Why is Apple acting like an asshole?
jessesquires.com
jessesquires.com
Edit: and guess what, if Apple didn’t have advance notice of this do you think their own build process could have handled it? I’d bet money on “no”. XBS takes hours itself to spin up a new build, and with the usual testing a validation you see even the fastest updates taking at least a day. Back in iOS 7 it took them two to get critical fixes out the door, and patching the unc0ver 0-day took like a week for reference.
That's typical Apple, they are allergic to technical info and error display, when things are not working, there's no way to know why.
Steve Jobs used to say it over and over again when criticized by angry developers[1] that their main focus will always be users instead of developers and that the latter will just have to suck it up if they want to get a piece of the lucrative Apple user base pie.
In comedic contrast, here's a sweaty Steve Balmer shouting "Developers!" for half a minute.[2]
Ah, the early 2000's, with Apple and Microsoft battling it out, what a time to be alive.
Android error: App displays error and disappears
Windows error: App displays error, possibly writes to error log, dumps memory to disk, and suggests you visit a URL that provides no useful information.
None of them are great, but at least Windows gives you something to search for.
EDIT: Formatting
For example my auntie calling me in tears because windows "had performed an illegal operation" (verbatim error message text) and she was terrified she was going to prison.
Many non-dev folks around me have resolved windows errors by typing the error message or code into google - if they are spesific and well written, they enable you to do that!
This is just one example that I vividly recall. The simplest of operation downloading of an update, only apple can make it as big a nightmare as it was. Now they do a lot of things fabulously but when the fail they just fall on their face and ignore it or they would fail where I can't even imagine how to fail this bad.
The latest blunder (again download), my iPhone lost it's wifi after a fall and wow! behold you can't download an update over cellular. Apple will make you save your money by not using your expensive cellular data after all it's so much more expensive than your $800 phone.
Not having the problem in the first place would be better. Automatically solving the problem would be great! But, for once ever, I can safely say that this does sometimes fix problems.
The only real downsides versus Windows 10 are the Start Screen and the conhost implementation, but Classic Shell and Powershell fix both of those.
Then you google it and the first 300 results say you need to install their malware to fix the problem. Never change, Internet... never change.
See TinkerTool for an easy way to enable such options:
My company can build and maintain a really big program with a minimal number of developers because Windows is so backwards-compatible. No need to rebuild everything every 3 years because APIs changed or some framework got deprecated. It's just running and running and running on our customer's hardware.
> statically compiled with no non-kernel dependencies whatsoever
I'd love that. Would be great if we could even get rid of the C library. Compilers should emit Linux system call code directly.
Look at how many DLLs get updated in a typical windows security update.
Most of those would have been permanent security vulnerabilities if everything was statically linked.
Maybe the knowledge of how to make backwards compatible systems is even slowly leaving with the old guard and they just will never know how to make it work ever again.
A colleague of mine is very active in Microsoft's GitHub repos and is complaining daily that no employee there seems to know how their own software works. He routinely needs to explain Microsoft employees that their ideas will not work because of $generic_windows_api_behavior.
Look at the US space program for example. It took them 12 years from the first man in space to go to the moon. Nowadays Space X, Blue Origin etc. seem to have to re-learn everthing and edge themselves slowly towards launching manned missions. They very likely have the books about space flight but not much experience.
I'm not saying that young people don't know assembly and C. What I'm saying is that most younger people don't need assembly and C, so they are a lot less proficient in it. Hardware has become so fast, it doesn't matter that JavaScript is 20x times slower, so people nowadays write entire desktop programs in JavaScript that are slow on not-cutting-edge hardware and have bad OS integration.
Here was an interesting bit:
> I first heard about this from one of the developers of the hit game SimCity, who told me that there was a critical bug in his application: it used memory right after freeing it, a major no-no that happened to work OK on DOS but would not work under Windows where memory that is freed is likely to be snatched up by another running application right away. The testers on the Windows team were going through various popular applications, testing them to make sure they worked OK, but SimCity kept crashing. They reported this to the Windows developers, who disassembled SimCity, stepped through it in a debugger, found the bug, and added special code that checked if SimCity was running, and if it did, ran the memory allocator in a special mode in which you could still use memory after freeing it.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
I might be conflating causation and correlation, admittedly. I've always enjoyed the hardware aspect of computers, so it's hard to look at this sort of thing completely objectively.
It's too bad they just don't make VM stuff available, and make it available for a long time.
Yes it might be only nostalgia, but why don't they have something simple like dosbox for macos that would run mac classic apps or recent stuff.
I guess you just have to keep your old systems around
From Jobs's perspective here, App Store developers are also customers. So while he is talking about starting at the customers' perspective, rather than the engineers, I believe he's only talking about Apple engineers. 3rd party software devs that are building the Apple ecosystem are:
1. Paying for the privelege of being an Apple Developer
2. Paying Apple a portion of their own earnings.
3. Opting to develop for Apple, rather than other platforms
So if we are Apple developers, we are customers, and according to Jobs's philosophy laid out here, it's Apple's job to deliver value to us (as well as the actual end users).
That's their value. Not that their software releases will always be perfect.
None of you will stop making iOS apps over this.
Full disclosure - I have developed many apps for iOS, but have never monetized them. I have used both Hybrid and native tech to do this. It has been probably 5 years since I've done Hybrid and about 15 months since I made a native app.
Honestly we just expect everything of everyone else and nothing of ourselves anymore. So they had some wonky version releases, like none of us on here have ever had issues like that before.
I found the concept of monopsony to be quite interesting here.
AppStore was about enforcing expanded Human Interface Guidelines to ensure overall product quality while getting some money to the indie devs that had historically starved due to market fragmentation. The combination of overall user experience, apps and Tim Apple’s buying up all the manufacturing capacity in ChYna (to lockout competitors —a lesson they learned from the PC knock-off days) assured ..$2T!
Developers are users as well. In the early days of computing, both terms were actually synonymous. If Apple designed the user interface of its programming environment so that the software developer cannot find out what went wrong and why, Apple deserves all the hatred it gets.
Also, this "lucrative Apple pie" is the only reason anyone even cares about it. If money is removed from the equation, I have no doubt developers would rather invest their time on a Linux system that doesn't insult their intelligence.
Or they could have just launched both on Friday.
I've downloaded lots of stuff from google. Its rarely slow.
I use cloudfront on AWS - also rarely slow.
Apple - often slow. They have billions - is there something wrong with their caching layer at ISPs etc?
A Mac Mini with a 10G Ethernet port can saturate 10G.
So, how are they not fast?
