The Three Magic Gates – The Imaginative Universal

The (Missing) Apple Vision Pro Developer Ecosystem

January 30, 2024February 6, 2024 James Ashley

When the app store became available on the iPhone 3G in July of 2008, it had 500 native apps available. When the Apple Vision Pro comes out on February 2, 2024, it will reportedly have around 200* native apps available for download.

These numbers are important in understanding how what is occurring this week fits into the origin myth of the smartphone in late capitalist popular culture.

Here I don’t use the term “myth” to mean that what we understand about the origins of the smartphone are untrue – that the app store was Apple’s “killer app”, that a sui generis army of developers became enamored of the device and built a developer ecosystem around it, that the number of native apps, mostly games, built for the iPhone grew rapidly, even exponentially (to 100,000 by 2010), that someone attached a long tail to the app store beast so that a handful of popular apps captured the majority of the money flooding into the app store, and so on. This is our established understanding of what happened from 2008 to the present. I don’t intend to undermine it.

Rather, I’m interested in how this first cycle of the Apple device story, the original course, affects the second cycle, the ricorso. After Apple reached a saturation point for its devices in its primary, affluent markets, it was able to shift and make profits from the secondary market by selling re-branded older phones to the second and third world. But towards the end of the 20-teens, it was clear that even these secondary markets had hit a saturation point. People were not updating their phones as frequently as they used to, worldwide, and this would eventually hit the bottom line. The corso was reaching its period of decline; the old king was wounded; and in this period of transition the golden bough needs to be recovered in order to renew the technological landscape.

In February 2024, Tim Cook, the king of the orchard, is restarting Apple by embracing an iPhone replacement as he prepares to hand his kingdom over to a new king. The roadmap for this is occurring in an almost ritualistic manner, with commercials that echo the best moments of the previous device revolution.

If I am reaching deeply into the collective unconscious to explain what is happening today, it is because modern marketing is essentially myth creation. And Apple has to draw up all of this mythical sense of the importance of the smartphone in order to recreate what it had in 2008. It must draw mixed reality developers into its field of influence in order to create a store that will sustain it through the next 25 years, or risk a permanent decline.

The original 2008 app store, despite a pretty terrible iPhone SDK developer experience, was successful because developers believed in the promise that they could become app millionaires. Secondarily, developers also jumped in because they believed in the romance around the Apple developer ecosystem as a nexus for artists and dreamers.

I believe Apple believes its success is dependent on making an orchard for developers to create in. As beautiful as the new Vision Pro is, it can only be an occasion for the greatness of others. And in order to attract developers into this orchard, Apple must convince them that this has all happened before, in 2008, and that there will be a golden period in the beginning when any app will make money because there are so few apps available – fruit will drop from the trees into developers’ hands and fish will leap from the rivers into their laps. There is a flaw in this myth that, oddly, will ultimately confirm Apple’s preferred narrative.

First and foremost, any developer in the mixed reality space — that is, the space where development for the HoloLens, Magic Leap or the latest generations of Meta Quest occurs – understands that there is a vast crevasse separating the world of MR developers and the world of Apple developers. All the current Apple tools: XCode, SwiftUI, the various “kits”, are built for flat applications. On the other side, development for mixed reality headsets has been done on relatively mature game engines and for the most part on the Unity Engine. These developers understand spatial user interactions and how to move and light 3D objects around a given space, but they don’t know the first thing about those Apple tools. And the learning curve is huge in either direction. It will take a leap of faith for developers to attempt it.

There was originally some excitement about a Unity toolset for Apple Vision Pro mixed reality apps called Polyspatial which seemed promising. Initially, however, it was suggested that the price for using it might be in the tens of thousands**. Later still, it appears that much of the team working on it was affected by the recent Unity layoffs. Had it succeeded, it would have offered a bridge for mixed reality developers to cross. But from the early previews, it appears to still be a work in progress and might still take 6 months or longer to get to a mature point.

I’ve only broken the potential Apple Vision Pro developer ecosystem into two tribes, but there are many additional tribes in this landscape. The current Apple development ecosystem isn’t homogenous, nor is the mixed reality dev ecosystem. Some MR devs come from the games industry and for them MR may be a short detour in their careers. Some MR devs got their big breaks doing original development for the HoloLens in 2016 – these are probably the most valuable devs to have because they have seen 9 years of ups and downs in this industry. There are digital agency natives, who tend to dabble in lots of technologies. There are also veterans of the Creative Technologist movement of 2013, though most of these have gone on to work in AI related fields. The important thing is that none of these people work like any of the others. They have different workflows and different things they find important in coding. They may not even like each other.

