You can drag the stars toward you by pinching and pulling your hand
From Auckland, a seventeen-year-old who began teaching himself to code at age five has won Apple's global developer competition — not with borrowed ideas, but with a deeply original act of bringing New Zealand's night sky within reach of anyone who cannot travel to its remote dark-sky sanctuaries. Alex Liang's app, built for spatial computing hardware that hasn't even arrived in his own country yet, weaves together Māori star lore, cutting-edge augmented reality, and a teenager's quiet determination to close the distance between people and wonder. His win is a reminder that the most meaningful technology often begins not with ambition alone, but with a genuine desire to solve a problem close to home.
- New Zealand's clearest dark skies sit hours away from most of its people — Liang saw that gap and decided to close it with code rather than a car journey.
- He travelled to Sydney just to buy hardware his own country doesn't yet sell, then drove to Lake Tekapo to scan a historic church with a laser and rebuild it inside a virtual cosmos of 12,500 particles.
- The app speaks te reo Māori, lets users physically pull stars toward them through space, and draws on cultural knowledge that most astronomy software has long overlooked.
- Apple's global competition — judged against developers worldwide — handed its top recognition to a self-taught high schooler who has now collaborated with international meteor research networks and donated tools to Auckland's Stardome Observatory.
- Liang heads to Cupertino in weeks, with a gap year of global tech conferences planned after graduation and a stated goal of one day working at the company whose tools shaped him.
Alex Liang is seventeen, self-taught since the age of five, and in a few weeks he will walk into Apple's headquarters in Cupertino after winning the company's global developer competition. His winning app addresses something quietly real: Lake Tekapo, home to New Zealand's only professional research observatory and some of the clearest skies on Earth, is simply out of reach for most people. Liang's answer was to bring the stars to them.
Building for Apple Vision Pro — a headset not yet sold in New Zealand — he travelled to Sydney to buy one, then drove to Tekapo and used his iPhone's Lidar scanner to capture the Church of the Good Shepherd in three dimensions. He constructed a galaxy of 12,500 particles using Apple's augmented reality frameworks and a custom shader he wrote himself. The result lets users pinch and pull celestial objects through space while the app speaks in both te reo Māori and English, embedding the cultural weight of what they're seeing.
This is not his first recognition. His earlier app Make The Wish, donated to Auckland's Stardome Observatory, uses machine learning to predict meteor showers and photograph them with an ordinary iPhone. He built it in collaboration with Professor Denis Vida of Canada's Global Meteor Network — a connection formed at an astronomy conference that became a lasting partnership.
The spark came from his father, a software developer who showed him Apple's WWDC 2020 livestream and introduced him to Swift. That early exposure — a curious child, a parent who coded, and a competition to aim at — set everything in motion. At Cupertino, Liang will work alongside Apple engineers and attend the live keynote. After finishing his final year at Westlake High School, he plans a gap year circling the world's tech conferences. His destination, eventually, is Apple itself.
Alex Liang is seventeen years old, self-taught since he was five, and in a few weeks he will walk into Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. He won the company's global developer competition with an app that lets you hold the night sky in your hands.
The app is built for Apple Vision Pro, the spatial computing headset that hasn't yet arrived in New Zealand. Liang travelled to Sydney to buy one. What he created with it addresses a real problem: Lake Tekapo, home to the country's only professional research observatory and some of the clearest dark skies on Earth, is simply too far away or too expensive for most people to reach. His solution was to bring the stars closer.
To build it, Liang drove to Tekapo himself and used his iPhone's Lidar scanner—the pulsed laser that reads depth and distance—to capture the Church of the Good Shepherd in three dimensions. From there, he constructed a galaxy containing 12,500 particles using RealityKit and ARKit, Apple's augmented reality frameworks, along with a custom Metal compute shader he wrote himself. The result is immersive in the truest sense. You can look at objects—the Moon, Matariki, the stars themselves—and drag them toward you by pinching and pulling your hand through space. The app speaks in te reo Māori and English, weaving in the cultural significance of what you're seeing.
This is not Liang's first time catching Apple's eye. He has been coding for twelve years. His earlier apps, Little Planets and Make The Wish, won recognition in previous Apple competitions. Make The Wish, which he donated to Auckland's Stardome Observatory, uses machine learning to predict where meteor showers will appear, making it possible to photograph them with an ordinary iPhone instead of specialized equipment. He built that one with help from Professor Denis Vida, who runs Canada's Global Meteor Network, a system of more than 1,400 meteor cameras spread across 42 countries. Liang met Vida at an astronomy conference and the collaboration stuck.
His father, a software developer now working in generative AI for video, lit the spark. He showed his son Apple's WWDC 2020 livestream, including that year's student competition winners, and introduced him to Swift, the programming language that powers Apple's ecosystem. The combination—a curious kid, a father who coded, and early exposure to the tools and the competition itself—created the conditions for what followed.
At Cupertino, Liang will watch the live keynote, work alongside Apple engineers, and participate in hands-on labs. He's hoping to meet Tim Cook, Apple's outgoing chief executive, and the company's top product managers. He's in his final year at Westlake High School. After that, he plans to take a gap year travelling to conferences and tech events around the world. The goal is clear: he wants to work at Apple one day. For now, he's seventeen, and the world is watching to see what he builds next.
Citações Notáveis
Lake Tekapo is renowned for its pristine dark skies, but it's geographically or financially out of reach for many— Alex Liang, explaining the motivation for his app
I want to work at Apple one day— Alex Liang, on his future plans
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why did you focus on stargazing specifically? There are so many things you could have built.
Lake Tekapo is special—it's one of the few places in New Zealand where you can actually see the stars properly. But most people can't get there. I wanted to democratize that experience.
And you chose to include te reo Māori in the app. That wasn't a technical requirement.
The stars have meaning in Māori culture. Matariki especially. If I'm going to show people the sky, I should show them the whole story, not just the astronomy.
You've been coding since you were five. Do you remember what that felt like—being that young and already building things?
Not really, but my dad says I was just curious. He'd show me how things worked, and I'd want to make my own. It became natural.
Your previous app uses AI to predict meteor showers. How does that change what's possible?
Without machine learning, you're guessing. With it, you can actually point your phone at the right part of the sky at the right time and capture something real. That's the difference between luck and knowing.
What do you want to learn at Apple that you can't learn anywhere else?
How they think about spatial computing at scale. How they design for billions of people. And honestly, I want to see how the best engineers in the world approach problems.