Apple falls over after big events for developers etc. Is there not a cashing layer locally at ISP level - ie, push '209 out in advance to ISP cache, then everyone can gobble it up when you announce and link on your website?
a: lacking the qualities needed for effective action
b: unable to function properly
- Add to homescreen dialog - Background sync - Proper push notifications - Proper WASM support (a lot of features are missing)
Honestly, at this point, the government should step in, like they did at the end of the last century with Microsoft. Walled gardens hurt innovation a lot, and the App Store in combination with the restricted web on iOS are the ultimate expression of the former.
I would personally like to continue paying higher prices to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obfuscated web-pages with push notifications, please.
Just enable the API Apple, I bet you already have it hidden behind some flags.
People just allow everything and then get overloaded by all the worthless interruptions.
I know how to design and build things with my hands. I also know how to design logos, websites and other things. I can code and enjoy building and maintaining the network of websites I built in the past 15 years.
But I feel I'm spreading myself too thin when I'm also learning to code in React or Dart (Flutter) for a single one-off project. I fear I won't be able to put in the hours required to become adequately proficient in another field that's constantly changing.
The rest of what you said sounds pretty on par with the rest of the self taught programmers I’ve met (me being one of them).
May I suggest trying to outsource this small app to a freelancer? It could be a quite time- and cost-effective small project for someone who already has extensive experience with iOS.
plus, they get the added bonus that they can demand you pay 30% of various transitions that they couldn't demand if you just left it a website that happened to be PWA
Their incentives are entirely aligned not to support the latest web standards and not allow any other browsers on iOS to add them
Besides that, according to the latest App Store rules, apps that just surface cross platform services aren’t required to have in app purchases.
You're asking the wrong question.
Could it possibly be that HN posters are wrong and PWAs aren’t good enough on Android either?
Would they enable web notifications if it was universally available? Yes. Would they enable it just for Android users? Some do. Does this say something about the quality of PWA's? You tell me. You seem to be adamant that the web sucks, yet literally millions of companies are succesful on the web without accompanying apps.
Where are all the developers who are being forced to create iOS apps but are “saving money” by not creating Android apps because PWA support is so good?
1. Web, iOS, Android
2. Web, iOS - since PWAs are suppose to be “good enough for Android”.
3. Web
But you hardly ever see #2. Why is that?
> How many apps [could] be viable as a website if only iOS Safari had push notifications[?]
I’d say a lot.
> [How many of them] would actually bring in any significant amount of revenue?
Adding this caveat doesn’t change my answer—but I really don’t like what it's implying. Software is not suddenly without value just because it doesn’t make money.
Yet you didn’t name any. If that were the case, you should be able to name the equivalent web apps on Android that must be apps on iOS.
> Software is not suddenly without value just because it doesn’t make money.
So where are those “valuable” web apps on Android? Also revenue is the most objective way to measure value.
Reddit, Trello, Twitter. Probably Discord and Slack too.
I haven't used Android in years but I certainly don't see why these wouldn't work as web apps if you had push notifications. All the functionality is there.
That's why you're asking the wrong question.
You should see a proliferation of cases where companies create an iOS app and a web app for everyone else.
Nonsense. Wikipedia must be worthless for you? What about air? Do you feel you'd breathe with more satisfaction if someone was profiting from the air you breathe?
On the other hand, there's plenty of immensely profitable things that have negative value. Cigarettes? Oil? Weapons? Opioids? I could go on and on.
“Value” has a definite meaning in economics. If someone is willing to pay for something, it has value to them.
What better choice do we have than to measure value across a population? How much value a population places on something based on how much they are willing to pay is objective. Whether that value is utilitarian or based on other factors is subjective.
Are we really arguing about basic supply and demand? Yes suppliers have methods to drive demand.
They could make every API opt-in or propose improvements, but they won't.
With IE6, people were at least allowed to install more capable browsers. With iOS there are no other browsers. Only user interfaces around Safari webviews.
Yes, Apple wants us to spend all of our time interacting with / committed to their users. No, that aren’t maliciously trying to steal our time from other platforms. The thought chain ends with their platform, never considering that we even have other platforms to support.
A self-obsessed outlook is different from a deliberately sabotaging business plan, even when they present the same outward behaviors. Occam’s razor.
I am not sure why other people being allowed to install other browsers on their phone would force you to do anything.
Also an app can access and send more data than a browser window. Anything the webview can block can just get transmitted by the app itself separately. So there's no reason to block 3rd-party browser engines as the GP post says.
The real security issue is: if a bug in Safari is found (it happens quite often) users cannot use another browser in the meantime.
Not for most people.
That still does not force you to install those browser engines.
If you want the apple approved apps, in the apple approve app store, that fine. But me using different settings does not force you to not use those approved apps.
https://www.counterpointresearch.com/us-market-smartphone-sh...
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/united-sta...
Sorry but this is not an effective way to gauge market share of a browser or a platform. That 60% figure you're throwing around is not an absolute metric. It's based only on visitors to websites that use the "Statcounter" tracking code. There definitely is a large margin of error using this to gather statistics about market share.
In comparison, the other commenter's link is actually more accurate because:
>This report is one of the series of reports which tracks mobile handset: Smartphone and Feature Phone shipments every quarter for more than 140 brands covering more than 95% of the total device shipments in the industry.
Tracking site visitors based on sporadic implementation of a tracker, vs getting actual numbers of units shipped/sold. I'm going with the actual numbers, not the sort-of-guessing of Statcounter.
(Disclosure: I work for Google)
Units shipped doesn't tell the whole story either, but it is a specific metric that doesn't suffer from bots gaming things or any of the other problems that using stats based on tracking code can lead to.
So Web Browsing is a very imperfect measure of installed base. Worldwide estimates are that that less than 20% of mobile devices sold are iOS, roughly 15% iirc. It’s almost certain US sales percentages for iOS are much higher, but no where near 60%.
are you really saying you would pay higher prices because you can' t press the "no" button and never visit the same website again?
Beyond the "punch the monkey" game you mention, another massive problem is that web push notifications have just become another vector to deliver spam to users. If you look at devices belonging to "normal" users, you'll often see dozens of spammy web notifications (pornographic content, "30% off, BUY NOW", etc...). And because these are average users, they don't necessarily understand how to configure their devices to reduce or eliminate the spam.
Web push notifications needs a way to proactively filter out those that abuse the API, otherwise its doomed to become just another vector for spam that pisses off end users.
But bad websites are not something we are going to get rid of using only iPhones...
To get rid of the cookie notifications, I can at least set web pages I go to default to reader view.
The problem is that if Apple singlehandedly decide what's right and what isn't we are back to IE.
They just don't want web apps to rival with the native ones skipping the whole store experience and fee
But that's just speculation on my side, I have no data to back it up
On top of that, how many apps are really just surfacing server hosted services where there are no in app purchases?
