17 ms·

My simple argument - Microsoft is actually focusing on "Developers, Developers, Developers" & what developers want instead of just lip service. Focus on develo

My simple argument - Microsoft is actually focusing on "Developers, Developers, Developers" & what developers want instead of just lip service. Focus on developers & they'll create awesome stuff with your product. IMO, Apple is where they are because they made a nice piece of hardware with a platform that allowed developers to make & sell apps on it. ITunes was great for musical devs & IPhone was great for software devs.

oblio 8y ago
Apple had first mover advantage into a niche they redefined: smartphone as touch screen based device with a software keyboard instead of a device with a hardware keyboard. The real question for Apple in my opinion is: where will they go from here? Android is creeping higher and higher in the ecosystem and smartphones are starting to become good enough, just like PCs. They are a status symbols, which PCs couldn't be, but as they become so widespread, their status symbol value decreases.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  I think they could carve out a niche as the phone manufacturer that respects people's privacy, but I'd be a lot happier to join their cheerleading squad over that if they weren't also constantly ratcheting up their prices. It doesn't sit well with Tim Cook's statements to the effect of privacy being a right and not a luxury.
  - scirocco 8y ago
    "phone manufacturer that respects people's privacy" Small market (outside of HN) :)
  - basch 8y ago
    right now apple is - privacy focused - arm processor design leader - swift native apps thats about all that differentiates it. the question is how long that will matter, and if or when the third becomes more of a hinderance. If Microsoft and Google continue to grow towards each other (teams being built on chrome, Microsoft treating android as its mobile operating system.)
  - black-tea 8y ago
    I thought Apple was going for that market already. Microsoft going there would be hilarious.
    - r00fus 8y ago
      Microsoft? They are neither privacy oriented (hello, telemetry) nor do they have a functioning phone business.
- Brockenstein 8y ago
  Android is already used in the majority of the market. It's just that android phones aren't under a single corporate umbrella like Apple phones are.
- scarface74 8y ago
  People have been saying that Apple products are a “status symbol” since the iPod. How is a product owned by 45% of smart phone owners - at least in the US - a status symbol?
  - caspper69 8y ago
    Children
  - danieldk 8y ago
    By product differentiation. People who do not want or cannot spend a lot of money buy an older generation (currently iPhone 7 and iPhone 8), people who can spend more buy the latest iteration. With the watch there is also a lot of differentiation, from basic bands, sports bands, to expensive metal or leather bands. Though, I do not agree that people are only buying Apple for status. A lot of non-tech friends just find iPhones simpler to use, does not have preinstalled crap, and gets updated longer.
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I bought a 6s in 2015. I kept it until earlier this year, replaces the battery for $29, bought an Apple battery case and gave it to my son. It runs the latest OS and is still faster than most midrange Android phones coming out this year.
      - slaw 8y ago
        iPhone 6s is faster than any android phone in single core tests. Mozilla Kraken score for 6s is 1315ms.
  - emptyfile 8y ago
    >at least in the US Key. Outside of the US and a few high income countries it was always a status symbol everywhere.
    - varjag 8y ago
- demosito666 8y ago
  > Android is creeping higher and higher in the ecosystem It crept there about 7 years ago and is about 90% of the market now, why present tense? And it was good enough from like day 1, although the hardware was behind sometimes. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-operating-systems/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-sha...
  - te_chris 8y ago
    Global market share. In most western countries it's around 50/50 or 60/40 one way or the other. End of the day, that's still where most of the purchasing power is.
    - danieldk 8y ago
      Indeed, and Apple's services revenue is also growing quite a bit. So, they'll want chunks of the market where it is also likely that people will be purchasing paid apps, iCloud storage, Apple Music, movies, etc.
    - tpush 8y ago
      > In most western countries it's around 50/50 or 60/40 one way or the other. Not really, it's 70/30 Android/iOS for the whole of Europe on average.
      - te_chris 8y ago
        Yeah, but in the wealthier countries, apart from Germany and France, it seems iOS is either almost tied or in the majority (I just looked at US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Sweden)
  - MarkMc 8y ago
    Here are the Android Q2 figures from that link: 2018: 88% 2017: 87.8% 2016: 86.2% 2015: 82.2% 2014: 83.8% 2013: 79% 2012: 64.2% 2011: 43.4% So I think it's fair to use the present tense, especially now that Apple will stop disclosing iPhone unit sales which indicates they are no longer growing. I wonder whether we'll see a tipping point - especially in poor countries where the Android share is close to 100% - where developers start producing Android apps but not iPhone apps, and this affects the desirability of iPhone. As a side note: I hate statista and hope it is removed from Google search because (a) 90% of the time when I try to access that page I see a "Exclusive Premium statistic" label that blocks 80% of the graph; (b) 100% of the time when I try to view the source figures of the graph I get the "Exclusive Premium Functionality" blocker.
