9 ms·

If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market.

jrockway 17y ago
The average person's tolerance for faulty software is lower than it should be. I guess Apple wants to raise expectations, so that people are locked into the iPhone. ("OMG, that android app has ITS OWN KEYBOARD!!!111".) Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.
- aaronbrethorst 17y ago
  Yeah, the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Emacs, vi, Mac OS X, iPhone OS, Windows 7, Google search, Apache, Nginx, the very first web browser, et cetera are utter crap.
  - jrockway 17y ago
    As an Emacs developer, I can tell you with 100% confidence that the C part of Emacs is utter crap. The good news is that there isn't very much of it. The rest of the software is buggier than it should be. My web browser has remotely-exploitable security holes. Random drivers in Linux randomly regress as the version number increases. OS X and Windows 7 crash for no reason, and don't support enough hardware. The only program I use regularly that doesn't crash on me is Xmonad. And guess which language that isn't written in.
    - wisty 17y ago
      Xmonad claims to be about 1000 lines of Haskell. I'd say that's equivalent to about 10-100k of C. It doesn't crash because it's simple, not because it's written in a good language. Well you'd probably have 100X as many bugs in a C program (it takes 10X as many LOC, and I bet bugs scale with N^2), so Haskell is a bit better, but language isn't as important as scope. Big programs have more bugs.
      - sketerpot 17y ago
        It's not just lines of code; Haskell's BDSM-oriented type system is often infuriating, but it's remarkably good at catching bugs at compile time. Haskell programs tend to have a surprisingly small bug rate once you can actually get the things to compile.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        Actually, it doesn't crash because a theorem prover was run over the code to prove that it wouldn't crash. I believe some obscure stackset crashes were preemptively found this way. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/05/does-xmonad-crash.html http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/05/does-xmonad-crash.h...
    - l0stman 17y ago
      To be fair, the part of Emacs implemented in Lisp looks nothing like poetry. I wouldn't qualify it as ``utter crap'' but it's a lot messier than I thought. Some of the default packages looks like straight C code translated verbatim to Lisp. My take is that even if it's easier to screw things up in C, that doesn't mean that if you program in a higher level language, you'd automatically produce elegant code.
      - eru 17y ago
        Emacs Lisp is a mess. It doesn't even have lexical scoping.
        jrockway 17y ago
        The development version does. I can tell you, though, that this doesn't really matter in real life. The compiler warns you when you use a free variable, so it's pretty hard to accidentally misuse a dynamic variable. There are pathological cases that people point out, but these rarely matter in elisp that most people actually write. Programming Emacs is a little different from programming other systems, but once you use its idioms instead of the ones you took from your favorite language, everything works quite nicely.
        eru 17y ago
        Oh, it's not so much a problem of using a free variable by accident--where the compiler can help you out--but of not being able to use proper closures. I agree that emacs lisp can still be used to productively write software. People put up with much worse things.
    - jabakobob 17y ago
      While I agree that C (and C++, and Obj-C) have some problems that make it really easy to write completely buggy software, I wouldn't go as far as blaming programming languages for buggy apps. Plus, I don't understand why people keep praising XMonad for its lack of bugs. It has some bugs that are quite annoying (eg. stuck windows that don't close, locked with only one tile on a screen) -- on the other hand, I've never seen a bug in metacity.
  - Confusion 17y ago
    Not sure why this is getting upvoted (and the grandparent downvoted), because it is completely besides the point. I'm always amazed when any of my code runs, but the more so when I write C. Apple is strangely not supporting any modern language that reduces the chance of subtle and hard-to-fund bugs.
- stevenN 17y ago
  "Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs." Why does it really scare me when people that claim to programmers say stuff like that. If what you say is true, that you are "surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.", then you really should not be programming.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
tzs 17y ago