Among the most popular there are
- Uber
- Telegram
- Trivago
- Tinder
- Google maps Go
- AliExpress
Do you have a citation?
same reason people write native apps on iOS
It's easier to track users, especially those users rich enough to buy high end phones and that will probably spend more money and the ROI is higher.
They also make PWAS to gain user base on low end phones and emerging markets.
And because making them is quite cheap.
Do you propose that Apple makes Safari more able to invade privacy?
If the only purpose of PWAs for Android is to make it easier to run on low end cheap phones - that’s really not a good argument is it with iOS is it? Even the 6s from 2015 is more performant than many mid range new Android phones.
Or ask browser vendors to have a global allow/deny flag for every Web API
I don't want websites asking me to enable notifications. 99.9% of the time, the answer is no.
I don't want websites asking me to enable location access. 99.9% of the time, the answer is NO.
Nor do I want them asking for permissions to install to my Home Screen (the answer is no), or to track me (the answer is NO).
>Or ask browser vendors to have a global allow/deny flag for every Web API
When possible, I've carefully configured my browser to automatically reject these requests, but instead of respecting that, these websites, with all their hubris, have chosen to circumvent my preferences by presenting shitty JS-based permission requests (as opposed to using the permissions UI built into the browser).
Each one of these new web APIs have significantly degraded my experience as an end user, by presenting a million permission dialogs whenever I'm visiting webpages, without providing me with any features of value (again, because I'm not ever, ever gonna trust some random website with these permissions).
Users don't care to pontificate about the virtues of the open web, they just want their stuff to work. And until the open web can provide a better user experience, of course users are going to flock to various walled gardens (App Stores, Facebook, etc...). Until we find a way to implement web standards elegantly, without degrading the user experience, the open web is always going to face an uphill battle over the relative safety of walled gardens.
I know I don't want them.
Apple is in the committee.
Every time I pickup an old iOS device the stupid thing is nags me to update it, 100 times. And you can't just click no you have to click multiple things to get it to fuck off.
It's not absurd to me to pay for platforms that attempt to preemptively remove filth rather than need to be on the constant lookout for filth. This is particularly true when most of these entire ecosystems (the web, app stores, video content) seem to be based on sneaking filth in front of your eyes at every available opportunity.
Making an hyperbole here, but wouldn't Mosaic 1993 edition solve every issue then?
I mean, removing features of course makes software more secure
I argue that disabling JavaScript would only bring great benefits to humanity
Apple market is rich, it is the richest tech company, with the highest market valuation ever, one cannot avoid it
So it's gonna drive adoption no matter what
Like it did for Flash (right or wrong, they did it)
I was writing web applications during the 90s, they were called intranets back then, IE wasn't bad, it was simply unavoidable
And being unavoidable halted competition for more than a decade
On another side: having a platform that doesn't obey to common standards creates tech segregation
I remember seeing japanes phones 20 years ago, they were ahead of time,but unusable outside of Japan
Last but not least, having a flag that says "allow me to shoot myself in the foot of I want to" it's less hostile than "you don't know what you're doing let me handle it for you"
WOW
That escalated quickly
I never promoted Chrome, in fact I'm an old time Firefox users and in the 90s I owned a Netscape 3 gold license.
I don't write fronted software anymore, but writing for every browser means adhering to the standard
Apple has steered away more than any other vendor lately
So...
Yes, which you’ll find if you do Safari adheres to quite well. Finding examples where it doesn’t is easy, just like on chrome. Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform without one entity owning it. If you found out Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows, would you call this not adhering to the standard?
They don' t
Apple refused to implement 16 web API in Safari
> Which is why we have media queries and poly fills because it’s simply impossible to have a unified platform
And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes
At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines
Do you see the difference?
> Chrome doesn’t render the same on linux as it doesn’t on windows
that' s not true
Windows and Linux that have simply different font rendering engines and different native widgets
That's all
> would you call this not adhering to the standard?
absolutely NOT!
In no part of the standard rendering is formalized
It wouldn't make sense
The way things are rendered is standardized, not the way they should look
https://www.w3.org/TR/2014/REC-html5-20141028/rendering.html
> HTML is intended to apply to multiple media (it is a media-independent language). User agent implementors are encouraged to adapt the suggestions in this section to their target media.
OK and these APIs don’t stop real work.
> And that' s why big players like Apple hat control a closed ecosystem shouldn't be allowed to be assholes
And putting all that power into the hands of a single browser will not end well, so stop promoting Chrome or saying other browsers should be like Chrome. FF isn’t going to win.
> At least on Android I can install other browsers and other browser engines Do you see the difference?
Yes, next question, do I care?
> that' s not true
100% true, read the dev blogs and understand the WM on linux is fundamentally different than windows or mac, therefore rendering is not exactly the same.
Standards help align, they do not force alignment. If safari implemented a p element as a span, then this is not following the spec. Choosing not to implement a portion of a modular spec, is still following the spec.
Yes, just like you’re free to never visit an annoying website asking to spam notifications you’re free to take away Apple’s decision making power you grant them by simply not buying an iphone.
That's a very common argument
But it doesn't get any less stupid with time.
I never owned an iPhone.
Because I am an adult homo sapiens that can take decisions for himself.
But you should know that if a standard exists, and the standard has been approved by a consortium, a consortium where Apple is a very important member, they should at least support what they signed for, instead of forcing developers to go through hoops just to support their platform.
When Elon Musk make Teslas he has to put airbags in them, stop lights, front lights, safety belts, they must pass crash tests, because that's the standard, otherwise he couldn't sell them as cars.
So if Apple believe that the standard that they approved is too dangerous, they can make their OS more secure, instead of putting the blame on developers.
They are
> I’m a full stack dev, I understand what it takes to support safari and a majority of the time is actually Chrome being fast and loose with the standard
I am as well, I understand a closed platform when I see one.
> But the features lacking don’t stop meaningful work at all.
If only it was true...
It' s not lacking, it has been removed on purpose.
The web engine Safari is built from already supports those features.
You don't even understand the rules.
Sorry.
Notification APIs are in Webkit, the open source implementation of Safari.
proof: https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/blob/89c28d471fae35f1788a0f...
Can you prove that Apple didn't remove standard APIs from their browser?
But those reasons are weakening.
Buy the hardware, install lineageos, insert SIM?
Frankly, because everyone I know uses iMessage.
At any rate, maybe you're so worried about single-page web apps being bad actors that you're happy Apple so severely hamstrings them, but I... just can't see a lot to worry about there. And if Apple let PWAs be even a little better on iOS than they are now, it would go at least some distance toward ameliorating complaints about the App Store.
Native iOS notifications are opt-in
Disappointingly, Apple makes an exception for their first party apps.