- mamon 8y ago
  I've been to Los Angeles last weekend and have seen homeless people at the subway stations entertaining themselves with their iPhones. Now tell me: how is owning an iPhone a "status symbol"?
  - likeclockwork 8y ago
    If you don't have one your status is lower than even that of a homeless person.
rfinney 8y ago
A lot of developers want portability and retaining all revenue from their programs. Could Apple do even better by providing more for developers on these fronts?
- Topgamer7 8y ago
  Apple is where they are by taking a percent off sales through their store. It would be a fight to claw out their main source of revenue.
  - mattferderer 8y ago
    Actually it's a small percentage. "For calendar 2017 the App sztores approximate $11.4 billion in revenue was almost 5% of the company’s projected $237 billion in total revenue and over a third of the $31 billion in forecasted services revenue." - https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-app-store-generated-over-11-billion-in-revenue-for-the-company-last-year/#7b6716176613 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-ap... Great podcast on this topic - https://www.mergeconflict.fm/113 https://www.mergeconflict.fm/113
- scarface74 8y ago
  Yes and with portability you get Electron apps... Developers want to produce cross platform apps that are not a good user experience for users. There is a well known hierarchy when it comes to Apple: Apple first then users then developers as it should be.
  - jamesgeck0 8y ago
    With portability you also get Qt apps, which generally blend in reasonably well on their respective platforms. Developers can go the extra mile to make apps really blend in on each platform, but the defaults are fine.
scarface74 8y ago
Developers go where the money is and where the users are. No matter how great the “developer story” is for Microsoft, Windows Phone languished. Microsoft to it’s credit, is also going to where the developers are.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  I think Microsoft's biggest mistake with Windows Phone was branding it with "Windows." I wish they would have called it an Xbox Phone and tightly integrated it with Xbox live. Early on, they could focus on getting some really great games built and the lack of "apps" wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was.
  - toyg 8y ago
    On the other hand, I know a few big companies that initially went with Windows Phone only because of the "safe" image - no chance they would have done that with a gaming-related brand. The idea of going after the Blackberry-vacated market wasn't completely wrong. The real issue was the repeated backward-compatibility break; it pissed off all their early partners and adopters and discouraged any serious investment in the platform. By the end, it wasn't a bad platform, but the trust was gone.
    - vtesucks 8y ago
      I didn't know there was an enterprise adoption. Could you name a few?
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        It was relatively common here in Europe, where higher management was getting their Blackberries replaced with iPhones and everyone else below got to choose between Android and WP. A telecommunications company starting with V used to do that.
        vtesucks 8y ago
subdane 8y ago
When OSX launched with a Unix platform, every hackathon went from Thinkpads to Macbooks over the course of a year or two. It was just more fun to make tech on them. I don't think it was intentional on Apple's part to target developers, I think it was a byproduct of the Next's team's passion for great tools that leaked into Apple's offerings. Apple would do well to make developers happy and to make creative pros happy. It's weird that we're forced to buy iMacs and Macbook Airs in 2018 to do our best work.
- stevewodil 8y ago
  With the new keyboard mechanisms and the killing of the escape key on their Pro models Apple has already made their stance with developers clear. Buy a Windows laptop with nice hardware and run Linux.
  - dlivingston 8y ago
    I quite like the butterfly keyboards. I find that, after I spent a few weeks getting used to it, I can type much faster and cleaner. The removal of the escape key makes vim practically unusable, though. I know a few people who have remapped it to a different key, but still..
    - VibrantClarity 8y ago
      ctrl + [
    - franey 8y ago
      I've been using Caps Lock as Esc for around a year now (and Shift + Shift for caps). It's a big ergonomic win for me on both my laptop and desktop keyboards.
    - ngokevin 8y ago
      People should remap it anyways. The escape key is the farthest away key, yet it's the most frequently used key. I have it to `jj`.
  - 8y ago
black-tea 8y ago
Any examples of "awesome stuff" made with a Microsoft product? If it were just about developers, Linux would be number one.
- danso 8y ago
  Stardew Valley, and many other games I imagine: https://twitter.com/concernedape/status/750858584603242496 https://twitter.com/concernedape/status/750858584603242496 VS Code seems to have gained significant traction among developers.
  - bduerst 8y ago
    XNA is basically just some high-level APIs. Even ConcernedApe (StardewValley developer) has recommended against using it: https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/game-development-and-engine-decision.25210/#post-989009 https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/game-development...
- freehunter 8y ago
  Stack Exchange?
- e12e 8y ago
  Windows now run Linux binaries.