Even more vexing — unless you simply want to create a port of an app from another platform — you will probably need a combination of all of these people in order to create something great in the Apple Vision Pro. This isn’t easy. And because it isn’t easy, it will take a lot more time for the Apple Vision Pro to grow its store of native apps than anticipated. This is going to be a long road.

So how long will it take Apple devs to get their heads inside spatial computing? And how long will it take coders with MR experience to learn the Apple tools? To be generous, let’s say that if a small team is very focused and works together well, and if they start today, they will be able to skill up in about five months. They will need an additional 3 months to design and build a worthwhile app. Supposing some overlap between learning and building, let’s say this comes to six months. This is still six months from launch, or sometime in August, before the number of Vision Pro apps starts to pick up.

This is six months in which the availability of native apps for the Vision Pro will be relatively low and in which any decent app will have a good chance of making serious money. The current inventory for Vision Pros in 2024 is estimated to be around 400,000. 400,000 people with Apple Vision Pros, assuming they sell out (and Apple has already sold 200,000 before launch) will be looking for things to do with their devices. It’s a good bet that someone who has paid approximately $2,800 for a spatial computing headset will be willing to spend a few hundred dollars more for apps for their device.

And let’s say an average app will go for $5. Assuming just a quarter of available app purchasers will be interested in buying your app, you could easily make $500,000. This is a decent return for a few months of learning a new software platform. And the sooner you learn it, the more likely you are to be at the root of the long tail rather than at its tip.

Which is to say, even if you attempt to escape the myth that Apple is creating for itself, you will eventually find your way back to it. Such is the nature of myths and the hero’s journey. They are always true in a self-fulfilling way.

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* On 2/2/24, the AVP was released with 600 native apps.

** Currently Polyspatial and VisionOS packages for Unity require a $2000/seat/yr Unity Pro license.

Outsourcing to Sleestak

May 31, 2009 James Ashley5 Comments

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I have a mirror blog called ‘Outsourcing to Sleestak’ that is hosted on my company’s corporate site. It has seen a recent spike in hits for reasons I do not fully understand. Looking through the search queries that bring people to my mirror site, I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot of interest in the advantages of outsourcing to sleestak, especially in these difficult financial times.

As the world’s leading authority on outsourcing to sleestak, I thought it might be helpful if I provide the following FAQ. Bear in mind that these FAQ are solely the result of my personal research and expertise in the area. My company has its own outsourcing solution that I will decline to comment on – especially as I am offering a competing solution to the problem of providing cheap alternatives for expensive problems. So without further ado:

The Outsourcing to Sleestak FAQ

1. Isn’t the plural of ‘sleestak’ in fact ‘sleestaks’?

No. The plural form of ‘sleestak’ is ‘sleestak’, as in “Ten sleestak can do the work of a typical developer without the added cost of health insurance or the hassle of labor laws.”

2. I have heard that sleestak are not effective developers and often screw up projects, in part due to their lack of fingers. Is this true?

This is a common lie spread by jealous outsourcing centers in Bangalore. While the physical disabilities of sleestak are admittedly problematic, they are more than capable of manipulating polyhedral objects called ‘crystals’. Work stations in the land of the lost are equipped with large keyboards in which the typical key is replaced with these crystals, making the sleestak more than qualified to search MSDN forums for code samples they can paste into their own projects. Furthermore, I find these attacks on the digitally impaired to be highly prejudicial and unnecessary.

3. What about the language barrier?

While it is true that the sleestak lack vocal cords, per se, I have never found this to be a deal breaker in working with sleestak outsourcing centers. Each sleestak ‘tribe’, which is made up of 20 to 30 sleestak, has a ‘leader’ which I like to call the ‘project lead’. Each leader has a magic crystal around his neck that allows him to communicate in a faux English accent. Software requirements may be given to the ‘project lead’ who will in turn translate them for the sleestak workforce. You will never personally have to interact with a sleestak developer.