"If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market" Perhaps, like Nintendo, they learned the lessons from the collapse of the home video game market in 1983. When Nintendo was contemplating developing the NES, they took a deep look at what had caused the collapse. What they concluded was that the main cause of death was the market being flooded with too many crappy games. Originally, if you wanted to write, say, an Intellivision game, you went and got a job with either Mattel or APh Technological Consulting (the company that did the hardware design, system software, and many of the early games for Mattel). If you wanted to do an Atari game, you went and got a job with Atari. The games at this time were all pretty good. A consumer could go out, buy a game based just on the information printed on the box, and go home and be pretty sure they'd have a good experience. As time went on, a few more companies joined the party. Activision and Imagic, for instance. These companies were started by people who had worked for Mattel or Atari or their contractors like APh, and generally produced quality games. A consumer still could be confident that plunking down $40 or whatever for a new game, based just on the box description, would be a good move. More time passed, and companies that had little or no connection to Atari and Mattel jumped in, using information gleaned by reverse engineering the consoles and system software. The information was not always complete, and they didn't know all the tricks and techniques we authorized developers knew to squeeze greatness out of the hardware. They produced a lot of crap games. Consumers now found that spending $40 on a game was a big gamble. They had to work to get good games--be aware of brands, read reviews. They stopped buying--all games, not just the bad games. Nintendo's conclusion was that their new console must be locked down. Only developers that Nintendo approved would be allowed to produce cartridges. This way, they could ensure that quality remained high, and get the now shy consumers to come back and give games another change. It clearly worked--and consoles have been locked down ever since, and the console game market is huge.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- wvenable 17y ago
  This is exactly what I thought the original app approval process would be for: an Apple "seal of quality". That would be a fine trade off for users -- they may only get the approved apps, but at least they're screened for quality. However, that isn't what the approval process is. There are literally thousands of crappy applications that were happily approved and clogging up all categories in the app store. It seems non-trivial app rejections are not done on behalf of the user but are done solely to protect Apple's own interests. Remember when a bunch of high-quality Google voice apps disappeared from store? And that's just one example, there have been many more. And now they're rejecting apps not based on their quality, but based on the programming language or development environment used to create them. How is that at all relevant to the user? This is entirely about protecting Apple's own interests and the comparison to Nintendo's lock down of the NES is not applicable.
loire280 17y ago
If Apple's strategy of toolkit lockdown (to improve app quality, performance, and differentiation) is overly draconian, their platform will fail in the market.
eli 17y ago
Or just don't let "bad" apps in the store -- regardless of how they were developed. I mean, duh. I'm having a hard time seeing how it is anything but an attack on Flash.
mechanical_fish 17y ago
Apple is letting them fail in the market. On their competitors' devices. Don't worry, if you savor the cross-platform software experience there will be plenty of options for you. At bargain prices, in fact.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Yeah, that's true. iPhone users don't even want Google Voice.
  - fantazio 17y ago
    oh yeah? how about calling europe with one click on ATT networks for 2c a minute? ... please - you Apple fan-boys should try things before jumping to conclusions ... i dumped my iphone for a nexus specifically for Google Voice and Apple draconian control on the platform ...
    - jrockway 17y ago
      Sarcasm, my friend. Take a look at my post history and call me an "Apple fan-boy" again...
rmc 17y ago
Apple don't believe in a free market / free competition. If they did, then they wouldn't have an App Store.
- jfoutz 17y ago
  I don't think there's any government intervention forcing people to work on (or not work on) app store apps. I think apple is doing well in the (presumably free, it's way more open than other places) market, because they are very good at negotiating their property rights. I guess it's just fashionable to imply the "bad guys" are "communists" Do you mean the FCC approval process for new cell phones is a massive barrier to entry? I'm sure it's not free, but i can't imagine they'd want more that a few dozen phones and $100k of studies. maybe a half a million?
tvon 17y ago
Apple isn't interested in proving a point about market viability, they just don't want that on their platform.
hexis 17y ago
Part of what people like about Apple's products is the inclusion of Apple's opinions. Both the App Store and the iTouch Platform are Apple products.

