Why is Apple acting like an asshole? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#331

Post by zepto » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

selykg wrote: post #297

zepto wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the downside of the update not being in the store today vs next week?

Several downsides Say the iOS update has brand new features. Your app can't take advantage of those fancy new features and your users don't get them until next week either. Possible marketing, usually Apple has categories in the App Store for apps that support the latest features or are ready for that iOS version. They could in theory do this next week I guess, but point is there's excitement today, and will be less…

The first point doesn’t make sense to me at all. No particular date was set for when users would be able to install apps with the new features.

Point two seems weak. The idea that Apple won’t promote apps with the new features when they are released makes no sense at all. You make it sound like this is unlikely, but I don’t see why you’d think that.

As for excitement - what excitement are we talking about? Users will get app updates automatically as they become available.

Are you suggesting that users typically buy a whole load of new apps on the one day iOS updates ship, but only if those apps have features only supported by the new OS? That would be an interesting fact if true, but it would also be supported by data, which I don’t see anywhere.

I’d speculate that users more often look for new apps when they get a new phone - which is supported by the data on Christmas app installs, and isn’t affected by this.

So we’re left with the possibility that the developer has bugs in the last iOS 13 version of their app that did not manifest under Beta 8, but do manifest under the GM.

I agree this is not impossible, although very unlikely to affect all but the tiniest handful of apps. Beta 8 and GM are unlikely to have significant changes of the kind that might expose such bugs, but again I agree it’s not impossible.

This seems like an extremely exotic case, and certainly in no way justifies Apple being called an ‘Asshole’, except by someone who has other reasons for wanting to malign them.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#332

Post by romanoderoma » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

mirthflat83 wrote: post #227

romanoderoma wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would personally like to continue paying higher prices to protect myself from low-quality background-syncing byte-code-obfuscated web-pages with push notifications are you really saying you would pay higher prices because you can' t press the "no" button and never visit the same website again?

Yes. I don’t want to press the “no” button for a 100 times.

You should lobby W3C to remove the API from the standard then.

Or ask browser vendors to have a global allow/deny flag for every Web API

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#333

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

temp667 wrote: post #226

saagarjha wrote: post #43

This article is missing the best part, that the new Xcode you have to use to build your app was released today at 11 AM, with a build number of ‘208. It was a really strange build in that it was missing components to build for Apple silicon: for that you need to use the old beta, which Apple has kept up on their website so you can juggle both. But that’s not all! Soon afterwards they changed the website saying the ne…

Question - why are apple downloads slow - I don't get it. I've downloaded lots of stuff from google. Its rarely slow. I use cloudfront on AWS - also rarely slow. Apple - often slow. They have billions - is there something wrong with their caching layer at ISPs etc?

They're actually usually pretty decent, back when I had a gigabit connection I would regularly saturate it with Xcode or macOS or whatever beta Apple had the for the week. The issue is that when they're rushing and developers are rushing they just don't handle the load well at all–right after presentation when new things get posted is usually a bad time :/ Perhaps they just don't scale very well.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#334

Post by jmull » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

geoffpado wrote: post #39

gilgoomesh wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's possible to ship fixes for a new iOS version before that iOS version actually launches No it isn't. Apple doesn't permit code linking against the latest SDK to be submitted until the SDK goes "GM". That happened today.

To expand on this, if your app is "broken" because of changes made that require new OS features in order to "fix" them (such as the new limited permissions for photos, contacts, and location), you were completely unable to issue a new update to fix them until the end of the event. That gives you ≈24 hours to get the new GM, create a build (including setting up your CI system with the new GM, if applicable), make sure…

The new location precision user auth seems to have been done in a backwards compatible way, at least in my testing:

- app with existing location permission in iOS 13 gets precise location.

- when the user prompt appears, it looks like precise location is the default in the UI.

(This is with an app build against iOS 13 SDK -- not sure yet if the iOS 14 SDK changes things.)

I think Apple will likely change this in the future, but right now devs are getting the time they need to adjust.

(As is, this new permission does almost nothing since 99% users will accept the defaults. I think they'll probably require more explicit action on the user's part to get precise location in the future.)

