Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

blog.kronis.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–299 of 299 posts

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#291

Post by Gareth321 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #244
Gareth321 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. It seems like the wrong trade-off, since stab…

> thereby requiring the use of subscriptions as the only viable business model for developers. That is Apple's primary revenue stream by far, and they're making far more money now that we have to subscribe to workout apps instead of buying them once and using them for years. Apple earns almost twice as much revenue from selling iPhones ($210B per year) than it does from "Services" ($109B), and "Services" includes far…

Thanks for the correction. I should have said profit, and I should clarify further: gross profit for the App Store and global iPhone production is similar ($84B and $88B), but the App Store and other services have nearly double the profit margin and is growing much faster than physical products.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#292

Post by Wowfunhappy »

gblargg wrote: post #290
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly what `sudo spctl --master-disable` does! You'll still see a warning dialog on first launch.

So you don't lose any of the protections, just are allowed the option of running anyway (or backing out and NOT running it after getting the warning)?

I don’t understand what you mean by “protection”. The “protection” offered by Gatekeeper is that you aren’t able to run unsigned software without going into System Preferences. That’s it. There isn’t some other secret sauce.

Without Gatekeeper, macOS will instead pop up a dialog warning you that the application was downloaded from the internet, and provide an option to run it anyway, on first launch.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#293

Post by musicale »

Gareth321 wrote: post #226
musicale wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's contempt for backward compatibility This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. I…

> This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. It seems like the wrong trade-off, since stab…

> thereby requiring the use of subscriptions as the only viable business model for developers

This is ugly because I hate subscriptions, but I believe that the constant maintenance burden makes subscriptions more appealing for developers.

But why would you want to subscribe to a game on iOS that you could just buy once and run forever on another platform?

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#294

Post by musicale »

asimovDev wrote: post #209
musicale wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately well-written native macOS desktop software (Apple's own apps are sometimes exceptions, if we ignore monstrosities like the Music app) seems to be dying (new "desktop" software often being a wrapper for a clunky web app), while half of my Steam library that used to run on macOS no longer does. (And removing Rosetta2 might kill the other half.)

A subset of Rosetta 2 will be kept around for game compatibility iirc. Don't know what it entails or how it would work though

I am crossing my fingers.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#295

Post by musicale »

tpmoney wrote: post #245
Gareth321 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. It seems like the wrong trade-off, since stab…

Apple has been dropping older subsystems and backwards compatibility layers long before app subscriptions were the default way people got paid for software. The 68k -> PPC transition happened in the mid 90's and 68k support was dropped entirely somewhere around OS 8 and the start of the iMac era. The Carbon framework might have been the most long running one, going from about 2000 to 2012 for deprecation and basicall…

Losing carbon support on the Mac, and 32-bit support on both macOS and iOS was painful.

I particularly miss games like Chaos Rings 1&2, which are no longer playable and don't seem to be available anywhere.

Another bad change was when iPhone "backups" stopped including apps, which now have to be re-downloaded (which does not work for apps which have been removed from the app store.)

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#296

Post by musicale »

bkdbkd wrote: post #156
musicale wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's contempt for backward compatibility This is absolutely correct. Instead of maintaining any sort of ABI and API stability, Apple offloads a constant burden of maintenance updates across thousands of developers, just to keep existing apps from breaking every year with a new iOS version. This takes time which could be spent in more productive ways such as fixing bugs, adding features, or developing new apps. I…

Contempt. use any apple device 2 updates back or more. you're screwed. You would accept this in no other place in life, except that apple gives it for free, and puts a 'security' sticker on the box. It's a racket. Planned obsolescence 2.0 - Users forced to update, update removes features, breaks working apps, breaks paid for ip ( literally removed from phones), apple blames the devs. bullshit.

It is a shame that you can't choose to get security updates only without app-breaking feature changes. So you have to update (because security, actively exploited vulnerabilities, etc.) but then your apps (mostly paid apps in my case since I dislike subscriptions and obnoxious f2p monetization schemes) break.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#297

Post by Nevermark »

F7F7F7 wrote: post #152
Nevermark wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is that false dichotomy. You can turn off all protection, as you point out. So who Apple markets Neo's to isn't a factor. > Apple’s fault if nobody else decided to make their own trust repositories and the only alternative on the market is to have no safeguard at all. Does Apple provide a means for enabling third party trust systems, without disabling Apple's protections in general? If not, that is a serious pro…

Sounds like you should pick something other than MacOS.

Unfortunately, your tone deaf comment is in an HN cliche.

1) People complain about the imperfections of what they love.

2) Imperfections are highly unlikely to tilt the benefits from one device to another, given there are few device choices, devices have hundreds of other pros/cons, and people accrue years of familiarity and functional investment.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#298

Post by ashwani1242 »

sliqqq wrote: post #252

Bro i feel you so much! i am developing an app aimed at Intel Macs, but i cannot even publish it, because you need a Silicon mac to use the Apple Developer Program. It's so unbelievable brainless. The market still holds 10-20% intel devices, especially outside the US and in some high-end environments, where 128GB RAM machines cannot easily be replaced with a silicon mac. Sometimes it feels like Apple has no clue how…

I just went through this with a small paid macOS menu bar app. The hardest part was not the code, it was figuring out which app store rules I had accidentally stepped on- app name wording, accessibility permission assumptions, and even cmd+q behavior.

The review did eventually pass, but the process felt much more fragile than shipping the product itself and i had to remove one key feature of the app as well for the review to pass.

Re: Distributing Mac software is increasing my cortisol levels

#299

Post by chr15m »

chaostheory wrote: post #162
chr15m wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many cases of signed & notarised software that pwned users.

Sure, but the more barriers there are the better because it still reduces the number of threats. That’s why people choose to rent walled gardens. Otherwise, Linux would have higher adoption even among our crowd. If you really value freedom over everything else, I don’t see value in putting bad bandages over closed platforms. Might as well just switch to an open one.

> the more barriers there are the better

No. Barriers have tradeoffs beyond simply safety. Safety is often possible without these barriers. False dichotomy.

Post reply on HN