Pro will be available in the United States on 2 February, roughly eight months after it was first announced at WWDC 2023. When the device is released next month, it may come with one less feature, according to a keen-eyed X (formerly Twitter) user who noticed changes to the company's website and introductory video — the latter is now a few seconds shorter than the original video — to hide one Vision Pro feature that was shown off at WWDC last year.

X user M1 (@M1Astra) noticed a change to Apple's introductory video on YouTube, which was posted seven months ago. The original video, which was 9 minutes and 11 seconds lengthy, has been reduced to 9 minutes, resulting in an 11-second cut. The company has discontinued the Open Sky Environment function, which was supposed to "magically replace" the wearer's ceiling with a "clear, open sky."

Vision Pro headset: Edited trailer

However, scrolling the seek bar to 5:13 exposes the thumbnail preview from the previous video, which showed a woman wearing the Vision Pro headset, facing the ceiling, and observing blue skies and clouds on the headset. The edited trailer shows someone pulling the Vision Pro over their eyes aboard a plane.

Similarly, Apple's website has been updated, with the line "<...> or magically replace your ceiling with a clear, open sky" replaced by " <...> or turn your room into a personal movie theatre with Cinema Environment."

Vision Pro headset: the reason for the feature not operating

One possible reason why the feature isn't operating as planned is that there are hundreds of various types of roofs and ceilings, making it challenging to maximise the immersive feature for every scenario. Meanwhile, Apple has not confirmed if the capability has been removed from visionOS 1.0 or will be added to the headset in a future release.