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Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

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Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#341
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the majority of people can get a product, how can it be a status symbol? Simple. If you have it you're ok. if not you are a marginal

But seeing that the other 50% don’t have iOS devices, how can they feel marginal?

Well I can't know all intricate details but I've heard and not once from my friend's kids something in line of: but dad everyone has an iPhone and I must have one too. Maybe it is not representative but that's what I've heard.

On top of that I got customers for my software and ones that own Mac/iOS are are shall I say very vocal. Here is the literal quote: when are you guys going to have your product for Mac? You should know that Windows sucks and no one will take your product seriously. All my friends have Mac and iPhone.

It does sound like they feel being belong to some higher level

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#342
post #226
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But I also know that you can have so much sugar you fall into a diabetic coma. Exactly my feelings. Same thing here started from machine code and now doing everything else including kitchen sink

Did you guys really start from machine code or do you mean assembler?

Machine code. Was actually typing it on big roll of paper and then crawling around it pretending to be a debugger

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear to me what you think Exhibit B is demonstrating. That's the documentation for CIColor.init(red:green:blue:alpha:), and it's documented. It creates a CIColor with the specified red/green/blue/alpha components. This is literally just a model object.

There are no examples.

There's no need for examples because initializing objects/structs is such a basic feature of both languages that Apple supports, it should be taken as read that the reader knows how to do it.

    CIColor.init(red: 0.0, green: 1.0, blue: 0.0, alpha: 1.0)

    [[CIColor alloc] initWithRed:0.0 green:1.0 blue:0.0 alpha:1.0]

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#344
post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When speaking to Blackberry execs (10+ yrs ago) about their abysmal developer support I pointed to apple.com/developer as an example of how it should be done. Blackberry's lack of developer support was surely one of the key reasons for its failure. Apple seriously needs to re-focus.

As someone with 'insider' insight into BlackBerry ... I would say the issue is complicated: 1) BlackBerry was never thought of internally as a 'platform' more of a 'solution' (i.e. you get what you get out of the box) - apps were a little secondary. That perspective was too slow to evolve. 2) The original Java APIs were not very well thought out - part of the problem in 'great docs' was that the underlying platform w…

Wasn’t there also an issue of allowing foreign governments to MitM their service?

All the data was routed through Canada, right?

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#345
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But seeing that the other 50% don’t have iOS devices, how can they feel marginal?

Well I can't know all intricate details but I've heard and not once from my friend's kids something in line of: but dad everyone has an iPhone and I must have one too. Maybe it is not representative but that's what I've heard. On top of that I got customers for my software and ones that own Mac/iOS are are shall I say very vocal. Here is the literal quote: when are you guys going to have your product for Mac? You sho…

Well I can't know all intricate details

Finding marketshare for mobile in various markets isn’t that hard....

But why base an opinion on anecdotes when their is widely available data?

Surely you’re not basing your opinion on Mac marketshare (which hovers around 10%) based on “your friends”.?

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#346
post #153

Maybe I'm the only one, but when I start looking into a project, I start at the API docs and work from there. I really need to know if key features I want are viable on the platform or not. If I want to use an accessibility API to, in a supported way, read all of the items in every menu in the menu bar, how do I do that? Is it supported? Is there a set of best practices I should follow? The problem with not documenti…

Bingo

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#347
post #153

Maybe I'm the only one, but when I start looking into a project, I start at the API docs and work from there. I really need to know if key features I want are viable on the platform or not. If I want to use an accessibility API to, in a supported way, read all of the items in every menu in the menu bar, how do I do that? Is it supported? Is there a set of best practices I should follow? The problem with not documenti…

You are not the only one. My most recent experience with Apple's documentation (regarding some iOS 13 API concern), left me with a sense of impending doom and hopelessness. After about 5 minutes I gave up and went back to playing the google/stackoverflow search game. I have become very addicted to the quality of Microsoft's documentation for things like .Net Core & C#, and have found it virtually impossible to tolera…

A better example would be:

- Apple: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coreimage/cicolorc...

- Microsoft: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/coreimage.cicolo...

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#348
Funny thing is Microsoft has much better documentation on Apple's very own frameworks. Simply compare their documentation on this arbitrary type (CIAffineClamp):

Microsoft's Documentation: - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/coreimage.ciaffi... - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/coreimage.ciaffi...

Apple's Documentation: - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Gr...

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#349
post #117

Nowhere in the comments thus far has anyone pointed out that SwiftUI — the framework in TFA's crosshairs — is in beta. I've written a relatively large amount of SwiftUI code and I get the impression that the design is still in flux. There are corner cases (as well as much more mainstream one) that haven't been fully thought through. Beta 5 of Xcode 11 brought non-trivial changes to the API and I expect those to conti…

As I noted in another comment, the documentation for SwiftUI is actually pretty good, especially if you take into account how quickly the framework has changed. It includes some rich, progressive tutorials. [0] The author states that they are planning to write an app from scratch with SwiftUI. I think most iOS developers would hesitate to build an entire app on a beta framework. [0] - https://developer.apple.com/tuto…

The SwiftUI tutorials also have quiz questions at the bottom to test your understanding of the tutorial. Never seen that before but seems like a great idea

https://developer.apple.com/tutorials/swiftui/creating-and-c...

Re: Apple Developer Documentation Is Missing

#350

I actually agree whole heartedly with the intentions behind this article. I find Apples documentation to be incomplete and not nearly as detailed as I think it should be. I think that personally it’s not all that well organized either. My minimum standard for good documentation has and always been Python’s[0]. While no documentation is perfect, I think they mostly get it right by providing good explanations and examp…

I’ve also found links in Microsoft’s documentation that often link to things they have already marked as outdated or not going to be updated

IMHO that's usually a good sign --- that the API you're using is not ever going to change again. MS values stability and backwards compatibility far more than others (and in the past, that was even better) so "not going to be updated" means "this has become mature and stable, don't worry about unexpected changes."

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