Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#111

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #91

crazygringo wrote: post #70

Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person 's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behav…

I'm already fairly well-known in the Apple developer community and received a lot of positive feedback on social media before posting the announcement, but I do think you're overestimating the amount of effort that I and other developers are willing to put into getting Feedback Assistant improved. This is not a fight for higher income or something of that obvious importance. The beauty of the strike is that steps 1-3…

Might be worth having a public list of people who've "signed" your boycott, though.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#112

Post by musicale » Mon, Nov 06, 2023, 11:38 PM UTC

changoplatanero wrote: post #17

ladberg wrote: post #8

I sympathize: even filing radars internally at Apple gets much of the same treatment, albeit with the ability to see the state of the radar.

Yeah he's lamenting how poorly the external developers are being treated but seems like they are largely being treated the same as Apple treats its own employees

Sad but probably true. I imagine Apple can afford to do better and it would pay off both internally and externally.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#113

Post by lapcat » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 12:01 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #111

lapcat wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm already fairly well-known in the Apple developer community and received a lot of positive feedback on social media before posting the announcement, but I do think you're overestimating the amount of effort that I and other developers are willing to put into getting Feedback Assistant improved. This is not a fight for higher income or something of that obvious importance. The beauty of the strike is that steps 1-3…

Might be worth having a public list of people who've "signed" your boycott, though.

I've considered that, but I have some concerns about the idea.

I'm worried about personally getting overwhelmed by emails and messages on social media. The more successful the boycott, the more I become swamped. :-)

Also, I think many developers have a fear of reprisal, whether that's empirically justified or not. My understanding is that there's now actually some degree of anonymity in Feedback Assistant, after changes were made in recent years for GDPR compliance? In any case, putting your name in public is a bigger step than simply boycotting, and I'm aiming for maximum participation. I've put my own name on this, and some cranks have even speculated that I might get kicked out of the developer program for it, which I doubt, because it would make me a martyr and kill my popular software — not to mention that dropping several 0days on Apple didn't get me kicked out — but I suppose that's always a possibility.

In general, I don't think that petitions are particularly useful. I'm more in favor of action (though in this specific case, the boycott is technically inaction).

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#114

Post by tinus_hn » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 12:46 AM UTC

black_puppydog wrote: post #105

joenot443 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Respectfully, why file them at all if that's the case? The cynic in me can't help but see that as free high-quality engineering labor for what's already the world's most valuable company. They don't need more help :)

This is also the stance I take on customer support of Apple products. It got hyped so much about "just working" that I take it as a bit of an insult that they want me to stand in for their CS team. I do make exceptions for close family.

You prefer fixing Windows computers?

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#115

Post by schappim » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 12:53 AM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #70

Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person 's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behav…

Sure Apple could be indifferent to a small percentage of people boycotting their process, but the Public Relations (PR) and Comms group is extremely averse to negative commentary. I'd imagine there are some emails flying around right now...

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#116

Post by krackers » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 12:59 AM UTC

JKCalhoun wrote: post #57

MichaelZuo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would the ideal structure look like in your opinion?

Ideally, daily BRBs (kept to an hour) with engineers attending. If it turns out there are too many Radars to keep the BRBs to an hour then there are issues elsewhere. At the same time, I didn't mention it above, engineers need to be allowed time in the product schedule to fix these bugs. As probably everyone knows, when a bug is kicked down the road once (because of scheduling constraints: hey, we gotta ship the soft…

>People still talk about how wonderful SnowLeopard was simply because it was a bug-fix only (mostly?) release.

I think that was part marketing, snow leopard brought pretty sweeping architectural/internal changes: ARC, GCD, 64-bit kernel, so it definitely wasn't a pure bugfix release.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#117

Post by saagarjha » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 1:00 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #113

saagarjha wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might be worth having a public list of people who've "signed" your boycott, though.

I've considered that, but I have some concerns about the idea. I'm worried about personally getting overwhelmed by emails and messages on social media. The more successful the boycott, the more I become swamped. :-) Also, I think many developers have a fear of reprisal, whether that's empirically justified or not. My understanding is that there's now actually some degree of anonymity in Feedback Assistant, after chan…

If this gets you kicked out of the developer program, I think everyone would be quite upset, yes.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#118

Post by ary » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 1:27 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #110

crimsontech wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fully agree. I work in security and sent Apple a bypass for child restriction policies on iOS, they told me to send it to feedback. Testing, reproducing, writing it up all takes time and effort. I didn’t want anything from them other than for it to be fixed, I have kids with iPhones. It’s no different than other companies though, I sent a remote code execution to Cisco and they just replied that they already knew abo…

To be fair, remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity.

> remote code execution and "I got around the child lock on this device" are somewhat different in severity

You’ll notice that the recipients of both reports responded similarly, with apathy. Perhaps that was the point of juxtaposing them?

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#119

Post by type0 » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 2:37 AM UTC

stockboss wrote: post #75

wackget wrote: post #60

As a developer, I flatly refuse to engage with Apple in any way because of their $100 annual fee. I feel especially vindicated when stuff like this surfaces. Imagine being the richest company in the world and having the audacity to charge people for the privilege of being able to contribute to your platform. It is absolutely insane, and nothing will convince me otherwise.

while i agree with your sentiment, i think Apple would probably argue that they're actually charging for access to their distribution network.

They are charging for the access to their "walled city/garden", they are promoting digital feudalism and the worst part is that other companies see them as exemplary for these terrible practices.

Re: Apple developer boycott of Feedback Assistant

#120

Post by rendaw » Tue, Nov 07, 2023, 4:22 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #91

crazygringo wrote: post #70

Boycotts/strikes* only work if most or nearly all people participate, because you'll only participate if you're pretty sure nearly everyone else is too. While if this blogpost merely gets 0.1% of developers to strike... Apple couldn't care less. I think this developer strike is a great idea, but launching it as a single person 's call to action (Jeff Johnson's) is not generally going to be effective in changing behav…

I'm already fairly well-known in the Apple developer community and received a lot of positive feedback on social media before posting the announcement, but I do think you're overestimating the amount of effort that I and other developers are willing to put into getting Feedback Assistant improved. This is not a fight for higher income or something of that obvious importance. The beauty of the strike is that steps 1-3…

I think Apple will individually reply to the feedbacks with a PR message like "we take your concerns seriously, we have a plan to improve our feedback interaction." Because the replies are individual and posted on a private channel, people who joined the boycott will not have any wider visibility, and think "Oh maybe it's okay now" and go back to using it.

It might be worth establishing an official public dialog forum and discouraging people from individually communicating until a resolution is confirmed there in public. Right now it's on individuals to confirm that Apple improved things, which can only reasonbly be done by submitting more feedback (i.e. breaking the boycott).

I've personally stopped providing feedback via forms on cloud providers' websites due to similar unacknowledgement and general disinterest in improving developer experience, but haven't tried to organize anything about it.