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Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

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Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#161

Post by api »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back:

If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure.

Windows 10 is looking good. If it gets really, really good they might close the gap with Apple for professional users. Their glastnost/perestroika trend of opening up and embracing the dev community isn't hurting their reputation either. I really think Satya Nadella is turning the company around.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#162

Post by pedalpete »

ryanSrich wrote: post #143
mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

Until an OS comes along that rivals OSX, I'll stick with Apple. I'm one of the few people I know that really doesn't put a whole lot of thought into hardware. Yes I need my machine to run properly but as long as there's a baseline achievement of performance I'm good. Obviously I'd never be able to give up OSX for work purposes. Pretty much every piece of software I use is tied to OSX only.

What software are you using that is only on Mac? I'm surprised by this, as it seems most development software is available for all platforms these days.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#163

Post by waynecochran »

I teach both iOS/UIKit and OS X/AppKit in some of my courses and I have to rewrite my solutions every year. So much is deprecated and so much changes. If you write mildly sophisticated apps for iOS, just prepare to rewrite them every year.

Just look at the evolution of memory management from retain/release, to gc, to ARC, throw in properties, etc... Not to mention the API's that are constantly deprecated. Even my model (non-IU) classes get overhauled.

In the end the apps are doing anything better...

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#164

Post by [deleted] »

csomar wrote: post #146
mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

For general consumers, Microsoft is catching up. But Apple never really gained marketshare there because of its high prices. For Professionals, (especially software developers), I don't think so. OS X is still very superior to Windows. And the apps on OS X makes it worthwhile.

[deleted]

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#165

Post by walterbell »

saidajigumi wrote: post #157
olefoo wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't necessarily want to solve that problem. Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0]; namely the software, games and media that make their hardware useful. Software in the app store is a viciously competitive low-margin market; just like most other commodity markets. Which is why you need to treat it skeptically and work on building a name outside the app store before you a…

> Apple is working hard to commoditize the complements to their hardware [0] I've heard this argument before, and if it's true, it's suicidal. Apple will have failed to learn a critical lesson from Microsoft's dominance of the early PC era: it's the apps that matter. Even once there was a significant potential market of would-be platform "switchers" who wanted something beyond what Windows was offering, these switche…

Once upon a time, Apple invested to own 19% of Adobe, which went onto become a powerful software anchor of Apple's hardware ecosystem. Perhaps a bit too powerful for Jobs' liking, hence the modern strategies to commoditize ISVs on iOS.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#166

Post by gamesbrainiac »

api wrote: post #161
mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back: If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure. Windows 10 is looking good.…

Thats exactly what I tend to do on a Windows machine, and I don't miss linux at all. Feels like having a VPS (which it really is) ready at all times with awesome bandwidth.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#167

Post by api »

Sort of "meta," but I am getting the feeling that the whole "mobile is the future everything else is dead make everything for phones!" era is going the way of "web/cloud is the future everything else is dead write everything for the browser!"

Obviously mobile ain't going anywhere any more than the web is... I am referring to the mobile-only and everything else is dead mania. I feel like it has maybe a year or two left in it.

Question is: what is the next thing that is "the future" and will make everything else "dead"? Internet of things?

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#168

Post by briandear »

ThomPete wrote: post #45
eridius wrote: post #12

> Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level. This is a curious argument to make. The platform is too popular ? Would it have made any sense at all if anyone made the same claim about, say, Windows game development? I suspect what this really means is "there are more games than ever, and the iOS App Store is becoming increasingly difficult to rely on as a discovery mechanism, thus requiring advertisin…

The problem isn't that it's popular. The problem is that it's not designed to it's current popularity. 5000apps added every day yet no way for developers to build meaningful relationships with their customers or creating trials make it a very irrational platform to be on. Its nothing like how Google deals with popularity and quality. It's a huge problem Apple will have to solve. On the mac app store they completely g…

Trials? How much does a paid game cost; a few bucks? People really want a trial before they make a $1.99 investment? When you go to a restaurant, do you ask for a piece of steak before you actually order it? Do you get a trial of a movie before you buy a ticket? A trailer doesn't count because apps can have trailers too. Why is this trial obsession such a big deal for such cheap products? I personally would love to see the end of the in app purchase model. When I buy a game, I want to have the game and not have to be feeding money into it to unlock stuff. But, the market likes them because those games appear "free."

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#169

Post by mooreds »

api wrote: post #161
mark_l_watson wrote: post #104

I think that becoming the most profitable company in the world has negatively impacted Apple, at least how I view them. I wrote the chess program given away free with the early Apple IIs, made some good money on a Mac app in 1984, and until recently favored Mac laptops: a fan boy. That is changing. I bought an incredibly cheap and underpowered Windows 8.1 laptop in January (HP Stream 11) for $199 and like it quite a…

One thought I had about MS as a development machine a while back: If you want your Unix toolchains for development, you could still have them. The Surface Pro is powerful enough to run Linux in Vagrant or another virtualization engine. So you could just run a virtual dev environment. Virtual environments are sometimes better anyway, since you can replicate your operational infrastructure. Windows 10 is looking good.…

Absolutely!

I usually buy windows machines because of price/performance, and, to be honest, because I know how to make windows work for me and don't want to learn mac idioms.

However, the first thing I do is install git for windows, which gives me bash to navigate the filesystem, and then vagrant/virtualbox/ubuntu for development.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#170

Post by jkestner »

kbenson wrote: post #20
dyarosla wrote: post #16

I admire the developer, but the whole post feels like a cop-out blaming Apple. Too much competition? Let's give up. Engine broke from some change, don't want to try fixing it? Let's give up. Ads cost too much? Not, 'let's stop advertising on iOS', instead, Let's give up. I can understand as much as the next iOS developer that changes that require large workarounds due to software/hardware updates that aren't backward…

It makes sense to get out when it's not profitable. In this case, it's a small segment of their sales. They said so directly in their explanation. If there were no sales on iOS, would that be giving up, or just accepting it's not a profitable segment for your business? > Why do developers feel entitled to hardware devices that will always work with legacy code? First, I'm not sure where you are getting that sentiment…

It'd be enlightening to this conversation to know what caused their engine to break, before we assign blame.
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