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

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#481

Post by smacktoward » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

Mikhail_Edoshin wrote: post #452

smacktoward wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do developers feel entitled to hardware devices that will always work with legacy code? "Entitled" isn't really the word I would use there. It's not like developers throughout history have forced poor platform vendors to provide backwards compatibility at gunpoint. It's that most platform developers have provided backwards compatibility because doing so helps them attract developers. This has been true literall…

Why Microsoft as an example? They are pretty nuts about backward compatibility, including fixing other people bugs so their software would continue to run (the old SimCity bug). I believe I can still run Doom and, say, Ventura Publisher 3.0 on vanilla Windows 8 (although I'd prefer DOSBox, of course, at least for games).

It's true, MS cares more about back-compat than nearly anybody else. I was thinking there more of the "they'll use our platform whether they like it or not, because where else are they gonna go?" attitude that led to debacles like the Long IE6 Winter.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#482

Post by gdubs » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

Understandably, most comments are gonna focus on App Store discovery, etc.

But one thing that stands out for me is a reliance on 3rd party frameworks and a lack of desire to learn new technology.

The problem with a framework is that when things break they can be a nightmare to fix. Work closer to the system frameworks and you face a steeper learning curve, but you gain confidence for when things go wrong.

As far as ever-evolving technology -- well, maybe it can feel daunting, but it's also exciting and fun.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#483

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #135

aresant wrote: post #31

It is fascinating how much the "micro-transaction" model on the iOS platform continues to bury everything else. Spiderweb throwing in the towel I would guess has a lot more to do with their #1 point "Competition on the App Store has risen to a frenzied level." than the others. The top two grossing games - Clash of Clans and Game of War - receive metacritic scores of 74 and 67 respectively. Whereas the most recent Spi…

I genuinely hate how apple has pushed microtransactions as the only viable route for app/game demos on their platform. I want to try out an app or game for free, and then decide if I want to purchase the full thing or not. This is how games always worked, and this is how Steam / PS3 / Xbox work. The infrastructure apple provides however forces demos to live in the same category as microtransaction games, and as a res…

Apple didn't do this. Companies wanting to make money since so few people actually paid for games up front did this.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#484

Post by s73v3r » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:31 PM UTC

emsy wrote: post #425

ThomPete wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They buy what they are presented with and whats considered popular. How can they know up front whats good and bad? Thats how the movie industry still works that how the music industry used to work. I bet you Netflix show the same tendency of having more people see non-chart movies than if they had to pay for it.

As to why you're downvoted: HN has become rather eager to downvote. I'd even say toxic, because a few months ago I were downvoted and I knew I deserved it. Nowadays it's because I or someone else has an unpopular (but well reasoned) opinion. It's frustrating, not because I care for my Karma but because I'd like to have a discourse beyond agreeing on the popular opinion.

He's probably been downvoted because his entire chain of comments boils down to "Hurr durr, people R sheep!"

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#485

Post by extc » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:35 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #449

lloeki wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is changing Recently I challenged myself to learn more about USB, HID devices and kernel development, so I partially reverse engineered and wrote a driver for the Xbox One controller. This is great and all, but it needs to be signed for people to use it without lowering a level of defense. Turns out you don't just need to be an Apple Developer, you also need to make a special request and regenerate your certif…

I think it's not just that the dev backdoors will go away, I think the whole OS is going away. It's pretty obvious to me that in the long run only iOS will remain. It makes zero sense to keep two semi incompatible operating systems around, and it's just the sort of radical move apple would do. Yes, there are a gazillion reasons to keep OS X around, but knowing apple none of them will matter enough.

Me from 4.5 years ago agrees: http://mattshaw.org/news/apples-dumbing-down-of-computers-a-...