I don't know why Apple is allowed to keep other browser engines out of their system, but probably just because the relevant people just don't understand that the Chrome/FF/etc. on iOS are just a Safari with a different UI and that it gives Apple about half (depending on country; in the US probably more) of the mobile browser share and users just the chance to either use Android or be stuck with Safari.
In addition, the author obviously doesn't know that the before mentioned push notification API is not just used for regular push notifications, but is also required for other use-cases like messengers for example.
Nevertheless, that is besides the point as the rendering engine is not the sole source of browser differences. I am not saying the Googles high market share isn't a problem itself, but that Apple is abusing their market position to hold back the development of the web (by not implementing relevant APIs and not allowing competing browser engines on their platform).
In my neck of the woods people most definitely do complain about Chrome, specifically the lack of privacy from being a Google product.
It’s a bit ironic, but browser engine monopoly on iOS is the only thing standing in the way of browser engine monopoly across all platforms.
The conversation is 100% about how much influence Apple should permit Google to have over the evolution of iOS.
All of those sound like things that will be abused by the majority of developers the minute they are allowed to inflict them upon users, either willingly or commanded to by their overlords in the name of ""Engagement""
How?
What do you even define as """innovation"""?
Honest question, I'd love to see some actual answers here instead of the usual canned hyperbole.
So far Apple's users are mostly satisfied with them, happily voting with their wallets, and the only people complaining about Apple are mostly the developers and companies who want unfettered access to iOS' users, and I haven't heard any good reasons from them other than "we want to maximize our own profits."
> Apple’s iOS rules would not have allowed for the invention of the web browser. Let that sink in. They would have rejected one of the most important technical innovations in the history of computing. Microsoft‘s bully tactic of making IE free seems quaint in comparison.
> But here’s the kicker: think of all the other amazing ideas that haven’t gotten a chance to be invented because they aren’t allowed on mobile devices. Mosaic happened less than 10 years after the Macintosh. We very well might have already had a browser-caliber invention by now.
> Just for people asking: the flagrant violations of AppStore policy that web browsers would be rejected for in this hypothetical are:
> 1) Running outside code
> 2) Allowing payments that circumvent Apple’s IAP
> 3) Allowing access to NSFW content
Source: https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1297199788316692480
More commentary: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/08/25/potential/
It’s hard to give specific examples about innovation that hasn’t happened, if only because not everyone is sufficiently innovative to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas.
I doubt any of the original Mosaic developers had any idea just how important their original innovation would become.
People are free to "innovate" and experiment and invent on Android and the PC, and if an innovation is deemed desirable on Apple's curated platform — which they are perfectly within their rights to control, and millions of users continue to be happy with that — then Apple will make a provision for it.
On iOS, there would be a whole host of problems with allowing third-party browser engines and app stores that the people clamoring for looser restrictions have yet to address:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24469664
Not the least of which is: How would you enforce a user's settings for privacy and parental controls on third-party browsers and app stores?
It's hard, but not because of prohibited innovation. It's because we have android, and it doesn't have neither ios rules nor a fantastic potential innovation that breaks the deal with apple. There is simply no example that could be used as a good enough argument. Apple users do not live in a vacuum as well, many of them have seen or used other platforms and still stick with ios as it is.
>iOS rules would not have allowed for the invention of the web browser. Let that sink in.
Web browser is a highly secure piece of software, protected on par or even harder than the os itself. If any ios app could freely download, compile and execute an arbitrary code from the internet, that would be a world-wide security and privacy disaster every few weeks. Let that sink in instead.
It sounds like you’re saying iOS is insecure compared to WebKit and Blink, and that they can be trusted to run arbitrary code downloaded from arbitrary untrusted sources, but iOS cannot.
That’s a pretty damning indictment of the state of iOS, if it’s less capable of sandboxing than a browser, despite having tight coupling between hardware and software.
> Let that sink in instead.
Tragically, you’re probably right too.
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=walled+garden
They look like pretty fucking pleasant places to be in!
If they own the device, then I want my 1k back.
If you're trying to narrow your punishment to be specifically "the crime of not letting me pick my own browser rendering engine" then I can't help you. This is not a hill I even remotely interested in dying on or spending more time on.
iOS has a PWA-style add to home screen dialog, but it's part of Safari. It's accessed from the share sheet.
They've been working with developers for a long time on the new App Clips functionality and that's been open for developers to start working.
So I am not following what is this article is saying? It seems like they're suggesting that Apple should release iOS a few days after announcing, but, that isn't enough time for most developers to test and release updates for a major iOS update; but Apple never intended those few days to be the only time developers had.
Usually there's a period of time between announcement and when it ships, such that a developer can get the release version of Xcode (if necessary), do some final testing, then send any updates to Apple for review. With enough lead time that their updated app can be available on the App Store the same day as the iOS update being available.
That isn't really possible this time around.
Say the iOS update has brand new features. Your app can't take advantage of those fancy new features and your users don't get them until next week either.
Possible marketing, usually Apple has categories in the App Store for apps that support the latest features or are ready for that iOS version. They could in theory do this next week I guess, but point is there's excitement today, and will be less next week.
Possible bugs in your current app that aren't fixed but exist only in the latest iOS. If you base your entire process on past experience you planned to release bug fixes for iOS 14 with a larger update and now those updates aren't available to a majority of your userbase.
Edit: removed a part that was inaccurate.
Point two seems weak. The idea that Apple won’t promote apps with the new features when they are released makes no sense at all. You make it sound like this is unlikely, but I don’t see why you’d think that.
As for excitement - what excitement are we talking about? Users will get app updates automatically as they become available.
Are you suggesting that users typically buy a whole load of new apps on the one day iOS updates ship, but only if those apps have features only supported by the new OS? That would be an interesting fact if true, but it would also be supported by data, which I don’t see anywhere.
I’d speculate that users more often look for new apps when they get a new phone - which is supported by the data on Christmas app installs, and isn’t affected by this.
So we’re left with the possibility that the developer has bugs in the last iOS 13 version of their app that did not manifest under Beta 8, but do manifest under the GM.
I agree this is not impossible, although very unlikely to affect all but the tiniest handful of apps. Beta 8 and GM are unlikely to have significant changes of the kind that might expose such bugs, but again I agree it’s not impossible.
This seems like an extremely exotic case, and certainly in no way justifies Apple being called an ‘Asshole’, except by someone who has other reasons for wanting to malign them.
The expectation is that apps will support the new features on day one. Because that's how it has worked in the past.
> what excitement are we talking about? Users will get app updates automatically as they become available.
Again, historically, apps support the new features on day one. That won't be the case with this release because there's no way an App developer will be able to ship an app to App Store review in 24 hours and have the app available the same day.
> Are you suggesting that users typically buy a whole load of new apps on the one day iOS updates ship, but only if those apps have features only supported by the new OS?