The average person's tolerance for faulty software is lower than it should be. I guess Apple wants to raise expectations, so that people are locked into the iPhone. ("OMG, that android app has ITS OWN KEYBOARD!!!111".) Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.

aaronbrethorst 17y ago
Yeah, the Linux kernel, Mozilla, Chrome, Safari, Emacs, vi, Mac OS X, iPhone OS, Windows 7, Google search, Apache, Nginx, the very first web browser, et cetera are utter crap.
- jrockway 17y ago
  As an Emacs developer, I can tell you with 100% confidence that the C part of Emacs is utter crap. The good news is that there isn't very much of it. The rest of the software is buggier than it should be. My web browser has remotely-exploitable security holes. Random drivers in Linux randomly regress as the version number increases. OS X and Windows 7 crash for no reason, and don't support enough hardware. The only program I use regularly that doesn't crash on me is Xmonad. And guess which language that isn't written in.
  - wisty 17y ago
    Xmonad claims to be about 1000 lines of Haskell. I'd say that's equivalent to about 10-100k of C. It doesn't crash because it's simple, not because it's written in a good language. Well you'd probably have 100X as many bugs in a C program (it takes 10X as many LOC, and I bet bugs scale with N^2), so Haskell is a bit better, but language isn't as important as scope. Big programs have more bugs.
    - sketerpot 17y ago
      It's not just lines of code; Haskell's BDSM-oriented type system is often infuriating, but it's remarkably good at catching bugs at compile time. Haskell programs tend to have a surprisingly small bug rate once you can actually get the things to compile.
    - jrockway 17y ago
      Actually, it doesn't crash because a theorem prover was run over the code to prove that it wouldn't crash. I believe some obscure stackset crashes were preemptively found this way. http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/05/does-xmonad-crash.html http://neilmitchell.blogspot.com/2007/05/does-xmonad-crash.h...
  - l0stman 17y ago
    To be fair, the part of Emacs implemented in Lisp looks nothing like poetry. I wouldn't qualify it as ``utter crap'' but it's a lot messier than I thought. Some of the default packages looks like straight C code translated verbatim to Lisp. My take is that even if it's easier to screw things up in C, that doesn't mean that if you program in a higher level language, you'd automatically produce elegant code.
    - eru 17y ago
      Emacs Lisp is a mess. It doesn't even have lexical scoping.
      - jrockway 17y ago
        The development version does. I can tell you, though, that this doesn't really matter in real life. The compiler warns you when you use a free variable, so it's pretty hard to accidentally misuse a dynamic variable. There are pathological cases that people point out, but these rarely matter in elisp that most people actually write. Programming Emacs is a little different from programming other systems, but once you use its idioms instead of the ones you took from your favorite language, everything works quite nicely.
        eru 17y ago
        Oh, it's not so much a problem of using a free variable by accident--where the compiler can help you out--but of not being able to use proper closures. I agree that emacs lisp can still be used to productively write software. People put up with much worse things.
  - jabakobob 17y ago
    While I agree that C (and C++, and Obj-C) have some problems that make it really easy to write completely buggy software, I wouldn't go as far as blaming programming languages for buggy apps. Plus, I don't understand why people keep praising XMonad for its lack of bugs. It has some bugs that are quite annoying (eg. stuck windows that don't close, locked with only one tile on a screen) -- on the other hand, I've never seen a bug in metacity.
- Confusion 17y ago
  Not sure why this is getting upvoted (and the grandparent downvoted), because it is completely besides the point. I'm always amazed when any of my code runs, but the more so when I write C. Apple is strangely not supporting any modern language that reduces the chance of subtle and hard-to-fund bugs.
stevenN 17y ago
"Of course, this is why I don't use C, C++, or Objective-C. I'm always a little surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs." Why does it really scare me when people that claim to programmers say stuff like that. If what you say is true, that you are "surprised when someone writes code in one of those languages that actually runs.", then you really should not be programming.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

