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Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

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Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#281

Post by the_common_man »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #7
the_common_man wrote: post #2

One of the reasons I never buy apple products. They seem to control everything and cannot support such a company

How do you get around it though? Genuinely asking. I guess you try to source your own parts outside of controlling companies and only work on open source OS's and software run by super transparent groups? It just seems like a ton of work for something that might not even be viable. I don't know how I could possibly operate outside of apple, microsoft, google, etc. all of which have massive ethical issues. To be very…

I use Android and Linux. I selfhost my cloud services using cloudron to avoid the big g. I will be the first to admit that the end solution is substandard compared to apple but freedom has its price (and i am happy to fight the fight)

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#282

Post by rootusrootus »

User23 wrote: post #239
gretch wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My philosophy is that Apple can do whatever they want (as long as legal and ethical). They made a thing, and you bought it. Why would anyone with a bent on free computing walk into what they know to be a closed ecosystem. Just buy an Android phone. It’s like flying to a foreign country and expecting everyone to English to you imo…

> They made a thing, and you bought it. That's the key point: I bought it. It's mine now and I have the moral the moral right to do anything I please with it that isn't immoral. Granted, there can be laws that trample that moral right or artificial technical barriers that attempt to restrict it, but both are unjust. Attempted word magic spells such as "by using this product that you just bought you agree that you did…

> I bought it. It's mine now and I have the moral the moral right to do anything I please with it that isn't immoral.

And ... you do? Is there some reason you can't do whatever you want with the device? This is like complaining that you can't use your xbox or television as a general purpose computing device.

You can legally hack your own iphone. Go for it. You own the device.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#283

Post by anigbrowl »

SxC97 wrote: post #258
bevesce- wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's because you were an asshole about it. For example calling them fanboys

Nice try, but I've found it's impossible to convince assholes that maybe people aren’t mindless fanboys, but rather that everyone has different requirements for their personal devices and it’s fruitless to try and force your preferences on them.

Nice try, but I've found it's impossible to convince nerds that maybe businesses aren’t mindless tyrants, but rather that every firm has different target markets for their business model and it’s fruitless to try and force your preferences on them.

I would personally just not buy an iOS device for this reason, though now they're putting M* chips in them I suspect they'll eventually be jailbroken and able to run an open source operating sysem.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#284

Post by fsflover »

lnenad wrote: post #208
ozim wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "Apple doesn’t want dev accounts to be an easy backdoor for trash apps". It is all about quality of the app store. Downside is that I see bunch of corporate apps that are total trash on app store.

This is a wrong take as these apps have nothing to do with the app store.

Where are the trash apps and malware in F-Droid or Linux repositories?

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#285

Post by rootusrootus »

voakbasda wrote: post #170
PedroBatista wrote: post #128

The relationship some developers have with Apple should be a case-study with multiple PhD thesis in psychology. Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent. Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.…

It’s not just Apple. The same dynamic plays out with most other hyped technologies. Apple’s fans may demonstrate this behavior most clearly, but cults of sycophants exist for many different companies: Microsoft, Tesla, Google, … this list never ends.

> Apple’s fans may demonstrate this behavior most clearly

I think that changed years ago. The iPhone made Apple very mainstream, which dilutes the fanboy effect considerably.

Tesla fans are much, much worse at this point. I say that as a two-time (and current) Tesla owner who is decidedly not a Tesla fanboy (and in fact going the opposite direction a little more every day).

> this list never ends

The list is different for everyone. Everyone thinks their own choices are the only rational ones.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#286

Post by lolinder »

rootusrootus wrote: post #264
lolinder wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Jobs never lost his vision that Apple should sell appliances, and people who wanted to "wrench their own devices" should buy PCs. And honestly, I don't think information appliances are a bad thing to have in the world. It's not the kind of device I would choose for myself, but there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous. Android is fine for my use case,…

> there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous I am not sure if you are trying to come off as snobby, but that's how this reads. This 'class of users' is in many cases very technical people who just don't want their phone to be anything other than an appliance. It's quite common to love tinkering with things, while not wanting to tinker with everything .

No, I didn't mean it at all. I was thinking of my mother-in-law, who I'm very grateful uses an iPhone.

Highly technical people may choose an information appliance as well, and that's fine! All the more reason for such a thing to exist.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#287

Post by gretch »

PedroBatista wrote: post #128

The relationship some developers have with Apple should be a case-study with multiple PhD thesis in psychology. Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent. Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.…

Do you realize how smug and condescending this comment is? As if everyone who happens to disagree with you is psychology broken and utterly stupid?

Let me give you another perspective as an apple user - I don't think about Apple at all.

I have a glass brick that sends 20 - 30 text message a day and a couple times I'll use GPS to go to a new restaurant. Sometimes I'll do crossword puzzles. This brick happens to do it best.

I don't think about Apple.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#288

Post by causi »

sramsay wrote: post #68

What bothers me about this -- and it bothered me enough to leave the platform -- is not fees, or "hobby computing," or "it's just for my own use," or trying to figure out why this or that would be in Apple's interest. What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is. I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but a…

What bothers me is that it feels like an offense against the entire notion of what a computer is.

Yep. One of the most glaring examples of this is the complete extinction of portable backups. Back when I was carrying around a PDA I could plug it in, hit one button, and have a total backup of everything on my device. Plug a blank device in, hit one button, and everything is restored. Today if you want a bulletproof device backup you have to pay Apple for the privilege, and even then you're completely crippled by your upload and download bandwidth. It takes a long damn time to back up 512GB of data at 10mb/s upstream. Nearly five straight days, in fact.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#289

Post by taraharris »

kagakuninja wrote: post #193
taraharris wrote: post #77

I poured a year of my life into an app written in Swift for iOS before I ran into a brick wall trying to figure out how to use Apple's stuff to encode frames into an mp4 video. It's a pretty slick thing that uses low-level APIs like Metal, Core Audio, CFRunLoop, etc. https://github.com/realtaraharris/arezzo I accidentally spilled a latte into my M1 MacBook Pro, which cost me $2000 to buy. At that point I decided to j…

You could have been building apps on a cheap Mac Mini; even cheaper if bought used. You (like me) choose to buy an expensive MacBook Pro. Back when I developed iOS apps, I experienced a lot of pain (especially when everything was covered by an NDA). But I find it pretty bizarre to abandon an ecosystem because you spilled coffee on your expensive device.

The coffee damage was the last straw. I was fighting the language (Swift), the lack of documentation (WWDC videos are not a substitute for documentation), and the general lack of any attention paid toward the needs of small app developers.

I spent a lot of time building my own stuff to render pen strokes because Apple refused to supply an API that gives access to the underlying stroke data. SwiftUI was similarly crippled: developers have no access to internals, which made it impossible to write tests that would inspect the view hierarchy. I understand that Apple wants to retain flexibility with their APIs, but they took away far too much. I have no interest in an expensive platform that treats me like a child by locking me out of everything I actually need from it.

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