I'm not so sure about buying new apps, I am saying that typically existing apps get updates that take advantage of new features and those are typically available on day one of an iOS update and won't be this year.
I don't think iOS 14 has any major game changing features, so I don't think we'll see a massive buy in of new apps or anything. But if this trend happens again with a release that DOES have major new features then it's a big disappointment.
> So we’re left with the possibility that the developer has bugs in the last iOS 13 version of their app that did not manifest under Beta 8, but do manifest under the GM.
Keep in mind that developers on iOS tend to think in terms of larger updates. So an app developer may release a new major version on the same day as iOS 14, or iOS 13, etc.
These are typically 'free' updates for existing users, but they're whole version updates and come with a larger set of changes.
In the past, developers had time to prepare for release. If bugs existed in version 3 of their app running on the iOS beta, they probably fixed those in version 4 (unreleased) of their app, and planned to submit and ship version 4 the same day as iOS 14. That entire process is not going to happen this year, so it's possible that bugs existing in iOS 14, but did not exist in 13, will be present in apps until those updates ship next week sometime.
Edit:
>and certainly in no way justifies Apple being called an ‘Asshole’
I'm not calling Apple an asshole, I'm not defending the author of the article who is calling them an asshole. I'm simply explaining how it worked when I worked on a major top 50 app in the App Store. Thank god I'm not doing it anymore, it was stressful enough doing it in previous years, it's probably even worse today.
My guess is that Apple would have taken this into account when scheduling the release.
If there was some marquee feature where day 1 support was important, this would have been part of Apple’s planning.
It’s clear to me that this is really not a big deal at all and that the original author - not you - is trying to manufacture outrage where none is merited.
It’s also not clear to me that any significant end users would have reason to expect most apps to be updated on day 1.
Apps have simply never adopted all the new features they could, day 1 or not. Often adoption has been gradual. Even things that are very obvious like screen size changes sometimes have taken months to be supported.
Is it the end of the world? No, I don't think so, but it is very clearly causing a lot of developers pains today, you should at the very least acknowledge that and understand that just because you can shrug it off doesn't mean they can.
Something that is severely missing from the world of software, and I suspect engineering in general, is empathy. Hell, it's missing from the world today. Look at the political climate in the US for another big example.
So maybe that's what your takeaway should be, show a little empathy to those who are struggling today and understand that. On top of a global pandemic, on top of possibly having their kids at home and being home schooled or learning virtually, having maybe lost a loved one, maybe even had to abandon their home due to fires, that on top of any or all of that they now have to deal with the pains of an iOS release with no warning. Empathy. Try it.
I have plenty of empathy if developers are actually facing pain. Piling on to attack Apple, not so much. Apple employees also have families and many of them are in California too. I’m guessing they too are affected by all of these issues.
If the original author was able to articulate the pain they are facing, I’d have empathy for them.
They didn’t in fact do so, which is why we’re trying to figure out what the negative impacts would be.
It’s absurd also to suggest that there was an iOS release with no warning. That is simply not true. We’ve been expecting it for months, and we also knew the release schedule would be different this year.
If people are being pressured by managers in some painful way, then I do feel for them, but if that pressure is occurring because managers actually have a false understanding of what is at stake, then it is more empathetic to discuss the misunderstandings about this than it is to just nod along.
It’s really not clear at all what pain anyone should be feeling.
Presumably their apps are ready to go, and all they have to do is submit them and wait.
As we’ve already discussed, almost nobody should be actually discovering bugs now, regardless of Apple’s scheduling.
It’s just that nobody has been able to articulate why it’s any more than that.
The fact that Apple’s own software is not all updated just proves this point, since they obviously did know when it was going to be released.
Nowhere am I saying there should be no bugs. Just that this move has very little impact on bug fixing.
I'm not sure I understand?
It just isn’t a big deal.
You know nothing about me.
Until you started making personal attacks, this was simply disagreement and many interesting points were made, which is fine. Perhaps most people agree with your perspective.
You with this comment, on the other hand are literally offering nothing except ignorance to this conversation. No valuable analysis, and only incorrect facts.
I wonder why you feel the need to do this?
What would make you decide that this was helpful? Do you think you are protecting someone?
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ios-14-broken-buggy-app...
Though I'm not an mobile app developer just one of the things I can see as a downside.
Yes, developers should have already been working with the iOS betas and already have some confidence that things will work against the final release-- but there is no substitute for actually testing against the final release build. In this case, iOS 14 Beta 8 appears to be mostly identical to the GM Seed build (what released to devs yesterday, and what will release to the public today), but that, historically, has not always been the case-- in some cases, bugs get fixed in between the last beta build and the GM seed; in others, new bugs get introduced.
Even major apps like Instagram and Snapchat still have critical camera bugs on my phone right now that's running the latest iOS14Beta8 build.
So yes, it's possible to write to the beta, but no, it's not possible to guarantee there will be no last minute breaking changes.
No it isn't. Apple doesn't permit code linking against the latest SDK to be submitted until the SDK goes "GM". That happened today.
- app with existing location permission in iOS 13 gets precise location.
- when the user prompt appears, it looks like precise location is the default in the UI.
(This is with an app build against iOS 13 SDK -- not sure yet if the iOS 14 SDK changes things.)
I think Apple will likely change this in the future, but right now devs are getting the time they need to adjust.
(As is, this new permission does almost nothing since 99% users will accept the defaults. I think they'll probably require more explicit action on the user's part to get precise location in the future.)
~All of the bugs I've ever seen on a new iOS release are just where they've tightened up some behaviour.
the real things that were dropped since then were 32 bit protected mode apps, and for such you have plenty options for both virtualizing and paravirtualizing.
I can boot basically any other version of Windows under my windows system using Microsoft provided software.
I can even just go boot up older version of Windows on current hardware if needed be, up to a point.
almost everything from eighties to today I am able to run one way another, nothing "stopped" working.
Apple physically removes old software from their delivery platform or signing servers and if you lose your devices it's lost forever
how does it even compare?
Especially considering that only a small percent usually updates to new version of OS in first few days.
Imagine if your app crashes on launch with iOS 14 GM and does not on the latest beta, your business has been materially effected as a result.
Sure it would be nice to have a few days of extra preparation. But the post is obviously a result of pure frustration by developer and is exaggerated.
If you call everyone assholes because of such things then all software industry are assholes.
(From firends/contacts, none of the apps I have to deal with, at least not so far...)
So 15% on the first day, with 1.5 billion active iOS devices. Thats a pretty high number of potential unsattisfied user experience.
