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An appeal to Apple from Anukari

anukari.com

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Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#51

Post by arvinsim »

philistine wrote: post #35
eigenspace wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly nuts that so many developers continue to try to make software on MacOS. I understand the appeal of their current hardware, and I used to even be a big fan of the user experience, but it really seems like attempting to build software in MacOS is like trying to build a house on a sandbar. Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development targe…

> Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development target. You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple is very difficult to work with indeed, but they have a shit-ton of paying users. Still to this day, iOS is a better revenue maker than Android. Same for macOS compared to Windows. You want to make a living? Release on macOS. People there pay for soft…

I don't believe this. For iOS, sure. But for MacOS? The number of people that uses Windows dwarfs MacOS.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#52

Post by gjsman-1000 »

arvinsim wrote: post #51
philistine wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development target. You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple is very difficult to work with indeed, but they have a shit-ton of paying users. Still to this day, iOS is a better revenue maker than Android. Same for macOS compared to Windows. You want to make a living? Release on macOS. People there pay for soft…

I don't believe this. For iOS, sure. But for MacOS? The number of people that uses Windows dwarfs MacOS.

Dwarfs MacOS, sure; but the user base has been conditioned, like Android, to never purchase anything. Why would they purchase anything, when most of their time is spent in the web browser and maybe a few Adobe apps?

iOS is 27% of the mobile market; but total revenue through the App Store in 2024 was $103 billion. For Google Play, it was $46 billion. Double the sales, from a market 1/3rd the size. Whether we like it or not, the whole open platform of Windows being a breeding ground for viruses and piracy, and the ongoing cultural expectations that set, caused a direct effect on people's willingness to buy Windows software from unknown publishers without a third party (Steam, Microsoft Store) vetting them.

I expect it's highly situational. Don't expect to sell many games on Mac. However, I do find it interesting that services like SetApp exist on Mac, but nobody has tried anything with that level of quality on Windows. SetApp also hasn't shown any interest in expanding to Windows.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#53

Post by gjsman-1000 »

pjmlp wrote: post #39
eigenspace wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly nuts that so many developers continue to try to make software on MacOS. I understand the appeal of their current hardware, and I used to even be a big fan of the user experience, but it really seems like attempting to build software in MacOS is like trying to build a house on a sandbar. Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development targe…

It is still better engineered that dealing with the distribution of the day, reinventing the way to do sound, graphics stack, UI, ...... Once upon a time I thought either GNOME or KDE would win, and we could all enjoy the one Linux distribution, I was proven wrong. Then again, I have been back on Windows as main OS since Windows 7.

I don't know why you are downvoted here.

The engineering standards, and churn within the Linux desktop, are hilariously bad.

Nobody who uses it has a right to complain about how node_modules has a thousand dependencies and makes your JavaScript app brittle. Their superior Linux desktop won't even be capable of running the same software build outside of a Flatpak without crashes in three years.

As for lack of documentation, good luck pulling together all the pieces you need to write a fully native Linux application without using Qt, GTK, or a cross-platform solution. Maybe you have your own UI stack that needs porting. A simple request, fairly accomplishable on Mac. The lack of documentation on Linux outside of that privileged route will make Apple's documentation look like a gold standard. Heck, even if you stay on the privileged route, you're still probably in for a bad time.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#54

Post by AJRF »

I’ve worked in two high profile companies with very prominent apps on the Apple App Store.

The team we talked to at Apple never ever cared about our problems, but very often invited us to their office to discuss the latest feature they were going to announce at WWDC to strong arm us into supporting it. That was always the start and stop of their engagement with us. We had to burn technical support tickets to ever get any insight into why their buggy software wasn’t working.

Apples dev relations are not serious people.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#55

Post by vessenes »

Side note: Anukari should put out a Mick Gordon sound pack and share revs with him. That dude is making some crazy crazy stuff; his demo is awesome. Pairing up with artists once you have such a strong tool is good business and good for the world. If you like Mick Gordon. Which I do.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#56

Post by newsclues »

pjmlp wrote: post #40
thraway3837 wrote: post #30

This is all just too much Stockholm syndrome. Apple’s DX (developer experience) has always been utterly abysmal, and these continued blog posts just goes to show just how bad it is. Proprietary technologies, poor or no documentation, silent deprecations and removals of APIs, slow trickle feed of yearly WWDC releases that enable just a bit more functionality, introducing newer more entrenched ways to do stuff but stil…

On the old Mac OS, and early OS X day, the documentation was great, I dunno what happened to the documentation team. Swift on the server is for Apple ecosystem developers, to share code, just like all those reasons to apparently use JavaScript on the server instead of something saner.

