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Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

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Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#351

Post by temp667 »

saagarjha wrote: post #333
temp667 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is what I mean. When netflix releases a popular new show - it basically still streams etc. The bandwidth must still be nuts.

Apple falls over after big events for developers etc. Is there not a cashing layer locally at ISP level - ie, push '209 out in advance to ISP cache, then everyone can gobble it up when you announce and link on your website?

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#352

Post by selykg »

zepto wrote: post #331
selykg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> No particular date was set for when users would be able to install apps with the new features.

The expectation is that apps will support the new features on day one. Because that's how it has worked in the past.

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

Again, historically, apps support the new features on day one. That won't be the case with this release because there's no way an App developer will be able to ship an app to App Store review in 24 hours and have the app available the same day.

> 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?

I'm not so sure about buying new apps, I am saying that typically existing apps get updates that take advantage of new features and those are typically available on day one of an iOS update and won't be this year.

I don't think iOS 14 has any major game changing features, so I don't think we'll see a massive buy in of new apps or anything. But if this trend happens again with a release that DOES have major new features then it's a big disappointment.

> 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.

Keep in mind that developers on iOS tend to think in terms of larger updates. So an app developer may release a new major version on the same day as iOS 14, or iOS 13, etc.

These are typically 'free' updates for existing users, but they're whole version updates and come with a larger set of changes.

In the past, developers had time to prepare for release. If bugs existed in version 3 of their app running on the iOS beta, they probably fixed those in version 4 (unreleased) of their app, and planned to submit and ship version 4 the same day as iOS 14. That entire process is not going to happen this year, so it's possible that bugs existing in iOS 14, but did not exist in 13, will be present in apps until those updates ship next week sometime.

Edit:

>and certainly in no way justifies Apple being called an ‘Asshole’

I'm not calling Apple an asshole, I'm not defending the author of the article who is calling them an asshole. I'm simply explaining how it worked when I worked on a major top 50 app in the App Store. Thank god I'm not doing it anymore, it was stressful enough doing it in previous years, it's probably even worse today.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#353

Post by [deleted] »

scarface74 wrote: post #326
pietrovismara wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also revenue is the most objective way to measure value. Nonsense. Wikipedia must be worthless for you? What about air? Do you feel you'd breathe with more satisfaction if someone was profiting from the air you breathe? On the other hand, there's plenty of immensely profitable things that have negative value. Cigarettes? Oil? Weapons? Opioids? I could go on and on.

And you still haven’t come up with a situation where a major developer was forced to make an iOS app and decided to be content with a PWA for Android customers. “Value” has a definite meaning in economics. If someone is willing to pay for something, it has value to them.

[deleted]

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#354

Post by YetAnotherNick »

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?

It really depends on region. I have seen in US, most of the downloads are fast as that is their main region I guess. As the network latency does not matter when downloading big files, I use that VPN and get much better speed than using local CDN.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#355

Post by mikewhy »

RandallBrown wrote: post #336
dhagz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Chrome on Android will indeed present an "add to homescreen" dialog when the user visits a PWA.

https://web.dev/promote-install/#browser-promotion

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#356

Post by foepys »

pjmlp wrote: post #346
sangnoir wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft takes backward-compatibility as seriously as Apple takes product aesthetics.

I wish there was a bit more of that on the Win32/UWP reboot (Project Reunion, WinUI 3), .NET unification, C++/CX replacement.

I think Microsoft is at the point we're the old guard is leaving and the new hip kids take over who mostly only plugged libraries together because they never needed to write assembly.

Maybe the knowledge of how to make backwards compatible systems is even slowly leaving with the old guard and they just will never know how to make it work ever again.

A colleague of mine is very active in Microsoft's GitHub repos and is complaining daily that no employee there seems to know how their own software works. He routinely needs to explain Microsoft employees that their ideas will not work because of $generic_windows_api_behavior.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#358

Post by simonkafan »

The solution would be simple: Stop supporting Apple. Don't release apps on their platform. As long as everyone is just blindly following their orders, nothing will change.

And change is possible: Microsoft didn't care much about developers and users when IE was browser market leader and look what happened.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#359

Post by pastacacioepepe »

scarface74 wrote: post #326
pietrovismara wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also revenue is the most objective way to measure value. Nonsense. Wikipedia must be worthless for you? What about air? Do you feel you'd breathe with more satisfaction if someone was profiting from the air you breathe? On the other hand, there's plenty of immensely profitable things that have negative value. Cigarettes? Oil? Weapons? Opioids? I could go on and on.

And you still haven’t come up with a situation where a major developer was forced to make an iOS app and decided to be content with a PWA for Android customers. “Value” has a definite meaning in economics. If someone is willing to pay for something, it has value to them.

I don't even care about iOS. I just despise your definition of value, since it's simply wrong and dangerous.
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