oblio 8y ago

Apple had first mover advantage into a niche they redefined: smartphone as touch screen based device with a software keyboard instead of a device with a hardware keyboard. The real question for Apple in my opinion is: where will they go from here? Android is creeping higher and higher in the ecosystem and smartphones are starting to become good enough, just like PCs. They are a status symbols, which PCs couldn't be, but as they become so widespread, their status symbol value decreases.

bunderbunder 8y ago
I think they could carve out a niche as the phone manufacturer that respects people's privacy, but I'd be a lot happier to join their cheerleading squad over that if they weren't also constantly ratcheting up their prices. It doesn't sit well with Tim Cook's statements to the effect of privacy being a right and not a luxury.
- scirocco 8y ago
  "phone manufacturer that respects people's privacy" Small market (outside of HN) :)
- basch 8y ago
  right now apple is - privacy focused - arm processor design leader - swift native apps thats about all that differentiates it. the question is how long that will matter, and if or when the third becomes more of a hinderance. If Microsoft and Google continue to grow towards each other (teams being built on chrome, Microsoft treating android as its mobile operating system.)
- black-tea 8y ago
  I thought Apple was going for that market already. Microsoft going there would be hilarious.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Microsoft? They are neither privacy oriented (hello, telemetry) nor do they have a functioning phone business.
Brockenstein 8y ago
Android is already used in the majority of the market. It's just that android phones aren't under a single corporate umbrella like Apple phones are.
scarface74 8y ago
People have been saying that Apple products are a “status symbol” since the iPod. How is a product owned by 45% of smart phone owners - at least in the US - a status symbol?
- caspper69 8y ago
  Children
- danieldk 8y ago
  By product differentiation. People who do not want or cannot spend a lot of money buy an older generation (currently iPhone 7 and iPhone 8), people who can spend more buy the latest iteration. With the watch there is also a lot of differentiation, from basic bands, sports bands, to expensive metal or leather bands. Though, I do not agree that people are only buying Apple for status. A lot of non-tech friends just find iPhones simpler to use, does not have preinstalled crap, and gets updated longer.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I bought a 6s in 2015. I kept it until earlier this year, replaces the battery for $29, bought an Apple battery case and gave it to my son. It runs the latest OS and is still faster than most midrange Android phones coming out this year.
    - slaw 8y ago
      iPhone 6s is faster than any android phone in single core tests. Mozilla Kraken score for 6s is 1315ms.
- emptyfile 8y ago
  >at least in the US Key. Outside of the US and a few high income countries it was always a status symbol everywhere.
  - varjag 8y ago
demosito666 8y ago
> Android is creeping higher and higher in the ecosystem It crept there about 7 years ago and is about 90% of the market now, why present tense? And it was good enough from like day 1, although the hardware was behind sometimes. https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-share-held-by-smartphone-operating-systems/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266136/global-market-sha...
- te_chris 8y ago
  Global market share. In most western countries it's around 50/50 or 60/40 one way or the other. End of the day, that's still where most of the purchasing power is.
  - danieldk 8y ago
    Indeed, and Apple's services revenue is also growing quite a bit. So, they'll want chunks of the market where it is also likely that people will be purchasing paid apps, iCloud storage, Apple Music, movies, etc.
  - tpush 8y ago
    > In most western countries it's around 50/50 or 60/40 one way or the other. Not really, it's 70/30 Android/iOS for the whole of Europe on average.
    - te_chris 8y ago
      Yeah, but in the wealthier countries, apart from Germany and France, it seems iOS is either almost tied or in the majority (I just looked at US, UK, Canada, Netherlands, Sweden)
- MarkMc 8y ago
  Here are the Android Q2 figures from that link: 2018: 88% 2017: 87.8% 2016: 86.2% 2015: 82.2% 2014: 83.8% 2013: 79% 2012: 64.2% 2011: 43.4% So I think it's fair to use the present tense, especially now that Apple will stop disclosing iPhone unit sales which indicates they are no longer growing. I wonder whether we'll see a tipping point - especially in poor countries where the Android share is close to 100% - where developers start producing Android apps but not iPhone apps, and this affects the desirability of iPhone. As a side note: I hate statista and hope it is removed from Google search because (a) 90% of the time when I try to access that page I see a "Exclusive Premium statistic" label that blocks 80% of the graph; (b) 100% of the time when I try to view the source figures of the graph I get the "Exclusive Premium Functionality" blocker.
mamon 8y ago
I've been to Los Angeles last weekend and have seen homeless people at the subway stations entertaining themselves with their iPhones. Now tell me: how is owning an iPhone a "status symbol"?
- likeclockwork 8y ago
  If you don't have one your status is lower than even that of a homeless person.

