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An appeal to Apple from Anukari

anukari.com

81–90 of 197 posts

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#81

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…

> Stockholm syndrome

I don't think that's apt. What you find to be "abuse" others might find to be the kind of obstacles/issues that every platform/ecosystem has.

It probably helps if you never put Apple on a pedestal in the first place, so there's no special disappointment when they inevitably turn out to be imperfect. E.g., just because Apple publishes a new API/framework, that doesn't mean you need to jump on board and use it.

Anyway, developers are adults who can make their own judgements about whether it's worth it to work in Apple's ecosystem or not. It sounds like you've made your decision. Now let everyone else make theirs.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#82

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…

> Same for macOS compared to Windows. This hasn't ever been my experience. Maybe if you're in a really specific market niche where most of the userbase is on Mac. Only 5% of users on Windows paying for the software still absolutely dwarfs 100% of Mac users paying for it. We have more sales on Linux than we do Mac.

> We have more sales on Linux than we do Mac

That's interesting, what's your product? There are a few pieces of software on Macs that I would love to pay for on Linux but the option isn't there.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#83
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wouldn't call Xcode slim. It currently sits at 13GB+ as installed on my drive, and that does not include the simulators which are, what, 10GB each or something? Xcode is by far the largest application I have installed on my "daily driver" Mac.

It's still compressed on disk, so it takes only 5,4 GB of space, not 13 GB+. Sure, the simulator and the iOS or the other SDKs will take more space, but those aren't needed to develop macOS apps.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#84
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

My belief is that taking the time to write docs is kinda like an editing process of your thinking. You start to think hard about the reasons you've written an API and how it could be better. And there's a limit to how big you can think about something as a whole so you will naturally try to modularize and layer things. Not just adding things in an adhoc fashion.

I think they threw the towel when they realize the mess they've built. In contrast you have things like RHEL, FreeBSD, etc, where there's a drive to keep things small and neat just to be able to document them.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#85
post #81

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…

> Stockholm syndrome I don't think that's apt. What you find to be "abuse" others might find to be the kind of obstacles/issues that every platform/ecosystem has. It probably helps if you never put Apple on a pedestal in the first place, so there's no special disappointment when they inevitably turn out to be imperfect. E.g., just because Apple publishes a new API/framework, that doesn't mean you need to jump on boar…

> so there's no special disappointment when they inevitably turn out to be imperfect.

Oh poor Apple. If only they had the resources and engineers to fix that. /s

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#86
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 documen…

> 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

Isn't those the native stacks? Unless you're going for system programming. The nice thing about GTK and Qt is that you have access to the source code when you're trying to find the behavior of a component (if the docs is lacking). No such luck with AppKit.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#87
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You seem to be conflating 2 different things. Apple’s OS proficiency and the associated technologies they support on their OS and Apple’s dev tools proficiency.

People use Apple’s dev tools because they are the only/best way to deliver apps on Apple’s OSes.

If we changed the situation, so that Apple Dev Tools could be used to create applications for non Apple OSes, or non Apple Dev tools were first class citizens for creating Apple apps, I bet the vast majority of people would use the non Apple dev tools to create both Apple and non Apple apps.

What’s keeping Apple Dev Tools in the game is their privileged position in the Apple OS ecosystem.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#88
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even Wikipedia says Whataboutism can be completely deserved in some cases. It is absolutely deserved here - Apple built a 100 foot tower, and it's grown hairy over the last few decades. Linux built 7 30 foot towers without stairs in the same timeframe; but yelling about the overgrowth on the 100 foot tower is still somehow defensible. If they can't build their own towers correctly, they have no right to act like the…

Corporate sponsors on Linux provide a fraction of the money Apple does and even what they do are geared towards their own needs.

But more relevant is the fact that their donations are focused on running Linux as servers and there Linux is miles ahead of anything Apple provides, to the point that Apple has abandoned its server OS.

Re: An appeal to Apple from Anukari

#89

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…

The problem is that this could be easily applied to many things. To paraphrase: It’s honestly nuts that so many developers continue to try to make software using a bloated JavaScript framework and thousands of Node dependencies. That might also be true but that misses the point - programming is not engineering; nothing is done to an engineer’s preferred standard; and probably never will. It’s like being a CNC Technic…

Software engineering is not programming and is not about clean code. Using electron is building a skyscraper when you want to rest or a suspended bridge for crossing a small river. Even if you can order almost everything and you're just assembling, it is a wasteful and lazy solution.
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