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Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

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Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#41

Post by viraptor »

dcow wrote: post #22
alias_neo wrote: post #7

This appears to be a very typical response from an Apple user who doesn't understand the lengths and hoops developers have to jump through to work around Apple's many, many restrictions, bugs and limitations. In my day job, our Apple developers have spent years finding solutions to iOS restrictions around CallKit, Push Notifications and NSTodaysProblem, and those are just the things Apple has intentionally restricted…

I love Jason’s response and think it carries the right tone and is delivered near flawlessly. It’s clearly frustrating to deal with Apple’s platform lockdown, and he captures such in a professional and rational manner. Bravo. What bothers me is that I’ve experienced an increasing number of maintainers of supposed cross platform projects simply not care about macOS anymore to the extent that they’re openly hostile tow…

You can be "cross-platform" in many ways. In practice if you don't run MacOS yourself, there's just no reasonable way to support MacOS at all. It literally costs hundreds of dollars to get a compatible test environment, while most other systems (including Windows) you can download and run a in VM for free.

In practice if the MacOS support takes more than a quick headers / types update, it will likely need more care in the future as well. That means you need not just a driveby fix, but a continued commitment from someone to ensure compatibility. This is not out of hostility towards the users, but I'll keep calling things that don't work on MacOS cross-platform. (Yes, it sucks; You can vote with your money to stop that situation)

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#42

Post by segfaultbuserr »

smcl wrote: post #23

Incredible that people are so wired and ready to be outraged that they'd send off angry emails on christmas eve after reading someone else's problems with a piece of software.

+1, really can't understand that. If I want to rant about something, perhaps I'll post it on blogs or forums, I couldn't imagine that harassing the author with angry mails is also an option...

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#43

Post by furyg3 »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #31

> We faced rejections in submitting the app, because they decided to change their policy on the app having a link in the "About WireGuard" tool window to www.wireguard.com/donations/ (which they previously had allowed explicitly; now they want 30% or something) Last year Google started to ban donation links in FOSS apps, WireGuard was one of the first victims [0], completely removed from the store. I didn't know that…

I couldn't agree more. You're not paying for the app, or the service, those are free and you are simply making a donation.

I can imagine that Apple may want to define 'FOSS' to some extent (donations need to go to a non-profit with a board, software needs to be licensed under one of the following licenses, etc), but there should be some room for supporting FOSS that is included in an App Store.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#44

Post by tasn »

The iOS and macOS apps have been the biggest point of stress and frustration when building EteSync[1]. The API is buggy as hell and very limited (if at all available) and the review process is arbitrary and can cause updates to be rejected. You can never know if your workarounds will be accepted or rejected. Sometimes they can even get rejected in future app updates.

The EteSync experience is subpar on Apple devices, and there's almost nothing we can do about it. We already spent countless of hours trying to fix things, but Apple just make it impossible. We have more ideas on how to fix things, and we will keep on trying, but it's beyond me why would anyone willingly use an Apple product.

Edit (adding one more point): that's one of the more annoying parts about Apple being the gatekeeper to 40% of the US population and in effect, to 100% of businesses (because one bad Apple in the org is enough to spoil the whole bunch). As a developer, you are just stuck with no way out.

[1] https://www.etesync.com

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#45

Post by segfaultbuserr »

furyg3 wrote: post #43
segfaultbuserr wrote: post #31

> We faced rejections in submitting the app, because they decided to change their policy on the app having a link in the "About WireGuard" tool window to www.wireguard.com/donations/ (which they previously had allowed explicitly; now they want 30% or something) Last year Google started to ban donation links in FOSS apps, WireGuard was one of the first victims [0], completely removed from the store. I didn't know that…

I couldn't agree more. You're not paying for the app, or the service, those are free and you are simply making a donation. I can imagine that Apple may want to define 'FOSS' to some extent (donations need to go to a non-profit with a board, software needs to be licensed under one of the following licenses, etc), but there should be some room for supporting FOSS that is included in an App Store.

Yeah, I can imagine that payment links can potentially be used as a loophole for selling unauthorized in-app payment items outside the store. But this is not the case here, nothing is sold, it's literally only a link to the project home page, https://wireguard.com/donations/.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#46

Post by tasn »

apple-sauce wrote: post #16

Honestly, I don't get it. Apple makes big money from their ecosystem. Wireguard developer provides high-quality solution for free, helping to grow proprietary ecosystem, essentially helping Apple to make more money indirectly and directly (by giving 30% from donations). In return developer gets tons of hate from users and from Apple itself in the form of delayed reviews, rejects and constant threat of violating some…

Users demand it. You can't have a popular VPN app without Apple support (because at least one person in the org will have an iDevice), so you have to do it. I made another comment in this thread about my experience building EteSync.

That's one of the more annoying parts about Apple being the gatekeeper to 40% of the US population (and in effect, to 100% of businesses). As a developer, you are just stuck with no way out.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#47

Post by wscott »

First off, what a level-headed friendly response from a developer who is clearly frustrated by Apple's bugs and policies. As someone who has had to support commercial software this is not easy to do consistently.

Second, this has significantly tempered my lusting over the new M1 macs. I think I can be content with my ThinkPad's running Linux.

Re: Response to “WireGuard: great protocol, but skip the Mac app”

#49

Post by isodev »

There are bugs of course, but let's not loose scope of the fact that "Apple has restricted" usually means Apple is preventing bad actors from doing the wrong thing.

As a developer, I usually find it rewarding to work with the Sandbox and not against it. Making this part of the product conception very early on results in much smoother experience at the end. Of course, if submitting to the store is an afterthought there are surely some challenges to tackle.

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