4. What if I want a project lead onsite at my company? Is there anyone available to do that?

Besides sleestak workers and sleestak leaders, we also have sleestak from the distant past on staff such as Enik who are highly educated and trained in ‘soft’ skills. They are experts at telling the client what he wants to hear and will keep the project on track, or at least lead the client to believe that everything is on track. In a pinch, he is also experienced at rationalizing delivery problems and deflecting blame.

5. Can sleestak outsourcing meet my advanced programming needs in Silverlight, WPF and other complex technologies?

You are clearly looking at this in the wrong way. If you are concerned with getting work done, you should look to your internal developers, to independent contractors or consulting firms. If you are concerned with the bottom line, however, then you need to be outsourcing. At 99 cents an hour, sleestak are the most cost-effective solution for your programming needs.

6. I think you punted on that last question. If sleestak don’t know these technologies, then my project will never be completed. Shouldn’t I be concerned with getting working code, as well as cost savings, at the end of an engagement with sleestak?

Apples and oranges. It is all a question of motivation.

If you simply want to get work done, then you should give it to an internal team of developers. Internal developers, however, do not always keep up with the latest technology and methodologies and expect companies to provide expensive training.

An alternative is to hire independent contractors or contractors provided by staffing agencies. While these are frequently more expensive than internal staff, you can typically be assured of hiring someone with the skills you need to complete a project. Contractors, however, have the following shortcoming – they dread the day they complete a project because this is the day they must look for a new job. Consequently, they have a tendency to do only what is requested of them, seeing no need to do additional work that might bring their engagement to an end. Alternatively, they will over-architect a project in such a way that they will be needed well past the completion date for a project since they are the only ones who understand the code.

Another alternative is to engage a high-end consulting firm. High-end consultants are judged by their consulting companies based on their ability to deliver. Consequently they will work hard to complete a project as quickly and efficiently as possible in a way that leaves the client happy. They will juggle development speed, code quality and code maintainability in a manner that best meets the client’s objectives. Their ultimate goal is to complete a project as successfully and quickly as possible so they can move on to their next project and accomplish the same thing. The main shortcoming of hiring high-end consultants is that they are really expensive. They know they are the best and charge accordingly.

If money becomes a problem – let’s be frank, when isn’t it? – and you can’t afford the best solution, then you have a moral obligation to choose the cheapest solution. Why allow yourself to be straight jacketed by the dictum that you get what you pay for. With sleestak, you’ll be paying for what you get.

7. Your answer makes brilliant sense. But I’ve heard there is alot of turnover among sleestak. Isn’t this a problem?

Perhaps this is a problem for traditional outsourcing but not for sleestak outsourcing. Sleestak belong to what is known as a ‘hive mind’. What one sleestak knows, all other sleestak in the vicinity know equally well. This basically alleviates all the issues of project hand-over and application maintenance that plague the typical software project.

It is common to call developers ‘resources’. This gives the impression that all developers are commodities and interchangeable. Sadly this is not the case, and great effort has to be expended on team building, personality management and motivational techniques.

With sleestak outsourcing, we take these soft issues out of the equation. The hive mind ensures that sleestak are true development commodities. If one goes off to join a rival firm or is injured in a freak elevator accident, this is not a problem! We can replace him with someone with identical skills and an identical knowledge of the project the very next day.

8. I love the idea, but this sounds like science fiction. How can you afford to bill 99 cents an hour for software development? Aren’t you exploiting your sleestak?

Certainly not. Sleestak are not motivated by anything as banal as money. They are motivated by the desire to achieve client satisfaction – as represented by their client satisfaction target numbers for which they are rewarded with papaya and mangos. Unsatisfactory target numbers garner a half-hour in direct sunlight, which they find physically painful. This is a win-win situation for everybody.

And while there are certainly moral dilemmas involved in the employment of sleestak, this is not your problem. You can leave the worrying to us.

9. Given the recent backlash against foreign workers, isn’t outsourcing to sleestak a PR nightmare?

Let’s face it. There’s only one opinion you need to be concerned about – the opinion of your shareholders. Issues such as community backlash, employee morale, code quality and project deadlines are ultimately peripheral. The purpose of outsourcing is to demonstrate fiscal responsibility to shareholders. This is why, when a project goes bad or revenue is lost due to missed release dates, the solution is always to outsource even more work to sleestak – thus demonstrating your ability to quickly respond to revenue loss with efficient cost-cutting.

When it comes down to it, what’s good for sleestak is good for America.