tzs 17y ago

"If the cross-platform experience is subpar, Apple should just let these apps fail in the market" Perhaps, like Nintendo, they learned the lessons from the collapse of the home video game market in 1983. When Nintendo was contemplating developing the NES, they took a deep look at what had caused the collapse. What they concluded was that the main cause of death was the market being flooded with too many crappy games. Originally, if you wanted to write, say, an Intellivision game, you went and got a job with either Mattel or APh Technological Consulting (the company that did the hardware design, system software, and many of the early games for Mattel). If you wanted to do an Atari game, you went and got a job with Atari. The games at this time were all pretty good. A consumer could go out, buy a game based just on the information printed on the box, and go home and be pretty sure they'd have a good experience. As time went on, a few more companies joined the party. Activision and Imagic, for instance. These companies were started by people who had worked for Mattel or Atari or their contractors like APh, and generally produced quality games. A consumer still could be confident that plunking down $40 or whatever for a new game, based just on the box description, would be a good move. More time passed, and companies that had little or no connection to Atari and Mattel jumped in, using information gleaned by reverse engineering the consoles and system software. The information was not always complete, and they didn't know all the tricks and techniques we authorized developers knew to squeeze greatness out of the hardware. They produced a lot of crap games. Consumers now found that spending $40 on a game was a big gamble. They had to work to get good games--be aware of brands, read reviews. They stopped buying--all games, not just the bad games. Nintendo's conclusion was that their new console must be locked down. Only developers that Nintendo approved would be allowed to produce cartridges. This way, they could ensure that quality remained high, and get the now shy consumers to come back and give games another change. It clearly worked--and consoles have been locked down ever since, and the console game market is huge.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
wvenable 17y ago
This is exactly what I thought the original app approval process would be for: an Apple "seal of quality". That would be a fine trade off for users -- they may only get the approved apps, but at least they're screened for quality. However, that isn't what the approval process is. There are literally thousands of crappy applications that were happily approved and clogging up all categories in the app store. It seems non-trivial app rejections are not done on behalf of the user but are done solely to protect Apple's own interests. Remember when a bunch of high-quality Google voice apps disappeared from store? And that's just one example, there have been many more. And now they're rejecting apps not based on their quality, but based on the programming language or development environment used to create them. How is that at all relevant to the user? This is entirely about protecting Apple's own interests and the comparison to Nintendo's lock down of the NES is not applicable.

loire280 17y ago

If Apple's strategy of toolkit lockdown (to improve app quality, performance, and differentiation) is overly draconian, their platform will fail in the market.

eli 17y ago

Or just don't let "bad" apps in the store -- regardless of how they were developed. I mean, duh. I'm having a hard time seeing how it is anything but an attack on Flash.

mechanical_fish 17y ago

Apple is letting them fail in the market. On their competitors' devices. Don't worry, if you savor the cross-platform software experience there will be plenty of options for you. At bargain prices, in fact.

jrockway 17y ago
Yeah, that's true. iPhone users don't even want Google Voice.
- fantazio 17y ago
  oh yeah? how about calling europe with one click on ATT networks for 2c a minute? ... please - you Apple fan-boys should try things before jumping to conclusions ... i dumped my iphone for a nexus specifically for Google Voice and Apple draconian control on the platform ...
  - jrockway 17y ago
    Sarcasm, my friend. Take a look at my post history and call me an "Apple fan-boy" again...

rmc 17y ago

Apple don't believe in a free market / free competition. If they did, then they wouldn't have an App Store.

jfoutz 17y ago
I don't think there's any government intervention forcing people to work on (or not work on) app store apps. I think apple is doing well in the (presumably free, it's way more open than other places) market, because they are very good at negotiating their property rights. I guess it's just fashionable to imply the "bad guys" are "communists" Do you mean the FCC approval process for new cell phones is a massive barrier to entry? I'm sure it's not free, but i can't imagine they'd want more that a few dozen phones and $100k of studies. maybe a half a million?

tvon 17y ago

Apple isn't interested in proving a point about market viability, they just don't want that on their platform.

hexis 17y ago

Part of what people like about Apple's products is the inclusion of Apple's opinions. Both the App Store and the iTouch Platform are Apple products.