I stopped/dropped my iOS dev efforts. I had an app on Apple Store, and eventually pulled it because of the constant updates demanded by Xcode. Yes things were still working, but unless someone is willing to dedicate 'many' days every 3-6-9-12 months to catch-up on new requirements, it's just not worth it. For someone who does dev for a living, it's game on, for others who may want this as a side hustle, it can be overwhelming (keeping up with Apple). I don't blame them, this cat&mouse just didn't work for me. It could as well work just fine for the other part-time/hobby devs.
This just means that every time they change something, the devs have to rebuild, with an unknown amount of time spent. It might be as easy as just changing a couple of lines, or they changed the API so much you have to rethink your code.
And this is for apps that aren't using anything new, it's the old APIs that are changing under them.
I recently pulled it but I had a ios app since 2010, nothing advanced and was only updated every couple of years.
There was only twice I had to do a update because of iOS updates. Once a crashing bug and once to look nice on large screen devices.
I understand the need to progress and develop/create/evolve the programming languages, techniques, environments, it's just not fit for a hobby (in my case)(YMMV).
I've once had a Windows update break software, and I was easily able to downgrade the broken update (and it wasn't really MSvs fault entirely, graphics driver issue).
Multiple times I've had ipad updates break apps, and some apps have never worked again because the developers don't bother updating the app, and Apple blocks downgrading because...
It’s not all roses over there.
Maintaining backwards compatibility for every app is a big technical requirement, and Apple chooses to spend their efforts elsewhere. Microsoft takes the opposite route because they have many enterprise customers who have to keep using an internal CRM that was last updated in 1994 and all the developers have died.
If you want your OS to support abandoned apps, then you should definitely choose Microsoft. But most people have other priorities.
Similarly, keeping devices on old OS versions has a cost too. They could be insecure, opening users to the risk of compromise of their personal data. Newer apps will not work. Having a significant proportion of devices that have not bothered to upgrade stops developers from using the newest OS features (for an extreme version of this phenomena, remember ie6).
Apple prioritizes getting users and apps on the latest OS releases over perpetual support of abandonware. The proportion of users who need to support abandoned software is probably tiny compared to those who can benefit from OS updates. It's a conscious choice, and other vendors choose differently.
That's what the original article is trying to suggest.
> it's unlikely every single app developer could get a fix in time
Are you suggesting to freeze iOS development?
iOS 14 is also full of new quirks.
I’ve been using the betas and all of my existing apps work fine.
I’m developing for ios14, and don’t see any particular reason for my app to be out today.
What actual adverse effects are there to this?
Is there a class of app that runs on ios13 but is broken on ios14?
/s
Apps simply don’t work ‘just fine’ everywhere else.
Sometimes your crash is because of bad assumptions in your code, or sometimes your crash is due to real Apple bugs creeping into the iOS APIs. Not saying it's always possible to implement a workaround, but it's not as bad as the blog post makes it out to be.
Most of the problems I hear this year are not the compatibility checks that Apple had out in but UIKit just being broken for certain things. The difference being of course that “compatibility quirks” is Apple knowingly trying to fix something and doing a poor job as opposed to what’s happening here where they just changed random stuff and thought it was compatible but it the observed behavior is now different and breaks apps. For example, I have a bog-standard navigation bar that’s been broken since iOS 13 (if I build for that SDK) because Apple evidently thinks that they did their implementation correctly but somehow the way I have put my table view in a navigation view in a tab view (real complicated, I know) is something they couldn’t keep consistent.
I'm sure there are other examples as well.
When I was an iOS developer, this is exactly what I did. Install iOS beta, find any show stopper bugs, fix them in the current SDK and get the bug fix out. Most of the time it was just the beta OS highlighting an existing bug that the current OS ignored.
Once the bugs are fixed, then start adding beta OS features. These features often have to be gated anyway since it's normal to want to support current version -1 or -2.
So yeah, Apple should have given more than a day, but it's not nearly as serious as the hot takes want to make it out to be.
At the end of the day, a platform without apps or developers dies (Windows Phone users say hi). If devs get so mad at some point and stop pushing new apps or updates, I wonder if Apple would change their position.
Of course, I suppose this is still hard because 1) they are the most profitable mobile platform 2) many companies kinda rely on mobile. But well, no one predicted 2020 who knows what will come
What EPIC is doing is trying to rally people on their side of the fight.
This is the same reason why people (workers) have unions, in the traditional job market. It's not really comparable because developers are not workers, but there are some similarities: Apple benefits from the developers (immensely, with your Windows Phone example) and the developers too.. but Apple has the upper hand, by FAR.
At the end of the users own the devices not apple. It should ultimately be up to the user.
Rather than supporting Epic as if they are on our side, we need to actually think about what really would be a good alternative.
If the walled gardens was costing Apple customers instead of attracting them, the iPhone would have failed years ago. Android devices are cheaper, more diverse, and more flexible. There would be scant reasons to buy an iPhone.
That’s the very definition of choice.
As with most things on the internet, outrage drives engagement, so stuff like this will easily reach the front page of HN, even if most people really don’t care much at all.
Meanwhile what I really want to see in developers world is the same in cellphone area as is in PC area. Freedom of choice of what OS to put on my phone. On PC I can have HDD partitions and install Win/Lin/Mac all in the same hardware. This is my dream.
Personally on macOS or iOS I rarely use any of Apple's apps but I imagine I'm in the minority.
There's enough to rib on Apple on, but this really doesn't seem like one?
The App Store submission process is tightly integrated with the Xcode version used to build the app, if you want to be ready before users upgrade the App Store needs to be updated at least a few days before users automatically get the update. The App Store being updated to allow builds from the new version of Xcode is the most important issue. That only happened after 2pm ET on the 15th, and I’ve seen report their had been some delay (thankfully I only had to verify existing builds and didn’t need to submit a new build today). This means even if you had your build completely done based on pre Golden Master beta, and can either quickly reverify it or are comfortable just throwing it out there, you could only actually submit it today. Review times even without back and forth over policy points can take multiple days. Things will be worse for users over the next couple days.
iOS betas are frequently quite noisy and variable, if you test against an early beta you will need to retest against the actual GM with potential backwards compatible breaks each time. If you are either unlikely to have bugs or have enough capacity to spike doing a lot of work within a week you have the option of only doing the expensive thorough verification work against a single release.
There are still many reasons why real device testing with the production IAP environment are necessary. This is mostly a failure on Apple’s part to ever update their test environment’s capabilities and achieve parity with production. Doing this early requires you to be able to afford and have extra hardware of spend extra time having to upgrade and downgrade OS versions in order to verify the new version and continue to support live production hot fixes and support. A week between GM and GA is in the Goldilocks zone for developers, so that if they’re not doing a huge release to correspond with the iOS version they can upgrade test devices once, do one chunk of testing and fixing issues, and have their own build which will happily support both the old and new OS reviewer and live before users actually get the new OS.