Marketing pushed for features faster than engineering could build them properly to the former standard (quality and documentation).

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#57

Post by newsclues »

philistine wrote: post #35
eigenspace wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's honestly nuts that so many developers continue to try to make software on MacOS. I understand the appeal of their current hardware, and I used to even be a big fan of the user experience, but it really seems like attempting to build software in MacOS is like trying to build a house on a sandbar. Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development targe…

> Apple has done nothing and continues to do nothing to engender any confidence in their platform as a development target. You're missing the forest for the trees. Apple is very difficult to work with indeed, but they have a shit-ton of paying users. Still to this day, iOS is a better revenue maker than Android. Same for macOS compared to Windows. You want to make a living? Release on macOS. People there pay for soft…

Paying users is the key.

I’d imagine that people have failed to attract users who pay on Linux or windows and developers know that people use their software via piracy.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#58

Post by no_wizard »

pjmlp wrote: post #40
thraway3837 wrote: post #30

This is all just too much Stockholm syndrome. Apple’s DX (developer experience) has always been utterly abysmal, and these continued blog posts just goes to show just how bad it is. Proprietary technologies, poor or no documentation, silent deprecations and removals of APIs, slow trickle feed of yearly WWDC releases that enable just a bit more functionality, introducing newer more entrenched ways to do stuff but stil…

On the old Mac OS, and early OS X day, the documentation was great, I dunno what happened to the documentation team. Swift on the server is for Apple ecosystem developers, to share code, just like all those reasons to apparently use JavaScript on the server instead of something saner.

> JavaScript on the server instead of something saner

JS on the server is actually really fast and well supported. Not really sure what you're driving at here.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#59

Post by galad87 »

thraway3837 wrote: post #30

This is all just too much Stockholm syndrome. Apple’s DX (developer experience) has always been utterly abysmal, and these continued blog posts just goes to show just how bad it is. Proprietary technologies, poor or no documentation, silent deprecations and removals of APIs, slow trickle feed of yearly WWDC releases that enable just a bit more functionality, introducing newer more entrenched ways to do stuff but stil…

It's surely not perfect, and so much is quite horrible, but at least try to keep the facts in check. AppKit and auto layout are still working fine, they aren't going anywhere any time soon, there is no need to rewrite all the UI code.

Core Data threading? Well, it has got its pitfalls, but those are known, and anyway, nothing is forcing you to use it.

Xcode is so slim these days, it a ~3 GB download, it doesn't take an hour to unxip, and it can be dowloaded from the developer website.

Swift? It might be needed for a bunch of new frameworks, Objective-C isn't going anywhere anytime soon either.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#60

Post by duped »

johnnyjeans wrote: post #42
duped wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you, but there simply isn't an alternative for pro audio developers. You go where the users are and the majority of the market (by revenue) are Mac users. Now a lot of people may reply to this that Windows isn't that bad with ASIO (third party driver framework) or modern APIs like WASAPI (which is still lacking), or how pipewire is changing things on Linux so you don't need jack anymore (but god…

> You go where the users are and the majority of the market (by revenue) are Mac users. One of the worst things about Apple is how much time and effort they spend trying to lock you into their platform if you want to support it. There's no excuse for it. Even once they have you on their system, they're doing everything in their power to lock you in to their workflows and development environments. It's actually insane…

This is "don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower" territory imo. I don't think Apple is actively hostile to 3P developers or tries to lock them in. I think they simply don't care - or lack the institutional capacity to care even if individual developers in the organization want to care.

The Apple developer experience is an abject horror because they believe everyone who is capable of developing high value applications for Apple devices works at Apple, or will work at Apple. 3P devs are a nuisance they tolerate rather than a core value-add for their services and devices. I assume it's less bad within Apple, but I really have no idea.

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