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Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

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Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#131

Post by spiderfarmer »

nlitened wrote: post #121
spiderfarmer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be said for both. I have built a couple of 15 year old websites with passionate users who have been begging me for an app. Not to replicate the website, which works perfectly on mobile and is very up to date with best practices. They just want it for push notifications. I can switch to Android, yes. But my users won't switch phones for just my website. And I can recommend something like Pushover, but th…

Why wouldn't you just do exactly what your users passionately want, and make a small app just for notifications? You may even make it paid, so that your efforts are compensated -- I am sure, the users will be happy to support you.

I am working on it. But as a web developer this "small app" and everything that comes with it is easily hundreds of hours of work, just to clumsily recreate functionality that's already working in other browsers.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#132

Post by ecmascript »

unnouinceput wrote: post #130
ecmascript wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure that is true, but it is fast enough for many apps already and will be even faster in the future or do you really argue that most native apps on Apple Store couldn't be done as a web app?

Yes, you're right. actually not most, but more close to 95% of them apps could be done as web instead. Yet, on mission critical apps while they can be done as web apps, the decision to make them native it's not a choice, is a must.

If SpaceX can have a web app for their astronauts, I think so can you even if it's "mission critical". I just don't see any argument why a web app cannot be mission critical and work just as fine as a native app would.

Ok if you make an AAA-game title with extreme need of performance or if you make a database engine or something. This is however a very tiny minority of apps with extreme performance needs but again probably 99% of the apps on the appstore doesn't have those requirements and could be done as a web app.

I understand why you don't want code running medical equipment be dependant on some garbage collection or whatever, but no one is saying that we should use javascript for your heart monitoring equipment, unless it can fail and it won't kill you or hurt you physically.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#133

Post by geoffpado »

acqq wrote: post #70
saagarjha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use some sort of thing that the new privacy things will block you need to update to account for the new behavior. If you have new features you want users to have you need to build with the new SDK. If you have fixes for your app being broken (either because of you or Apple’s bugs) you need to fix them.

> If you use some sort of thing that the new privacy things will block you need to update to account for the new behavior. I am not shedding a tear for the producers of the apps that used privacy invading code all the time, and didn't stop since iOS betas exist, waiting instead for "official iOS 14" to "do something" -- which is probably forcing the user to agree or not use the app. I hope I'm wrong, and to accept th…

One of my apps, Black Highlighter [0], uses the photo library permissions to display your library to actually pick a image to edit in the app, and also to write your edited images back to the library. This is the main functionality of the app, and it's what people want to be able to do. I'm not doing anything nefarious with people's images, I'm just… building an image editor. Can I use other methods to let people pick an image? Sure. But until iOS 14, they were a demonstrably worse experience. Even still, it's a bit odd, because the initial screen of the app becomes a big blank view with a button to display the system photo picker.

I did my due diligence and I added a new button to use the new iOS 14 system photo picker months ago, when Apple first announced these changes. But until today at 11am, I could not ship those changes. Period. Nothing I could do to have a version available for users any time before today. In under 24 hours, I have to update my CI system, generate a build, check to make sure nothing broke, submit for App Review, and hope I get approved.

But wait! I also have two other apps that have iOS 14 functionality. So I've got to do those as well. And these are just my side projects. I have a day job, doing the same kind of work. And I'm the iOS CI "guru" there, so I've got to do the exact same thing… make sure Xcode 12 is updated on all our build agents, get actual builds out of them, submit to the store, etc.

All of the privacy work is done. It's been done. But the difference between ≈24 hours to get final builds out the door and a week to get final builds out the door is huge when you've got multiple different projects to handle. Especially when App Review is eating several of those hours all on its own.

So guess what? My projects are going to fall by the wayside, in favor of my day job. Is it a big deal? Who knows. Maybe I'll get some bad reviews. That'll suck a lot. Did it need to be this way? Absolutely not. Apple could have given us the week that they normally do, and everything would have been fine. Instead, they gave us a day, and that's just not enough time. So apps people use and like are just going to be broken for a few days, and there's not a thing developers can do about it.