Apple set a hard deadline for themselves. This would have been some time back, with the purpose of coordinating various development threads, manufacturing, marketing, and the holiday season.
But the OS side slipped.
They must have been dealing with some pretty gnarly issues to give devs only hours with the GM seed and even less time with the version of Xcode you can use to actually release updates.
Makes we wonder what the issues are and whether the OS is the only thing that slipped? ...time will tell if they shouldn't gone ahead pushed everything back. That would have been very costly, but an unstable OS release that, e.g., loses or exposes user data for lots of users would be costly as well. We'll see.
> Who is in charge of iOS releases at Apple that thought this was a good idea? Who is the head of Developer Relations that thought this was a good idea?
I think, obviously, nobody did. It wasn't planned.
What patches are required for apps to work on iOS 14?
I am not shedding a tear for the producers of the apps that used privacy invading code all the time, and didn't stop since iOS betas exist, waiting instead for "official iOS 14" to "do something" -- which is probably forcing the user to agree or not use the app.
I hope I'm wrong, and to accept that I'd need a specific example.
Apparently developers are unable to do this during the betas.
I did my due diligence and I added a new button to use the new iOS 14 system photo picker months ago, when Apple first announced these changes. But until today at 11am, I could not ship those changes. Period. Nothing I could do to have a version available for users any time before today. In under 24 hours, I have to update my CI system, generate a build, check to make sure nothing broke, submit for App Review, and hope I get approved.
But wait! I also have two other apps that have iOS 14 functionality. So I've got to do those as well. And these are just my side projects. I have a day job, doing the same kind of work. And I'm the iOS CI "guru" there, so I've got to do the exact same thing… make sure Xcode 12 is updated on all our build agents, get actual builds out of them, submit to the store, etc.
All of the privacy work is done. It's been done. But the difference between ≈24 hours to get final builds out the door and a week to get final builds out the door is huge when you've got multiple different projects to handle. Especially when App Review is eating several of those hours all on its own.
So guess what? My projects are going to fall by the wayside, in favor of my day job. Is it a big deal? Who knows. Maybe I'll get some bad reviews. That'll suck a lot. Did it need to be this way? Absolutely not. Apple could have given us the week that they normally do, and everything would have been fine. Instead, they gave us a day, and that's just not enough time. So apps people use and like are just going to be broken for a few days, and there's not a thing developers can do about it.
###
Secrecy is so ingrained in that company, at all levels, that it will never/ever change without fundamentally changing what/who Apple is as a company.
External developers, since the launch of the App Store, have been expected to be thankful that Apple even lets them on to their precious marketplace. There's also no special treatment when at bigger companies either. The only thing I've experienced is that we were invited to port our product to iOS 7's new flat UI just to be featured 6 weeks ahead of their rumored keynote date. They didn't even give us an actual time to submit.
Bigger products I've worked on do get a developer relations support person who makes sure we're able to meet Apple's latest demands, but they are not connected to the engineering (R&D) teams, so feedback is mostly downward. For example, they would ask why haven't we ported things to Metal yet? If we inform them there is a bug or missing documentation, they will make sure they get engineering involved to fix the bug so we can continue porting to Metal.
Bugs are another huge pain point that developers complain about. Whenever there's an issue, we're told, file the bug and it magically goes off into a black void with no feedback until some point in the future when the OS release has shipped and then we get to find out whether they decided to fix the issue or to mark it "Works as expected."
It really sucks that the company that builds the best tech is also the most toxic to partner with. They add undue stress and expect too much from their developer community. Partnerships should work both ways! Developers bring new experiences that light up the hardware, and make the platform better as a whole. However, Apple has somehow found a way to make the partnerships mostly one-sided and that will never change.
The only way out is really for all the coolest new features to land on Android and to put software in maintenance mode on iOS. Yet, I cannot fathom how that would ever happen either as that's 50% of the population in the US you would make suffer for the cause.
And change is possible: Microsoft didn't care much about developers and users when IE was browser market leader and look what happened.
File this one under “things that won’t matter and will be entirely forgotten in two weeks.”
In the case of the former, you can outlast these comparatively small players for decades with flush cash reserves and an army of bored attorneys with nothing better to do than watch your pittance of a legal team fight it endlessly until the last star falls from the heavens. Epic may want a fight, but its investors would capitulate sooner than people like Tim Sweeney think.
as for the latter, Apple has a fun track record of running small developers into the dirt. Either you sell your company to them, or they just build the same app in-house and blacklist you from the market.
Id also argue that the average apple afficionado outside of HN just doesnt care what apple does. Apple makes affluent status symbols and markets a premium brand identity, so developers like facebook and epic are hungry to tap into a market thats not only willing to drop more than a grand on a cellphone and accessories, but doesnt question often times predatory microtransactions. They want cash cows, apple runs the farm.
full confession though, i dont know how small devs fight this, and id be eager to know if anyone on HN has a cogent strategy? a boycott seems most effective.
(Obviously, I haven't developed anything for the Apple ecosystem, so these are genuine questions.)
Yes, but those pre-release OS versions are changed and updated by Apple as the process goes along. So once Apple declares the final version (AKA Gold Master), then everyone needs to regression test their apps against this final version that will be installed on user devices. The process of submitting the app update to the store must be done with a new toolchain as well. Usually the GM version and new toolchain are available 1 week before release. This time they were only available 1 day before. Even if all the development is done and the testing against the GM version goes smoothly, 1 day is a very short turn-around for getting your app update approved by Apple, especially on a day where lots of other developers will be submitting updates too.
> Also, why do you need to release a new version at all?
Sometimes the new version introduces unintentional bugs that break existing functionality and developers have to figure out how to work around it. Sometimes Apple intentionally deprecates existing functionality. These are things that developers can address with the pre-release versions, but again, those are moving targets and until the GM version is released, you don't know for sure.
Apple knows they are in control of +60% of the app mobile revenue worldwide. It wouldn't surprise me if management believed third party developers should consider themselves privileged to be on their platform.
HOW CAN APPLE MAKE APP REVIEW BETTER?
App Review has become faster but still feels very unsafe and unreliable. It feels like being delivered to the whims of the gods. They may strike you down, kill your business and refuse to negotiate about it. Speaking about which, speaking with app review is infuriating! They will mindlessly reiterate the same quasi-legal lingo about how your app should confirm to this or that guideline completely ignoring whatever actual logical or societally relevant or otherwise actually meaningful argument is made on the other side. I understand it is not these people themselves - they must hate their jobs - but the rules they themselves are bound to - but the resulting experience is god awful.
HOW SATISFIED ARE YOU WITH THE FOLLOWING APPLE DEVELOPER RESOURCES?
