“Vision OS today is nowhere near as vibrant a third party developer ecosystem as the Mac was in 1985 or 1986. Resentment — numbers 1, 2, and 3 on the list of reasons why developer relations are strained with Apple — has to do with money.”

Developer fee resentment is the single biggest threat to Vision OS ecosystem adoption

The 1984 Mac, despite poor consumer sales, had a blossoming third-party app ecosystem driven by developer enthusiasm. Vision OS in 2025 does not — and Gruber argues this is primarily a financial resentment problem, not a technology problem. If Apple enters its next hardware platform cycle with reluctant rather than enthusiastic developers, it will lose the ecosystem advantage that made the iPhone unstoppable.