Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad • Hacker News Board

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#381

Post by marincounty » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:17 AM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #328

izacus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, updating my Mac to Yosemite turned it into a slow stuttering mess - WindowServer memory leak forced me to reboot the Mac about every two hours or so or watch my desktop at While Windows does have problems, latest Apple software is mostly worse bug and update-wise.

Updating my iMac to Yosemite fried the graphics card. It seems Apple is putting form way ahead of function, and as a result stuffing too hot components into too small space (the same iMac has previously fried the screen and the HDD to death).

Thanks! I was just thinking I might take a chance, but at this point I'm actually thinking about reinstalling what came with the machine. These new operating systems are literally making me angry.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#382

Post by KobiQuantum » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:17 AM UTC

donkeyd wrote: post #298

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…

Every time I update Windows, or even restart my windows laptop I hope that it'll still work afterwards. Updating has previously killed my dedicated graphics card, which turned out to be a driver issue. With Intel providing 2 nearly identical drivers one of which kills it. A while ago the fingerprint reader just stopped working after a restart. After a full hour of debugging and restarting I gave up. The next day I fi…

Anecdotal evidence. Here's mine:

I never ever had any issues with any of my 3 desktop PCs or with mit X200 in the last 5 years. With my recent Thinkpad X1 carbon I had to boot only once into safe mode after upgrading some Lenovo provided driver after almost 2 years of use.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#383

Post by Nullabillity » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:18 AM UTC

Zarel wrote: post #222

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…

> Things like living in a web browser and a platform neutral IDE (I use IntelliJ for Clojure, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby) make OS platform less impactful on using a computer. Really? I'd think this would make the remaining things matter more. Things like: - International text input: in OS X, out of the box, é is opt+e, e (or the now even easier: hold down e and choose é from the menu). In Windows, é is alt+0233 or s…

On most OSes you can also compose using ´ then e for é.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#384

Post by Nullabillity » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:19 AM UTC

robin_reala wrote: post #331

ikurei wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's very subjective: - International text input: I can't remember the last time I had to use accents or special characters not in my native language; a few greek letters for formulae, and generally I can use '/alpha' instead of α. Isn't having to use chars not in your language pretty uncommon? - Trackpad quality: yes, I love using Macbook trackpads, but I use the mouse/trackpad very little anyway, and isn'…

English has lots of loan words using accents including common words like café and résumé and more uncommon ones like crème brûlée. It has native although uncommon accents, e.g. in coöperation. Personally, I also commonly type in Swedish which has the extra letters å, ä and ö in its alphabet, sometimes type in German (ö, ü and ß) and occasionally use an IME for 日本語 (Japanese). IME aside, losing direct access to the ab…

Or you could type it in two strokes instead by typing ´ then e. Typographical punctuation should be the editor's concern when it matters.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#385

Post by blub » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:22 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #367

vbezhenar wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone has different experience. I never had hardware problems with HP, Lenovo, Dell notebooks. It was built badly, it could broke something, but notebook worked well. With Macbook I had broken HDD which was replaced by warranty but it took almost a month without my working tool. And 2 years later sound just stopped working. Headphones work but buggy. I don't think I can pay for repair, probably will tinker with it…

> Everyone has different experience. Yeah, I'm acutely reminded of this every time someone brings up Windows 7's predecessor. Apparently I'm the only person who ever lived on this planet who had absolutely zero problems with Windows Vista, and even liked it quite a bit.

Make that two persons, I remember that it was quite ok on my machine.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#386

Post by NotOscarWilde » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:22 AM UTC

tjl wrote: post #243

pedalpete wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for a medium sized technology organisation (about 400 people) and lately you hear more and more developers talking about moving away from Mac. Most are going to linux some are picking up windows. I'd say it's about a 80-20 split. The thing I really notice is how everybody with a mac has a machine that is newer than two years. Those who are hitting the two year mark are experiencing hardware issues, particularl…

I have a laptop from mid-2009 that's still good (it's a white MacBook). The only problem I've had has been the battery bulging and Apple replaced them under Applecare with no problems. The last I had replaced out of warranty for no charge. It's slow, but everything still works. I used it for my main machine until late 2012 (when I bought an i7 Mac Mini) and was my portable machine until late 2013. My Mac Mini has bee…

> I have a laptop from mid-2009 that's still good ... was my portable machine until late 2013.

I don't think this should count as a counterexample. You have switched laptops in 2013, and while there could be many valid reasons for that (battery life, more power for development, your old laptop does not support a new OS) it made you old laptop inadequate -- and hence the switch.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#387

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:27 AM UTC

blub wrote: post #385

TeMPOraL wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everyone has different experience. Yeah, I'm acutely reminded of this every time someone brings up Windows 7's predecessor. Apparently I'm the only person who ever lived on this planet who had absolutely zero problems with Windows Vista, and even liked it quite a bit.

Make that two persons, I remember that it was quite ok on my machine.

Absolutely the only one issue I had with Vista was that system file copying went a little slow, and you could get 2x+ speedups by just using Total Commander instead. Apart from that, I had pretty much problem-free experience with Vista.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#388

Post by marincounty » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:36 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #379

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…

> Microsoft seems to be heading in a good direction, Apple less so. Just have a look at the enormous amount of open research available at http://research.microsoft.com and try to find the equivalent of Apple. That tells me enough.

I was afraid of what might happen to Apple after Steve Job's death. He said Tim wasn't a gadget guy. I am trying to give Apple a lot of grieving room, but enough is enough. I'm particularly irritated because I'm having OS X and iOS problems simultaneously. I'm actually so impressed with Microsoft lately, I'm thinking of putting all my meager savings on their stock. This is coming from a guy who literally thought Microsoft was evil.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#389

Post by thesagan » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:40 AM UTC

reustle wrote: post #314

izacus wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, updating my Mac to Yosemite turned it into a slow stuttering mess - WindowServer memory leak forced me to reboot the Mac about every two hours or so or watch my desktop at While Windows does have problems, latest Apple software is mostly worse bug and update-wise.

These kinds of issues are why I always suggest people do fresh installs of operating systems, and not upgrades.

I did a fresh install from a seemingly healthy, semi-recent MBP and Yosemite's WindowServer seemed to begin a slow strangulation on my machine.

Solved it by buying a top-of-the-line machine, which I'm sure Apple is loving.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#390

Post by octaveguin » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 10:40 AM UTC

ptaipale wrote: post #320

octaveguin wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software developers are generally paid quite a bit less in Finland than in the valley (e.g. 5k euros is quite high for a dev there) with a comparable cost of living. It's expensive in Helsinki and you won't find better paid developers anywhere in the world outside of the states. Not to say the above is correct - it's no sweat shop and the few outliers like supercell and rovio cannot possibly be there because they thr…

Just to add about the employment costs in Finland: 5000 € gross salary means about 6000 € total cost with payroll-related taxes and mandatory payments included, and about 3250 € net pay per month after taxes. It's certainly no sweat shop, but I would consider it modest cost if you account for the quality of the developers.

You're absolutely right.

Actually, Scandinavia in general has high quality developers on the cheap compared to the states. This while their quality of life seems on a whole better - seems a win/win to invest in or open satellite offices there :)