Apple hasn't iterated on its Vision Pro hardware since launching it in early 2024 for $3,499, opting instead to refine the headset with a steady stream of software updates. But Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that a new version of the Vision Pro could arrive "as early as this year," with a replacement for the 3-year-old Apple M2 chip and a more comfortable strap.

Gurman says that the updated Vision Pro would ship with Apple's M4 processor, which launched in the iPad Pro last year and has since found its way into new MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, a new iMac, and a redesigned Mac mini.

Our tests in Apple's other devices (and publicly available benchmark databases like Geekbench's) show the M4 offering roughly 50 percent better multicore CPU performance and 20 or 25 percent better graphics performance than the M2—respectable increases for a device like the Vision Pro that needs to draw high-resolution images with as little latency as possible. Improvements to the chip's video encoding and decoding hardware and image signal processor should also provide small-but-noticeable improvements to the headset's passthrough video feed.

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Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday with the company's standard keynote presentation—a combination of PR about how great Apple and its existing products are and a first look at the next-generation versions of iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and the company's other operating systems.

Reporting before the keynote rarely captures everything that Apple has planned at its presentations, but the reliable information we've seen so far is that Apple will keep the focus on its software this year rather than using the keynote to demo splashy new hardware like the Vision Pro and Apple Silicon Mac Pro, which the company introduced at WWDC a couple years back.

If you haven't been keeping track, here are a few of the things that are most likely to happen when the pre-recorded announcement videos start rolling next week.

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