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#335

Post by oarsinsync » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

Razengan wrote: post #165

pojntfx wrote: post #3

Honestly, this is why we need the Web. But Apple even blocks that since they don’t allow any browser engine apart from Safari, meaning that there is no - Add to homescreen dialog - Background sync - Proper push notifications - Proper WASM support (a lot of features are missing) Honestly, at this point, the government should step in, like they did at the end of the last century with Microsoft. Walled gardens hurt inno…

> Walled gardens hurt innovation a lot How? What do you even define as """innovation"""? Honest question, I'd love to see some actual answers here instead of the usual canned hyperbole. So far Apple's users are mostly satisfied with them, happily voting with their wallets, and the only people complaining about Apple are mostly the developers and companies who want unfettered access to iOS' users, and I haven't heard…

One example I saw cited recently is the Web browser itself. This is according to one of the original iPhone developers at Apple:

> Apple’s iOS rules would not have allowed for the invention of the web browser. Let that sink in. They would have rejected one of the most important technical innovations in the history of computing. Microsoft‘s bully tactic of making IE free seems quaint in comparison.

> But here’s the kicker: think of all the other amazing ideas that haven’t gotten a chance to be invented because they aren’t allowed on mobile devices. Mosaic happened less than 10 years after the Macintosh. We very well might have already had a browser-caliber invention by now.

> Just for people asking: the flagrant violations of AppStore policy that web browsers would be rejected for in this hypothetical are:

> 1) Running outside code

> 2) Allowing payments that circumvent Apple’s IAP

> 3) Allowing access to NSFW content

Source: https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1297199788316692480

More commentary: https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/08/25/potential/

It’s hard to give specific examples about innovation that hasn’t happened, if only because not everyone is sufficiently innovative to come up with truly groundbreaking ideas.

I doubt any of the original Mosaic developers had any idea just how important their original innovation would become.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#336

Post by RandallBrown » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

dhagz wrote: post #314

RandallBrown wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely add websites to your home screen on iOS.

I think they're referring to PWA-style "Add to Homescreen", which I agree is a weak point of iOS/MobileSafari. I also wonder why there isn't good/any support for WASM in Safari.

Does android provide a way to launch this dialog from within the website?

iOS has a PWA-style add to home screen dialog, but it's part of Safari. It's accessed from the share sheet.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#337

Post by zepto » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:50 PM UTC

apazzolini wrote: post #298

zepto wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the downside of the update not being in the store today vs next week?

The fact that some apps are broken and users with auto-update turned on are now unable to use those apps for a week?

Which apps are broken?

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#338

Post by pjmlp » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #275

pjmlp wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except not, because browsers enjoy black listing GPUs, so while in native you get 3D performance no matter what, on the Web it might just run with software rendering using single digit FPS. Then each browser is a different species, unless you adhere to the ChromeOS === Web school of thought.

Apple will not blacklist their own GPUs in WebKit.

That doesn't change the fact that everyone else does it, thus Web browser 3D gaming remains at the level of basic Flash alike games.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#339

Post by saagarjha » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #276

easton wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for beta releases of Xcode, since they’re only provided through the developer site (not the App Store) and you have to download a full installer every single time.

That’s bizarre. They provide delta OTA updates for iOS betas...

Xcode betas just don't go through software update for whatever reason. Not sure why.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#340

Post by jarjoura » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

When I read this, all I'm really reading is, Apple's biggest cultural position on secrecy is also its biggest pain-point for external developers.

Secrecy is so ingrained in that company, at all levels, that it will never/ever change without fundamentally changing what/who Apple is as a company.

External developers, since the launch of the App Store, have been expected to be thankful that Apple even lets them on to their precious marketplace. There's also no special treatment when at bigger companies either. The only thing I've experienced is that we were invited to port our product to iOS 7's new flat UI just to be featured 6 weeks ahead of their rumored keynote date. They didn't even give us an actual time to submit.

Bigger products I've worked on do get a developer relations support person who makes sure we're able to meet Apple's latest demands, but they are not connected to the engineering (R&D) teams, so feedback is mostly downward. For example, they would ask why haven't we ported things to Metal yet? If we inform them there is a bug or missing documentation, they will make sure they get engineering involved to fix the bug so we can continue porting to Metal.

Bugs are another huge pain point that developers complain about. Whenever there's an issue, we're told, file the bug and it magically goes off into a black void with no feedback until some point in the future when the OS release has shipped and then we get to find out whether they decided to fix the issue or to mark it "Works as expected."

It really sucks that the company that builds the best tech is also the most toxic to partner with. They add undue stress and expect too much from their developer community. Partnerships should work both ways! Developers bring new experiences that light up the hardware, and make the platform better as a whole. However, Apple has somehow found a way to make the partnerships mostly one-sided and that will never change.

The only way out is really for all the coolest new features to land on Android and to put software in maintenance mode on iOS. Yet, I cannot fathom how that would ever happen either as that's 50% of the population in the US you would make suffer for the cause.