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#486

Post by extc » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:40 PM 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…

This is how every OSX/iOS developer feels when they update Xcode or an iOS SDK. And Apple forces you to update in most cases, so you can't avoid it. They are breaking stuff left and right.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#487

Post by eridius » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:49 PM UTC

venomsnake wrote: post #346

eridius wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to build a community of users if you publish on the App Store? That's nonsense. All 3 of those games are by known developers with a pre-existing fan base and all 3 have user communities that are distinct from their retail channels. There is no reason to believe that the retail channel must provide a user community in order for a user community to exist.

But you cannot kickstart an ios game because you don't know if you can deliver. Due to apple censorship.

Huh? There have been multiple successful kickstarted iOS games. The most high-profile is probably Republique (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/486250632/republique-by...). And I have no idea what you mean by "due to apple censorship".

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#488

Post by extc » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:58 PM UTC

kuebelreiter wrote: post #311

This is a single twist of fate. It has no meaning except for the individual. He just doesn't want to keep up any more. His decision. But it has nothing to do with Apple.

Nothing to do with Apple? Since iOS7, Apple is constantly breaking apps that are already in the store and running fine. This is because they don't provide a backwards compatible runtime. For example, your app that's compiled and working well for iOS 8.2 can have new bugs (like text fields not appearing) after the user upgrades to iOS 8.3. To re-iterate, the user has not re-installed your app. They are still using the same great app compiled for 8.2 and now it doesn't work correctly. And the bug is caused by bad code from Apple in their runtime. To use an ironic comparison, if you made a Flash game in Flash 9, it would always run exactly the same way until the end up time, even after Flash 13 is released, because Adobe/Macromedia kept the runtime for each version and did not change it after it was released. New version meant a new runtime engine.

Anyway, so Apple breaks your app. It's possible you don't notice this because you don't test every feature of every app you've created for every new iOS version on the day it comes out. So within a couple weeks, most of your clients are asking you why your app doesn't work and you have to scramble to replicate the problem and then someone how fix it, sometimes having to rewrite a core part of your app. This happens over and over and it's tiring, costs your company money, makes you look bad to your clients and is very demoralizing. This is no one's fault but Apple's.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#489

Post by ThomPete » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 6:59 PM UTC

s73v3r wrote: post #484

emsy wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As to why you're downvoted: HN has become rather eager to downvote. I'd even say toxic, because a few months ago I were downvoted and I knew I deserved it. Nowadays it's because I or someone else has an unpopular (but well reasoned) opinion. It's frustrating, not because I care for my Karma but because I'd like to have a discourse beyond agreeing on the popular opinion.

He's probably been downvoted because his entire chain of comments boils down to "Hurr durr, people R sheep!"

Funny.

Here I though I was making an argument that when people where given the freedom to choose without it having financial implications they would in fact choose differently than when they have to pay for it and a "mistake" means more.

Re: Why We Are No Longer Developing for the iPad

#490

Post by soylentcola » Fri, Apr 17, 2015, 7:02 PM 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.

Nah, aside from some minor annoyances that ended up getting polished in updates I didn't have any issues with it either. When it came out I wasn't making much money so I wasn't running top of the line hardware by any means. Still, it ran OK on my PC at the time (Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM, and some low-ish end nVidia GPU). Still, even my budget Newegg Special was better than the real dogs some people were buying at the time (or some of the older computers they were trying to upgrade).

Vista seemed like it was built to leverage the current hardware of the time rather than run nicely on weaker systems that companies were still selling because they could passably run WinXP (slow CPUs, 256-512MB RAM, integrated GPU). It made sense because both OSX and Linux were capable of GPU acceleration of desktop windowing, aggressive use of caching things in RAM, etc. but too many users were still purchasing the absolute cheapest thing they could find that would still boot.

Then you had all of the hardware issues caused by companies not bothering to write new drivers for old peripherals and the software issues from applications that just assumed you were running as root/admin. I didn't have any old scanners or printers or anything that needed driver updates and very few of my important applications weren't updated to work under the new UAC setup.

In many ways, I feel like most of Vista's problems came from 98SE and then XP being "good enough" for so long that a lot of companies and users weren't used to needing to choose software and hardware more carefully.