Ternus and the App Store

It’s perhaps unsurprising with the billions (trillions if measured over multiple years) of profit that the company rakes in, that Apple wasn’t actually going to think of the customers any more than the little they already do. Trainloads of money corrupts all thinking like that. The writing was on the wall 10 years ago, but now it’s almost assured that Apple will fade into a sea of gray, boring, rounded corners, just like every other tech company.

Gurman stated that Meta hiring Alan Dye was a 'major coup' for the company. Just saying'.

> people buy Apple hardware because of the software

The hardware has never been more locked down, non-upgradable, and now, uneconomical. If they neither improve their own first-party and platform software, while making business worse for third-party developers who treat MacOS as a dumping ground for electron (or leave), what point will there be in buying the hardware?

Not sure where we’ll end up. Desktop Linux? Sure the desktop environment sucks, but MacOS is regressing anyway, and hey at least on my commodity PC hardware I can upgrade the RAM from 32 GB to 64 GB without throwing the entire machine away.

I thought it was curious/notable that Schiller would step back immediately as the handoff started, I was optimistic on Ternus taking over from Cook, but cautious concern rising.

"Apple’s app marketplace is loved by many consumers..."

I'd like to know the supporting evidence for that statement by Gurman. I say that with no cynicism or sarcasm. I've never heard or read broad appreciation like that about the "app marketplace."

I don't think Apple need to worry about developer sentiments, with vibe coding there will be more apps than ever.

A new generation of developers won't care that Apple takes a 30% cut, because they built and marketed their app in a week without doing much more than waiting for an ai to tell them it was done. Yes, quality will take a hit, but honestly, obvious vibe-slop is already being described as "It’s actually exquisitely well-designed and
painstakingly crafted." so yeah. It's a minor problem

https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/08/App_Store_Rejection_of_the_Week_-_Dark_Hours.pdf

@NaOH I have heard many people claim that the App Store is wonderful. This totally puzzles me, I don't understand it at all or agree with this, but there are many many people that feel that Apple has created a safe space for acquiring apps. Even many developers I've spoken to are enthusiastic about the fact that Apple literally offloads all the business requirements from then - processing credit cards, regulating downloads, dealing with taxes, user reviews etc. Having done oall these tasks myself a la carte, I'd just as do these things myself thank you very much. But the number of both users and developers that prefer the current App Store arrangement is far from insignificant, possibly even a majority, at least in my limited anecdotal experiences.

@Jim Rea: Thanks for that. I have heard specific compliments. I'm not (at all) a developer and I appreciate something like how I'm given advance notice on an app's annual renewal. But broad App Store appreciation is not something I've come across. Kind of like hearing, "I love the produce at Whole Foods" versus hearing, "I think Whole Foods is just great."

But I've also never known anyone who was ensnared by one of the App Store scam apps. At least there's widespread reports about that. So good to hear even anecdotal experiences like yours since I don't think Gurman was basing his wording off anything more than the App Store being an economic success for Apple.

@Kristoffer That's a surprisingly cynical take. I'm going to present another viewpoint: Apple does need developers and lack of developers is why the Vision Pro died. Even vibe coded slop wouldn't help because Slop devs aren't the kind to create an app for fun/curiosity. It's about money for them.

I think Apple has destroyed a resource more important than money: goodwill. And without it, they're struggling to succeed in anything they don't already control. That's a big red flag.

Apple app platforms:
iPad = dead
Vision Pro = dead
AppleTV = dead
Apple Watch = dead
macOS = dead
iPhone = micropayment and scams are flourishing. Otherwise dead

The iPhone started with such promise: new inputs (touch), new interactions (accelerometer) and experiences (AR potential). Yet seems like all that is a long long memory. Now it’s nothing but weather, todo and note apps. For as large as Apples footprint is, has anyone recently been able to build an actual business on them besides candy crush style games? The few well known businesses I know were all on Apples platforms pre App Store. So much potential in the hardware

@MaxOakland

> lack of developers is why the Vision Pro died

I'll suggest a different take on that; namely WHY was there a lack of developers.

Headset computing has two paradigms that can work:

- A cheap, near disposably-priced headset that is a platform of its own.
- An expensive headset that is a *peripheral* for other devices.

