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Apple-Developer Relations

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Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#241

Post by physicsguy »

josephg wrote: post #192
kiawe_fire wrote: post #174

I think the core sentiment here is being lost. This isn’t so much a call to action against Apple’s fees. It’s pointing out something that I’ve felt building over the last couple of years out of Apple, which is an attitude of hubris, contempt, and a “taking for granted” of Apple’s developers. The WWDC spiel of how much they value us has become trite and transparent. They do produce some really nice tools and APIs. I c…

> They do produce some really nice tools and APIs. I can’t knock what they provide developers. I wish that were true. But Xcode today feels like a bloated, buggy mess. It crashes regularly, and sometimes it lags so badly writing swift code that it drops keystrokes. It feels like permanently beta software, where the team never has time to fix the bugs in the last version before they’re rushing the next version out the…

It pissed me off as a non-iOS developer that it doubled in size overnight because of the ARM stuff. I'm not even writing Mac Apps, I just need the system libraries so I can install Homebrew GCC and get on with my work.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#242

Post by wayneftw »

vimy wrote: post #52
wayneftw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear the thoughts on this of people who are arguing with me in another thread that "Apple planned for web apps to be the only apps for the iPhone until they just happened to come up with the idea for the store full of native apps". Honestly, if you believe that Apple ever planned for iPhone to be web only you've got to buy this bridge from me. No kidding. Apple used the "web only apps" angle as a stopgap…

It really seems that was the original plan. An email from the Apple vs Epic trial where Steve Jobs gives the go ahead for the app store in October 2007. They had to rush to get the sdk done in three months. https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1400270458608664577

No it doesn't. Not even a little bit.

That's a go ahead email. That's not an email showing the conception of the idea.

We already had app stores on phones before this. You think they didn't come up with the idea until that email? It's perhaps the most obvious idea in the world.

Sorry, y'all are just wrong. This email is evidence that its all been discussed many times before the "go ahead".

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#243

Post by wayneftw »

Uehreka wrote: post #36
wayneftw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear the thoughts on this of people who are arguing with me in another thread that "Apple planned for web apps to be the only apps for the iPhone until they just happened to come up with the idea for the store full of native apps". Honestly, if you believe that Apple ever planned for iPhone to be web only you've got to buy this bridge from me. No kidding. Apple used the "web only apps" angle as a stopgap…

Sure thing. Apple told developers that webapps were the solution. They didn’t give any public indication that this would change. Now, one could argue that this was just cover while they got the native SDK ready, but that Bertrand Serlet email from the other thread was the point at which they even officially decided to have a native SDK at all (months after telling devs to write webapps). I think the real issue is wit…

Nobody, especially not Apple, decides something like that in one email or even a single conversation. Also this is the company that goes to great pains to hide what everybody can see about their plans. Keep that in mind.

Obviously, This is something that has been discussed over and over and over since they started planning the iPhone. I've watched Apple work, they don't hash out what their products are going to do through emails.

Sorry, but you're wrong. The idea had clearly occurred to them way before any of these emails that you're referencing.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#244

Post by mikece »

I really wish Overcast was available on Android (and via F-Droid so I could use it on Graphene OS). I say this having no idea how hard that would be... I would GLADLYpay Marco if I could use Overcast on Graphene.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#245

Post by kalleboo »

moosebear847 wrote: post #235
kalleboo wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people with lots of resources tried, and made pretty good phones/OSes - Nokia, Palm, Microsoft, Blackberry. They all fell down on the lack of apps. If your phone doesn't have apps for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, WhatsApp, LINE, tens of thousands of banks across the globe, credit cards, transit cards, various government ID schemes (try booking your vaccine in Sweden without an iPhone/Android) etc etc…

All those companies were around before and during the existence of the iPhone. At least some had apps, and had an equal or better chance at having all those apps, so I wonder why they weren’t successful. You have to start somewhere. If there were a good alternative, then adoption of it would drive gradual availability of these apps.

Software ecosystems with more than 2 platforms that need to be supported by developers just never happen.

Look at the desktop - we have Windows and Mac (and for a while it looked like we'd lose the Mac), Linux is still a desktop also-ran.