###

[0]: https://blackhighlighter.app

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#134

Post by ecmascript »

pjmlp wrote: post #80
ecmascript wrote: post #8

Web Web web, fuck native apps.

WebGL 2.0 => castrated OpenGL 3.0. ES WebGPU => To be done, will be a castrated Vulkan/Metal/DX 12. native => OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL 3.2 ES, Metal, Vulkan 1.x, DX 12 Ultimate,...

Yeah so lets continue throwing money on a company that actively prohibits you as a developer to actually make your game for the web. /s

By giving money to apple and by continue to build for their platform only ensures that this will remain true in the future as well.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#135

Post by etripe »

oneplane wrote: post #7

Why are people constantly personifying corporations? All you're going to end up with is a sociopath as that's what large companies are when you try to do that. Apple isn't a single person with evil intentions that thought: "let's make it very hard to work with this stuff", even if it might seem that way. It's far more likely that: - The alternative was worse - An internal policy or rule had unforeseen side-effects in…

> Why are people constantly personifying corporations?

Because corporations aren't democratic, so their policies are not the sum of all employees working there's opinions. Most of it is the result of top-down decisions, which in practice are made by fewer than 20 people: the board and the CEO. Technically, we could add shareholders to that list, but IIRC they barely exercise their right to vote. What's more: corporations as legal entities specifically exist to limit liability for the aforementioned people.

So when "Facebook" doesn't care about your privacy, it's Zuck and the board that don't, not individual developers. When "Shell" sponsors climate change denial, it's the board, not someone pumping your gas deciding. The personification is valid up to a point because the corporation as such is only a (useful) fictional construct.

> It's far more likely that [...]

I don't know the broader history of Apple's behaviour towards developers since I'm not an iOS developer, so I can't say whether this is a matter of policy or a snafu. Based on what I know, I'd also lean towards incompetence and not malice in this particular case.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#136

Post by akmarinov »

metaloqui wrote: post #50
akmarinov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some apps (Pokemon Go) just crash on launch on 14 without updates.

Pokemon Go released a fix today and it's already working ahead of iOS 14 being made generally available.

A ton of apps released updates today, I feel like these are the companies that are more tight with Apple, getting their app updates in quickly.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#137

Post by pjmlp »

ecmascript wrote: post #134
pjmlp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WebGL 2.0 => castrated OpenGL 3.0. ES WebGPU => To be done, will be a castrated Vulkan/Metal/DX 12. native => OpenGL 4.6, OpenGL 3.2 ES, Metal, Vulkan 1.x, DX 12 Ultimate,...

Yeah so lets continue throwing money on a company that actively prohibits you as a developer to actually make your game for the web. /s By giving money to apple and by continue to build for their platform only ensures that this will remain true in the future as well.

All companies doing Web browsers and Khronos are the ones to blame that 3D on the Web is castrated.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#138

Post by jamil7 »

ecmascript wrote: post #64
jamil7 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or things like real time audio processing, AR or on device ML. Anything thats not a JSON viewer or CRUD app basically.

I think that is a very pessimistic view of what you actually can achieve in a browser! With web assembly a lot of those things actually are very possible today.

But it's not always about if it's possible. I think we can even take a step back here and not look at performance critical apps to begin with, there are a whole host of successful native iOS apps on the App Store, making money that could be replicated as web apps with todays tech and added to the home screen, even on iOS Safari, yet these native apps keep getting built and sold. Why is that?

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#139

Post by CiaranMcNulty »

manigandham wrote: post #129
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because app developers will use other browser engines allowing them to ignore any of the privacy constraints in place at the moment.

That's already possible, and an app has far more access to your device and data anyway.

Apps cannot currently use other browser engines on iOS
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