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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

But do Synergy and Barrier Just Work? It has to Just Work, otherwise it's a defective product, or a rough prototype for some Apple product.

See, that's the thing. My guess is you had to configure Synergy, and as a techie you're blind to this effort. But it is still effort, hence a time sink and a cognitive burden. The Apple version is none of these and a joy to use because Apple puts the emphasis on making it Just Work with zero configuration if possible.

Hundreds of millions more people will experience multi-device control for the first time with Apple Universal Control, than will have ever heard of Synergy.

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> Apple puts the emphasis on making it Just Work

They really, really don't. I have constant Bluetooth issues with all of my Apple devices, and since all of their flashy stuff relies on Bluetooth most of it breaks every couple of days.

Universal clipboard failures, AirDrop failures, AirPod pairing issues when trying to switch between devices, and total Bluetooth stack crashes.

They get things working to 80% and then just stop maintaining them.

> But do Synergy and Barrier Just Work? It has to Just Work, otherwise it's a defective product.

I don't own any apple products so correct me if I'm wrong, but if there was a way to make a program to "just work" will Apple allow it? From what I've heard devs complain apple's walled garden is pretty restrictive when it comes to things you can and cannot do especially when mobile devices are involved.

I’m an Apple developer, and own lots of Apple products.

Apple gear and software always has a low-level advantage, as they own the SDK, but I haven’t seen them actually use this to deliberately disadvantage competitors (unlike some other companies that I won’t mention).

That said, I have seen them “Sherlock” developers, though; where they implement integrated versions of products made by independent devs. This has been fairly controversial, as they have not always paid/given credit to the developers they plowed under. That sucks, because it would, literally, cost them nothing to simply mention the product that inspired their work. I suspect that’s because lawyers.

I tend to like Apple for the same reason that other developers hate them. That “walled garden” is a big fat PItA, but it is also the reason for an enormous, lucrative, market. We need to learn to take the bad with the good, if we want to be happy.

> Apple gear and software always has a low-level advantage, as they own the SDK, but I haven’t seen them actually use this to deliberately disadvantage competitors (unlike some other companies that I won’t mention).

Try to write code for macOS that can stream data from disk as fast as Logic Pro. Maybe there's really no magic, and I'm just an idiot, but I certainly couldn't do it.

I’m not exactly sure what that has to do with disputing the quoted sentence. It’s actually what I was talking about. Everybody knows that Apple has "internal APIs," giving them access that non-Apple software does not have. This does make it difficult for independent developers to offer competing functionality (this has happened with me), but I have not felt that Apple has deliberately targeted competition. It's just that they have the ability to deliver something that serves the user, and their internal access gives them an advantage.

As an independent developer, I can certainly understand why I would not be allowed to access some of these private APIs, and I don't feel that it is because Apple is afraid of any competition from li'l ol' me. I have always assumed that it's because access at that level may bypass some security methods.

You have just described "deliberately disadvantaging" the competition, which was what you said you did not believe Apple had done.

The approach he described is consistent with non-malicious failure to turn a new API into something robust, reliable, external, and well documented. If you’ve got a hot new way to move bytes the long term stability of the API is a real concern. You break things if you change it.

No. "Deliberately disadvantaging" is doing something like adding code to slow down disk write operations used by a direct competitor.

Listen, I'm not gonna play this game. I said my piece, you said yours, we're done.

Do you really trust the average individual to install apps that with zero configuration can read your screen from any of your devices?

This walled garden is 100% a feature.

I’ve used barrier for years and love it. It’s great for separating personal and work devices but having access to both at once. But it requires some effort to run if the server is a static always on workstation, and constant effort if the server is a laptop which goes to sleep and/changes its IP address. I would never recommend it to someone that might need support.

> Hundreds of millions more people

It's a pretty niche feature. I have used both Barrier and Synergy in the past but as a workflow, visually manipulating multiple computers like this sucks. Few people need to do it and life is better if you can avoid needing to do it at all. Multiplatform development is the greatest win but still, the more you can minimise on-target testing, the better. A fast test harness on your dev machine is much nicer.

IMHO remoting into a machine is much less hassle than having a dedicated screen. Most use cases typically involve poking it now and again and having an occasional window on your main display is nicer than giving up desk space and properly aligning another display. If it's not part of your permanent setup then this extra display is often an ergonomic pest. You may be able to share peripherals but if you have to contort your neck to see it then ugh, it's not fun. It can be ergonomically nicer to use their own dedicated peripherals on a side table rather than sharing them.

If it's about sharing data then obviously network accessible storage (cloud, NAS or mount a remote machine's drive) is better.

Does anything that relies on “Linux on the desktop” just work? Of course not. I say this as a user.

How do I universal control my iPad from my Linux computer? Just Works within your own ecosystem, Never Works outside of it.

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