The cheap headset will attract users, and developers because of fixed hardware targets, like the way a games console has a decade-long developer life, and massive target markets because of affordability. Because it's a separate platform, it brings a negative effect to the user in that it's yet another platform, appstore, document format etc, more complexity and more things to manage, spreading the user more thinly across their device ecosystem. Self-contained tracking is ok, because these headsets are not designed to key with fixed accuracy to the real world.

The expensive headset will attract users by virtue of being a durable output device, like a monitor, that can survive multiple rounds of computer purchases, and will always be as good, as performant as it was when first bought. They can be priced for their high quality optics, because they're durable purchases. By acting as a peripheral for other devices it acts as a utility multiplier for each of those devices. It provides a value-add to every platform it's plugged into - it makes your Mac a VR device, your iPhone a VR device, etc. The developer story is you can add depth to your existing apps, and customers will buy in to it, because they only have to buy the headset once every 5-10 years. Expensive headsets need to offer lighthouse tracking, so they can integrate into existing tracked production processes, which are all lighthouse based.

Apple chose a middle ground, that combines all the low-power imprecise downsides of the former, with all of the expensive and heavy downsides of the latter, with no upsides that matter to the people who actually use this paradigm already.

So why would developers get on board.

Mmm, big mistake.

See also Satya Nadella.

There is no big VR headset market no matter what, and especially not in the $3,500 segment.

Part of the problem almost feels like what Steve Jobs warned about regarding OpenDoc. Apple had the technology (e.g., ARKit), and then tried to retrofit user stories of "maybe if we put that in a headset, they'll want to do something with it". But then you run into lots of problems, even before the price tag. OK, so this one is especially good at immersive video? Great, except how do you explain to couples that not only are they in for at least $7,000 now, they also can't _see each other_ while watching a movie together? Doesn't sound very immersive now, does it.

But there's plenty of other problems, arising either from "this technology is way ahead of its time" (as evidenced by the price tag). In that case, the Vision Pro is the Newton, the Quest is the Palm Pilot, and the iPhone has yet to come. Or they come from: hey, this sounds neat in a sci-fi movie kinda way, but lots of things do that aren't actually very practical in real life.

It's interesting that they ultimately made VNC'ing a Mac such a key feature, when they _could've_ gone one step further and made visionOS derive not from iOS but from macOS.

That's not to say the Vision Pro doesn't have some great features; the dial to transition between AR and VR comes to mind.

Apple's treatment of developers didn't help the Vision Pro launch, but I'm unconvinced they did much to hurt it. Even if it were $999, and had a bigger ecosystem, I'm unconvinced the whole form factor / haptics of a headset are quite ready yet, if ever, for the mass market.

Back to the market, it's likely Meta made more revenues with Quest than Apple did with Vision Pro; certainly Meta's unit numbers must be much higher (but the average sales price will be about a tenth). But even the lower-end, more games-focused headsets haven't taken the world by storm.

@Sören

You're right, there's isn't a Apple Big big market for a $3500 headset, and the market that does exist for high end headsets, Varjo, Somnium, Pimax's higher end devices are all the type of device I described; durable, lighthouse trackable and *tethered*. No one in the high end market cares about having to be wired to their workstation.

Vision Pro is what you get when people who don't use the tools already in the market, think they know better than the people who do, their product costs just as much as existing high end devices, but it's the wrong balance of compromises.

They made VNCing to a Mac a big feature as a desperation move, because they made a $3500 iPad whose major product story is covered by a $500 Quest, and which doesn't do what other comparably priced headsets can.

By the time it should have become obvious "iPad on your face" isn't a product anyone wants at the pricepoint Apple wanted to target, they were committed to their paradigm so had to do Mac connectivity in dumbest way possible, as VNC rather than the headset as a peripheral, so you can't get all the display capability of a Mac on the headset. It's still limited to the abilities of an iPad Pro.

And that's really the greatest sin of the Vision Pro - it should have been an alternative to a Pro Display XDR. You plug it into a Mac directly, and you have a VR-Native version of macOS as your UI, driven by the GPU in the Mac.

Unfortunately, Apple chose to make a UI paradigm that's just an iPad on your face - stacked flats in 3D space, like having a bunch of iPads floating around you, when the reality is that VR is about apps as working *environments*, where the tools are also three dimensional objects, that you place in space, and working is a full-body experience.

Trust Apple to take the exultation of making digital workflows a physical thing, where you can walk around, and reduce it to twitching fingers while sitting on a couch.

I don't know why some expect something different from Ternus, he was handpicked by Tim Cook. Did you really expect him to choose someone different than him?