Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

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I've been on HN for a long while now, so I believe I'm allowed to say this: I hate the idea of HN turning into Reddit. I hate 'news' stories about how we should all be outraged and boycot something. It's a ton of sheep following some ill advised, likely false rumor half the time. It's just kids in the playground trying to exercise mob rule.

There was a news story, saying how Apple have changed their wording to disallow non-approved languages for developing apps. Great. That's news. But 100+ follow up 'opinion pieces' on it? srsly? Do we need all that crap? 10 out of the top 22 stories on HN are about this one item!

The biggest mistake Apple has made IMHO has been opening the app store to all developers. They should have carefully selected chosen, quality partners, who would agree to play by Apples rules.

At the end of the day though, the general public doesn't care one bit how Apple "treat" developers, so it's all fairly moot.

If you take some principled stand by not making another worms game because you can't write it in clojure, you can be sure as hell someone else will just get on with it and write it in whatever Apple want.

At the end of the day though, the general public doesn't care one bit how Apple "treat" developers, so it's all fairly moot.

I keep hearing similar logic from lots of people - but surely you would agree that the general public cares about what cool apps they can run on their iPhone vs. their neighbor's Android? Up until now most devs have grit their teeth and tolerated the App store policies since they were outweighed by Apple's superior market size, UX, and even dev tools (Xcode, instruments, the simulator, and the SDK itself are all probably more well-thought out than their Android counterparts). But if you push them hard enough, they will move, and not just the ones with free software moral outrage.

Lots of other people have compared Apple's policies favorably with the policies of the video game console manufacturers. I invite those people to look at the history of what happened in the mid '90s in the transition from the Genesis/SNES era to the PlayStation/N64 era.

Apple's decision was undoubtedly not arbitrarily made. It was not an accidental combination of rules that produced something developers find distasteful; it was very intentional and deliberate.

I agree with axod: the "general public" doesn't care about the development environment for their Apple products. They just want things to work. If this rule results in a worse experience for consumers, Apple might have to repeal it; if not, it will probably stand.

If you really want a better situation for developers, stop with the boycots and "mob rule," as axod called it. Spend your time helping to increase the quality of an alternative platform that seems more developer friendly.

(P.S. 9 out of thirty stories on HN's main page are Apple related -- wtf.)

Graham's Law: As a HN discussion on community quality grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Reddit approaches 1.

(that said, I totally agree)

Jimbo's Law: As a discussion thread grows longer, the probability that someone in the thread will define a new law approaches 1.

Thanks for saying this.

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