I used to like Apple - look up to your company. I was elated to be able to visit the WWDC. Even spoke with Tim Cook - however briefly. Watching the 15 Sept Apple Event I noticed I was getting more and more annoyed. I really resent the dishonesty. I feel that I am starting to actually hate what Apple has become to stand for.
-"We treat all developers equally". - The tax evasions via Ireland. - Bullying a tiny company about a pear-shaped logo - Pretending to care about freedom of speech while supporting censorship and banning of apps in china. - the list goes on
Apple tries to present itself as a force of good - but has become a despicable company. It makes me sad. You are the one company that could actually be a force of good. Untouchable. You could really make a difference.
Yet you don't.
Well not in a good way at least.
HOW CAN APPLE IMPROVE THE TOOLS AND SERVICES IT PROVIDES AS A DEVELOPMENT PLATFORM? Be as specific and descriptive as possible
Focus on quality more than on constantly churning out new features - it's not necessary. You are Apple - you determine what happens. You used to stand for the best. It used to feel remarkable to use and work with Apple products. It's now just above par. Why? You're worth 2 trillion dollars already. Is 2.2 trillion more important than going back to actually making the best again.
HOW CAN APPLE MAKE THE APP STORE A BETTER PLATFORM FOR DISTRIBUTING YOUR APPS? Be as specific and descriptive as possible
"This app is damaged and may harm your computer" - stop that! At least try to be reasonable. Please!
If you hate Electron don't blame Electron. Blame Apple and Microsoft.
It sounds like due to hardware they were going to have to release iOS 14 in a day or two.
Steve Jobs was famously toxic (which is just popular term to describe someone with a cluster B personality disorder, aka "psychopath"). But he dresses like a rock star and creates beautiful things and so everybody is willing to forgive him.
This is kind of like the abused spouse who, after decades of abuse, finally realizes he or she was making excuses for a psychopath all along. Just file for divorce and get it over with. The abuser will make sure it's a horrible experience for you, but you'll be happier in the end.
And usually he's revered more by non techs.
Apple isn't a single person with evil intentions that thought: "let's make it very hard to work with this stuff", even if it might seem that way. It's far more likely that:
- The alternative was worse
- An internal policy or rule had unforeseen side-effects in planning or releasing
- The team doing the work on the release and the team doing relations aren't the same team and didn't communicate properly
- A deadline was set and because it was only met just barely you get an odd release schedule
Does that mean that this release is a fun planned schedule? No. But it doesn't mean the thousands of people working there are combined into one big person that wants to do bad things to you.
Because corporations aren't democratic, so their policies are not the sum of all employees working there's opinions. Most of it is the result of top-down decisions, which in practice are made by fewer than 20 people: the board and the CEO. Technically, we could add shareholders to that list, but IIRC they barely exercise their right to vote. What's more: corporations as legal entities specifically exist to limit liability for the aforementioned people.
So when "Facebook" doesn't care about your privacy, it's Zuck and the board that don't, not individual developers. When "Shell" sponsors climate change denial, it's the board, not someone pumping your gas deciding. The personification is valid up to a point because the corporation as such is only a (useful) fictional construct.
> It's far more likely that [...]
I don't know the broader history of Apple's behaviour towards developers since I'm not an iOS developer, so I can't say whether this is a matter of policy or a snafu. Based on what I know, I'd also lean towards incompetence and not malice in this particular case.
That was done after the announcement
Really? This is the way they have done the releases for about 10 years now.
> But today, Apple announced that iOS 14 is shipping tomorrow.
So... the only difference is it's not "few days" but "one day"? For an OS update everyone knew was coming because "for as long as I can remember it goes something like this"?
What's the assholery?
Anyone that has a work flow, even a personal workflow having nothing to do with actual earning of income, that updates as soon as an update is available, is an asshole to themselves, and a compulsive one at that. If there are no security patches, bug fixes or features that I desperately need, I don't update. I'm still running iPadOS13.4 and I may never update.
The problem here is not Apple's. Apple can do as it wants, and is under no obligation to make things convenient for the egotistical developers. From my perspective, (and fallacy argument from authority here, but fwiw, I studied computer science, flunky career in systems administration, and I am perfectly aware I rarely did any computer science, but am also aware programming is not computer science, either... CS is just math, and that is all... I personally just liked the problem solving necessities that sysadmining provided me, along with a decent living... I enjoyed solving those puzzles), developing for iOS sounds easy as snot. Developing a killer app is more difficult in that it must be innovative, clever, beautiful, and useful. But 99% of the apps on AppStore, and including 90% of the games, are duplicates of stuff that has been around forever. Where is the innovation?
And I have very little sympathy for developers because most of them made my life a living hell for 20 years. It is that precious few that did the opposite that I love, nay, that I worship. What are the chances anyone in this group of developer blamers and complainers, borderline narcissist egoists, are among them? Slim to none.
Apple gave you excellent tools. You have your own source code. Get something done! It doesn't matter how long it takes. But with the tools Apple provides, seems to me it is loading the tools, loading the source, grooming the source for the update, clicking a few radio buttons, compiling, and publishing. Shut up and get something done, or bail and go develop for another platform. Jeesh. Make install not war.
It’s besides the point by the profanity just weakens the argument. Presumably the iOS beta has been out long enough that developers could have pushed out an update if their app seriously breaks with the update.
Except that they used to do it a week later every year? And that there is no reason to release it tomorrow, like new hardware that ships with that pre-installed?
> Presumably the iOS beta has been out long enough that developers could have pushed out an update if their app seriously breaks with the update.
You can’t push out an update for the new OS except using the blessed toolchain that Apple released today. That’s what we’re annoyed about, not that the beta period was too short.
The article is the author's speech, it is their choice to use or not use language tools as they desire, but I ask you this. How would you title the article while maintaining the clear and concise form?
I don't believe profanity does weaken the argument, it shows that people (developers) are getting beyond the point of being able to maintain their decorum because of the sheer frustration at the arbitrary rules and actions from a company who's trillions are made, in a no insignificant part on the backs of others' work.
I’m not saying we need the same decorum in personal writing. But I am stating there’s another way to make the argument.
This isn't work, this is a personal blog, where someone is clearly and concisely expressing how many people feel using language that many people can relate to.
I'm sure many have made the same argument before, and many feel the same way about Apple and its tactics, however, this one is ranking high on HN right now because it has a title which clicks with people's frustration. Apple's being an "asshole", there's no need to mince words.
If companies are able to hijack this process by uploading assets it could be easy to exploit.
We are talking about a personal phone not a remote computer. Imagine if hackers got free reign in the private information of key political figures ?
I choose privacy thank you very much.
I wanted to break the preconception that software is just inherently secure. If anything it's super brittle and the continuous delivery cycle has its downsides.