For years many Apple watchers have complained that the company doesn’t innovate anymore, that it has just been riding the coattails of Steve Jobs’ iPhone. Yes, the Apple Watch launched under CEO Tim Cook, but its development started under Steve Jobs and was later refined by the Cook-led Apple.

So here we are as Apple unveils an entirely new product category for the first time in nearly a decade — and arguably the biggest innovation since the original iPhone —and there’s a wave of negativity around the Apple Vision Pro.

There’s some serious irony in that backlash, but the skepticism is understandable, especially since the new Vision Pro starts at $3,499. That’s $500 more than the already high price some had predicted and it’s $2,500 more than the Meta Quest Pro, though to be fair Meta's headset started at $1,500 before a price cut. But as someone who has tried the Vision Pro, I think it's important to take a step back for a moment and think about what Apple has accomplished here.

While the Vision Pro certainly borrows a lot from the iPhone, this is a breakthrough that that both leverages recent innovations (like Apple silicon) and feels like a completely new device that officially kicks off the post-iPhone era.

There’s a reason why Apple is calling the Vision Pro a spatial computer as opposed to a VR headset or mixed reality headset. It’s not just about being passive and watching stuff around you. Spatial computing implies something active, and there’s plenty of things you can do with this wearable device.

"The Apple Vision Pro is the most impressive piece of technology I've ever seen," said Ben Bajarin, CEO and principal analyst for Creative Strategies. "So many Apple innovations that came before are evident in this product. From all their work in custom silicon, miniaturization, sensor fusion, camera sensors, custom sensors, all the things they learned in other products manifest in AVP to create the experience they did."