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An appeal to Apple from Anukari

anukari.com

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Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#61
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It might be fast, doesn't make its WATs go away.

https://blog.kevinchisholm.com/javascript/javascript-wat/

Thankfully we can thank someone with the lifetime experience of designing Turbo Pascal, Delphi, J++, C#, and his team, to have made the experience bearable.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#62
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Ever seen the compiler support tables for ISO managed languages, Web or Khronos standards?

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#63
post #59

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…

Let's also keep in mind that the Linux desktop commits most of these offenses, but worse.

Core Data threading? Does Linux even attempt something like Core Data? How well is that going?

Swift? I remember when Linux diehards invented Vala. The Swift of Linux, but with none of the adoption.

As for UI code, Linux is finally starting to get a little more stable there. GTK 2 to 3 was a disaster; Qt wasn't fun between major upgrades; if you weren't using a framework, you needed to have fun learning the quirks of Xorg; nobody who builds for Linux gets to lecture Mac about UI stability.

Or, for that matter, app stability in general. Will a specific build of Blender outside of a Flatpak still work on the Linux desktop after 2 release cycles? No? Then don't lecture me about good practices. Don't lecture me about how my website or app was sloppily engineered because it has dependencies.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#64
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…

There is an excuse: shareholders. The more lock in there is, the more the champagne flows.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#65

The problem with exposing an API for this is that far too many developers will force the highest performance state all the time. I don't know if there's really a good way to stop that and have the API at the same time.

The article mentions game mode, which is a feature of the latest Apple operating systems that is optimised for cases like this. Game mode pops up a notification when it’s enabled, which most applications wouldn’t want to happen. So far I haven’t seen anything abuse it.

Requiring a fullscreen window stops almost all possible abuses, though, as you cannot do this from a background process.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#66

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…

The Apple DX used to be pretty great around 2010. But by now, it's laughably bad. With every additional OS update, they asked for more and more work (and expensive EV signing certificates) to keep our pro audio app working, which is why it has since been abandoned.

In fact, I'm now working on a USB hardware replacement for what used to be a macOS app, simply because Apple isn't allowing enough control anymore. Their DX has degraded to the point where delivering the features as an app has become impossible.

Also, USB gadgets are exempt from the 30% app store tax. You can even sell them with recurring subscriptions through your own payment methods. Both for the business owner and for the developer, sidestepping Apple is better than jumping through their ridiculous hoops.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#67
post #40

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.

I found some of that older documentation one day while being beyond frustrated with understanding some underdocumented iOS library APIs and it is incredible. What they have now is a joke in comparison. WWDC as a documentation strategy is terrible for people that learn from text. And it’s just a bad medium to begin with for information transfer. By its nature it’s bad at information density, and is often distracting and filled with fluff.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#68
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found some of that older documentation one day while being beyond frustrated with understanding some underdocumented iOS library APIs and it is incredible. What they have now is a joke in comparison. WWDC as a documentation strategy is terrible for people that learn from text. And it’s just a bad medium to begin with for information transfer. By its nature it’s bad at information density, and is often distracting a…

Yes, some of it survives on the archives, who knows for how long, always save copies of them.

I wonder if it is a generation gap, as many apparently learn coding via videos, however that it is not enough to go deep.

By the way, Microsoft suffers from the same diseas, they reduced their team size, ans unless one is coding since the 16 bit days, there are many things no one will find.

Some of it is gone forever, as they kept replacing their documentation, blogs and video platforms.

Other is still there, but you have to have actually used that in practice, to find out the Win32, or .NET Framework documentation that nowadays only gives the most recent version.

Or even Microsoft Systems Journal articles, as another example.

Google on Android is also a mixed bag, depending on what one is looking for.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

macOS also has a bunch of mechanisms to inform the user about this! IIRC the battery menu has entries for apps draining a lot of power (iterm always shows up there for me!)

My potentially incorrect understanding is that iTerm generally only shows up when the processes you run inside it are consuming a bunch of energy. It only shows up in the battery menu for me when I’m running simulations or other big CPU intensive stuff on the command line.

Yeah - I've always thought about this and was never sure!

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#70

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…

Apple's documentation used to be quite good—many useful guides, thousands of technical notes, development books quarterly—it's really a shame that they've turned their back on that. Their old docs leaned toward being overly detailed, which some complained about at the time, but I'd much prefer that over near radio silence.

Apple's also been deleting more and more of its old documentation. Much of the it can only be found on aging DVDs now, or web/FTP archives if you're lucky. Even more annoying is how some of the deleted docs are _still_ referenced modern docs and code samples.

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