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

Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

bennettnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 535 posts

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#431

Post by kube-system »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #311
ozim wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say "Apple doesn’t want dev accounts to be an easy backdoor for trash apps". It is all about quality of the app store. Downside is that I see bunch of corporate apps that are total trash on app store.

Trash apps according to whom? Apple considers all browsers that don't use WebKit as "trash" as well as other entire categories. Apparently the nanny state is repugnant to many, but nanny corporations that don't trust us to make our own choices, or have our own tastes and standards, is much more acceptable. The huge loss of customer freedom doesn't actually achieve the exclusion of "trash" apps nor malware.

Reasonably so. The last time the #1 browser in terms of market share did not abuse their position was Q3 1998.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#432

Post by phendrenad2 »

latexr wrote: post #357
phendrenad2 wrote: post #300

The logic here if flawed. Here's the key point: > So basically, I pay a yearly fee to get access to their SDK? Most manufactures provide that to you for free because they really want you to build apps for their platform. This is a classic case of hyper-focusing on the bottom-line cost of something, and ignoring all of the other costs. Windows 11 comes with ads in the search box. Do you see how that's related to XCode…

> Windows 11 comes with ads in the search box. Apple’s apps have ads for third parties (App Store) and to upsell their own services (Music, iCloud). They’re also allegedly working on adding ads to Maps: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/08/15/apple-could-bring-ads-t...

Microsoft does the same thing. Apple hardware is also said to be overpriced compared to comparable Windows hardware. So, how much do these factors play into Apple charging $99/year for XCode, and Windows having a free IDE? Or can we just give up on trying to track a few dollars through a trillion-dollar company already? Sheeesh.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#433

Post by bananapub »

smoldesu wrote: post #151
x0x0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious at all. All of us who still have to help people in our lives -- particularly elderly parents -- are very grateful for a platform where the users are not expected to be sysadmins. Which they will do quite badly. We have a 25+ year history of trying to get most people to not install random spyware/crapware/viruses on their computers, and it's fair to say the results are a complete and total failure. Ex…

iOS isn't impervious to malware either. Pegasus was deployed effortlessly to tens of thousands of iOS devices, and the App Store had nothing to do with it. Meanwhile, Apple still green-lights exploitative gambling and lootbox services as long as they're promised a cut of the loot. There is merit in pursuing a more secure future for computing, but there is zero merit in doing so alone.

> iOS isn't impervious to malware either.

fortunately no one made this hyperbolic claim.

> Pegasus was deployed effortlessly to tens of thousands of iOS devices,

I can't stop a G20 nation or the people they pay from hacking my mum's phone to steal from her bank account, but I can offer to buy her an iPhone and have her be immune to nearly all real world attacks.

it's of course fine if you don't care about the security difference (or think Google does nearly as good a job with their first party phones), but not sure why you're making hyperbolic posts arguing against some strawman?

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#434

Post by alexashka »

If there were a flourishing market of indie apps on Android/Windows (since they don't have these restrictions), you would have a valid point and then Apple would need to compete.

What you have is 'I don't want to pay because Apple is rich'. That's not a valid argument. By your logic, all big profitable companies should either lower their prices (to what, I wonder, breakeven?) or be called greedy and bad.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#435

Post by 0xEFF »

anonymouse008 wrote: post #418
danaris wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And these days, every Mac comes with a full Unix terminal built-in. Xcode is a free download (remember, if you wanted to develop Macintosh applications back in the day, you had to buy something like CodeWarrior!), and, as you say, they've developed Swift Playgrounds specifically to make a nicer onramp for people interested in developing their own stuff. It's never been trivial to configure the Mac in terms of things…

I’m fleshing out these thoughts more in a longer form - but I think Jobs was heading the company into the abyss with the appliance model. If it weren’t for the AppStore, it would’ve been the end of Apple. The iPhone wasn’t released with it at the outset - because this “make your own” wasn’t a part of the ethos. The Mac also suffered tremendously with no love to Final Cut, snipping Aperture, and leaving the hardware t…

It’s difficult to square creating both the most successful product and the most successful company in history with the idea Jobs heading the company into the abyss with the appliance model.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#436

Post by [deleted] »

_trackno5 wrote: post #199
stakhanov wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The whole article left me feeling a resounding "well, duhhhhhh". The author has simply chosen one of the least hackable compute platforms for his hacking hobby and is then complaining about it (I mean "hacking" in the original sense, not implying anything about illegal activities). If he were a farmer writing angry blog posts about how VW has made it damned-near impossible to plough a field with a VW beetle,…

Why shouldn’t he complain about it though? If nobody complains there’s no chance things will change. Sure people could vote with their feet, but not everyone is willing to do that. They should still be allowed to ask for improvements.

[deleted]

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#437

Post by dragonwriter »

alexashka wrote: post #434

If there were a flourishing market of indie apps on Android/Windows (since they don't have these restrictions), you would have a valid point and then Apple would need to compete. What you have is 'I don't want to pay because Apple is rich'. That's not a valid argument. By your logic, all big profitable companies should either lower their prices (to what, I wonder, breakeven?) or be called greedy and bad.

There is a flourishing world of indie/hobby apps (often “games”, at least loosely) on Android and Windows (parts of which are a “market” in the strict sense, but a lot of which is not because hobbies often aren’t about making money.)

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#438

Post by rchaud »

KoftaBob wrote: post #426
sixstringtheory wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably mean from an iOS device to a PC/Android. It can be done without using iCloud, but you’ll need a macOS machine or special iOS app to do it.

"Windows: You can import photos to your PC by connecting your device to your computer and using the Windows Photos app" https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201302

This is still pretty bad, reminds me of using the iPod on Windows.

On my Android phone I can just send the photos directly to my MacOS machine via Bluetooth. No app required.

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#439

Post by dev_tty01 »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #302
bragr wrote: post #24

I doubt this is "Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps", so much as "Apple doesn’t want dev accounts to be an easy backdoor for sideloading apps" and hobby apps are an acceptable casualty.

Almost everything associated with the iPhone is a casualty of "We need to collect our 15-30%". They apparently strive for a superior user experience, and then go about destroying the customer experience of what they seem to consider is their phones.

Yes, Apple wants their piece and I for one would like to see it at least reduced. I would also love to see an option to opt-in to at least sideloading personally built apps.

That being said, what customer are you referring to when you talk about "destroying the customer experience." Hundreds of millions of users express very high customer satisfaction with the experience. The vast number of users have no interest in sideloading and they love the simplicity of the app store. Apple is bringing in about 85% of the smartphone market profits and they have huge repeat purchase numbers. That is not because those billion users are unsatisfied or feel the experience has been "destroyed." The numbers are just too overwhelming.

Many HN readers are not the target market if openness is of paramount importance to them. It is hard to avoid, but we need to try and avoiding generalizing our preferences to the broader definition of "customer."

Re: Apple doesn’t want you developing hobby apps

#440

Post by JohnFen »

klondike_klive wrote: post #414
JohnFen wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I'll be doing. There are no smartphones on the market that I feel comfortable with trusting, even a little, so I'll be shifting to using a dumbphone instead, and also carrying a real, honest-to-goodness pocket computer that doesn't have a cell phone attached to it. The phone will be used for exchanging calls and texts. The computer for everything else.

Which pocket computer would you choose? Out of interest.

I haven't decided. The pickings seem slim, but I'm still working through the options (including the option of building my own).
Post reply on HN