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Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

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Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#41

Post by 0x0 »

saagarjha wrote: post #31
philliphaydon wrote: post #9

I thought App developers would be testing against the beta version? I don't really understand the problem. There's public beta's, it's out of beta, and will go to the public tomorrow, apps will continue to work.

You cannot submit you application except using the toolchain that was released today, which is occasionally different enough from the beta tools that your app will no longer work. So now you have a broken app and just hours to fix it, and then somehow App Review is going to get through it while a thousand other people are submitting at the same time you are? No way.

Well you can always ship updates with the old iOS 13 SDK toolchain (Xcode 11) the entire time. You could have tested on the iOS 14 betas, and if you found a crash, you could try to implement a workaround and resubmit in the weeks and months leading up to today.

Sometimes your crash is because of bad assumptions in your code, or sometimes your crash is due to real Apple bugs creeping into the iOS APIs. Not saying it's always possible to implement a workaround, but it's not as bad as the blog post makes it out to be.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#42

Post by emsy »

mrsuprawsm wrote: post #16
akmarinov wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Surely the developers had the 3 month beta period to identify these issues, and ship fixes, right? As far as I understand it, it's possible to ship fixes for a new iOS version before that iOS version actually launches, and indeed that's the idea of the beta period.

I have applications and games from the 90s that still work in Windows 10. The idea that developers have have to constantly push updates is unproductive in my opinion.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#43

Post by saagarjha »

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 new Xcode was actually build ’209. Around this time people had finished downloading the update, which was slow because everyone was freaking out about getting their app ready in time and grabbing it at the same time, and they realized that Xcode wouldn’t let them upload their updates. So everyone thought that of course build ‘209 was the right thing to get so they hit the website again to download the file…except Apple doesn’t do checksums, obviously, they do a really slow verification thing that every iOS developer hates with a passion and gives no useful information. In this case manually running the checksums told everyone that while Apple had updated the version they claimed to be have on their website, everyone was still getting build 208 and this build could not be used to submit updates. Then, later in the afternoon, Apple flipped the switch to allow build ‘208 to submit updates (which now need to go through review…). But that’s not all! In the evening at around 7 people started getting a different Xcode, the actual build ‘209 they claimed there were distributing all along…and now every developer is stuck with the decision of whether they should pull their old binary they uploaded and recompile with build ‘209 (as there are many differences between the two, based on a diff -r) or wing it. Totally uncool, totally unnecessary. If anything the blog post is not strongly worded enough about how much of a affront this is to developers.

Edit: and guess what, if Apple didn’t have advance notice of this do you think their own build process could have handled it? I’d bet money on “no”. XBS takes hours itself to spin up a new build, and with the usual testing a validation you see even the fastest updates taking at least a day. Back in iOS 7 it took them two to get critical fixes out the door, and patching the unc0ver 0-day took like a week for reference.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#44

Post by HenryBemis »

kylec wrote: post #2

Why is this an issue? Apps built with the old SDK will still work on iOS 14, and you can continue to submit apps built with the old SDK for a while. Nothing says your app _has_ to be built with the new SDK on day 1.

What Jamil7 commented..

I stopped/dropped my iOS dev efforts. I had an app on Apple Store, and eventually pulled it because of the constant updates demanded by Xcode. Yes things were still working, but unless someone is willing to dedicate 'many' days every 3-6-9-12 months to catch-up on new requirements, it's just not worth it. For someone who does dev for a living, it's game on, for others who may want this as a side hustle, it can be overwhelming (keeping up with Apple). I don't blame them, this cat&mouse just didn't work for me. It could as well work just fine for the other part-time/hobby devs.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#45

Post by fuj »

bzb5 wrote: post #38
jamil7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some apps look broken or are actually broken on iOS14.

I’m starting to see a pattern where it’s always the same apps that are broken on each major release. I suspect the developers of those apps are simply incompetent.

You seem like a really nice person.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#46

Post by saagarjha »

bzb5 wrote: post #38
jamil7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some apps look broken or are actually broken on iOS14.

I’m starting to see a pattern where it’s always the same apps that are broken on each major release. I suspect the developers of those apps are simply incompetent.

Perhaps, but updating their apps on a dime is simply unreasonable regardless.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#47

Post by saagarjha »

0x0 wrote: post #41
saagarjha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot submit you application except using the toolchain that was released today, which is occasionally different enough from the beta tools that your app will no longer work. So now you have a broken app and just hours to fix it, and then somehow App Review is going to get through it while a thousand other people are submitting at the same time you are? No way.

Well you can always ship updates with the old iOS 13 SDK toolchain (Xcode 11) the entire time. You could have tested on the iOS 14 betas, and if you found a crash, you could try to implement a workaround and resubmit in the weeks and months leading up to today. Sometimes your crash is because of bad assumptions in your code, or sometimes your crash is due to real Apple bugs creeping into the iOS APIs. Not saying it's…

That is correct. But I know for many apps building for iOS 14 is a requirement or bad things will happen™.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#48

Post by bumblebritches5 »

tracer4201 wrote: post #15

The profane language really isn’t necessary. It would be helpful to understand what portion of apps are negatively impacted by the new iOS version. If it’s insignificant, there’s really no strong incentive for Apple to specifically set a launch date with developers. It’s besides the point by the profanity just weakens the argument. Presumably the iOS beta has been out long enough that developers could have pushed out…

[dead]

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#49

Post by jamil7 »

bzb5 wrote: post #38
jamil7 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some apps look broken or are actually broken on iOS14.

I’m starting to see a pattern where it’s always the same apps that are broken on each major release. I suspect the developers of those apps are simply incompetent.

We only got the GM last night? how can anyone 100% know for sure their app is not going to break in some unexpected way between then and now? Thats the point of the grace period and the whole article / discussion here.

Re: Why is Apple acting like an asshole?

#50

Post by metaloqui »

akmarinov wrote: post #4
kylec wrote: post #2

Why is this an issue? Apps built with the old SDK will still work on iOS 14, and you can continue to submit apps built with the old SDK for a while. Nothing says your app _has_ to be built with the new SDK on day 1.

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.
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