Look at the web - it took Microsoft completely neglecting IE for 5 years before there was any momentum at all towards other browsers. And now we're back to web developers mostly neglecting Firefox and praying for the day they can drop Safari support so we're 100% Chrome.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#246

Post by 015a »

ksec wrote: post #208
015a wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, yeah. There's just so many unknowns when it comes to "how profitable are App Stores" that any conversation about it is seriously pointless. Like, I don't even want to guess; I refuse to believe that iOS is more profitable than Android, because I'm not even sure if that's the right question . All the data we have on global/domestic smartphone shipments, active users, monthly actives, daily actives, dollars spen…

>it all comes from these dodgy "Global Insights" app consulting firms. Most of my Data were deduced /inferred from Official Apple and Google, Mobile Carrier, Government Numbers. For more numbers Benedict Evans slides has many more details.

Apple has literally said, under oath, that they do not track App Store profitability (as, I assume, a separate entity from their much larger "Services" slush fund). [1]

Well, we can argue until we go blue about how maybe he's lying, or twisting words, or how the App Store alone represents a business larger than many Fortune 500 companies and its irresponsible/incompetent of them to not track it. Reality is probably a little of all of the above. But it speaks to how insane these conversations are; magical incantations of deductions and inferences to arrive at seemingly significant percentages and magnitudes which have no basis in reality.

Here's a statement I'll agree with: "An application distributed on iOS is likely to return higher per-install revenue than the same application distributed on Android." But if you read that, and believe for a second that it should inform some broader policy or even application development decision making, then we're on completely different pages.

[1] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-05-19-apple-exec...

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#247

Post by Silhouette »

Apocryphon wrote: post #225
Silhouette wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty Others might have a different perspective. For example, personally I use an iPhone because the following are my requirements in descending order of priority: 1. I now need a smartphone running one of the two major platforms. 2. I do not want anything to do with Google, ever. 3. I don't like a lot of what Apple do but they ar…

Ask yourself this, then. Would you be content to replace your iPhone with an older iPhone that fulfills the same needs? Maybe an iPhone 6S for a half-decent camera by today's standards? Or even an iPhone 5c? If you only need it for essential needs, how basic should an iPhone be?

No, I wouldn't use a much older Apple phone.

One of the things I really dislike about Apple is that they don't give clear statements of how long they will provide software updates and in particular security updates for on each product. For a device like a phone that is inherently connecting to external networks all the time, I regard those updates as essential. There also seem to be some vulnerabilities inherent in the design of older iPhones that have been addressed in newer models.

Another thing I really dislike about Apple is that iOS Safari lags behind everyone else in the industry when it comes to new features and supporting high performance pages. Regardless of why you believe this is the case, again an older device that either no longer gets updates or is unlikely to get many more is a liability.

Finally, while the camera on older iPhones might be half-decent by today's standards, I prefer one that is actually decent.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#248

Post by Silhouette »

salamandersauce wrote: post #239
Silhouette wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty Others might have a different perspective. For example, personally I use an iPhone because the following are my requirements in descending order of priority: 1. I now need a smartphone running one of the two major platforms. 2. I do not want anything to do with Google, ever. 3. I don't like a lot of what Apple do but they ar…

Why do you need one of the two major platforms if not for apps? Without your parking app available for example on iOS would you still pick the iPhone? Or would you settle for Google and Android? Without third party apps the iPhone would just be a feature phone with a very nice web browser. Now there's probably people that get away entirely with just the built in set of apps but I bet that's eroding day by day as more…

Yes, the small number of essential apps are why I need a smartphone on one of the two dominant platforms. As you say, it's mostly for "official business", and those apps are invariably free and typically provided by or used with some "official" organisation. I don't need them often, but when I do, there may be no sensible alternative any more.

If it weren't for those, I think personally I would be quite happy to have more of a "dumbphone". A digital Swiss army knife is a very useful device. A poor imitation of general purpose computing is not, and something like a laptop or a desktop workstation is a more suitable tool in that case.

Re: Apple-Developer Relations

#249

Post by [deleted] »

015a wrote: post #246
ksec wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it all comes from these dodgy "Global Insights" app consulting firms. Most of my Data were deduced /inferred from Official Apple and Google, Mobile Carrier, Government Numbers. For more numbers Benedict Evans slides has many more details.

Apple has literally said, under oath, that they do not track App Store profitability (as, I assume, a separate entity from their much larger "Services" slush fund). [1] Well, we can argue until we go blue about how maybe he's lying, or twisting words, or how the App Store alone represents a business larger than many Fortune 500 companies and its irresponsible/incompetent of them to not track it. Reality is probably a…

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