rfinney 8y ago

A lot of developers want portability and retaining all revenue from their programs. Could Apple do even better by providing more for developers on these fronts?

Topgamer7 8y ago
Apple is where they are by taking a percent off sales through their store. It would be a fight to claw out their main source of revenue.
- mattferderer 8y ago
  Actually it's a small percentage. "For calendar 2017 the App sztores approximate $11.4 billion in revenue was almost 5% of the company’s projected $237 billion in total revenue and over a third of the $31 billion in forecasted services revenue." - https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-app-store-generated-over-11-billion-in-revenue-for-the-company-last-year/#7b6716176613 https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2018/01/06/apples-ap... Great podcast on this topic - https://www.mergeconflict.fm/113 https://www.mergeconflict.fm/113
scarface74 8y ago
Yes and with portability you get Electron apps... Developers want to produce cross platform apps that are not a good user experience for users. There is a well known hierarchy when it comes to Apple: Apple first then users then developers as it should be.
- jamesgeck0 8y ago
  With portability you also get Qt apps, which generally blend in reasonably well on their respective platforms. Developers can go the extra mile to make apps really blend in on each platform, but the defaults are fine.

scarface74 8y ago

Developers go where the money is and where the users are. No matter how great the “developer story” is for Microsoft, Windows Phone languished. Microsoft to it’s credit, is also going to where the developers are.

RandallBrown 8y ago
I think Microsoft's biggest mistake with Windows Phone was branding it with "Windows." I wish they would have called it an Xbox Phone and tightly integrated it with Xbox live. Early on, they could focus on getting some really great games built and the lack of "apps" wouldn't have been as big of a deal as it was.
- toyg 8y ago
  On the other hand, I know a few big companies that initially went with Windows Phone only because of the "safe" image - no chance they would have done that with a gaming-related brand. The idea of going after the Blackberry-vacated market wasn't completely wrong. The real issue was the repeated backward-compatibility break; it pissed off all their early partners and adopters and discouraged any serious investment in the platform. By the end, it wasn't a bad platform, but the trust was gone.
  - vtesucks 8y ago
    I didn't know there was an enterprise adoption. Could you name a few?
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      It was relatively common here in Europe, where higher management was getting their Blackberries replaced with iPhones and everyone else below got to choose between Android and WP. A telecommunications company starting with V used to do that.
      - vtesucks 8y ago

subdane 8y ago

When OSX launched with a Unix platform, every hackathon went from Thinkpads to Macbooks over the course of a year or two. It was just more fun to make tech on them. I don't think it was intentional on Apple's part to target developers, I think it was a byproduct of the Next's team's passion for great tools that leaked into Apple's offerings. Apple would do well to make developers happy and to make creative pros happy. It's weird that we're forced to buy iMacs and Macbook Airs in 2018 to do our best work.

stevewodil 8y ago
With the new keyboard mechanisms and the killing of the escape key on their Pro models Apple has already made their stance with developers clear. Buy a Windows laptop with nice hardware and run Linux.
- dlivingston 8y ago
  I quite like the butterfly keyboards. I find that, after I spent a few weeks getting used to it, I can type much faster and cleaner. The removal of the escape key makes vim practically unusable, though. I know a few people who have remapped it to a different key, but still..
  - VibrantClarity 8y ago
    ctrl + [
  - franey 8y ago
    I've been using Caps Lock as Esc for around a year now (and Shift + Shift for caps). It's a big ergonomic win for me on both my laptop and desktop keyboards.
  - ngokevin 8y ago
    People should remap it anyways. The escape key is the farthest away key, yet it's the most frequently used key. I have it to `jj`.
- 8y ago

black-tea 8y ago

Any examples of "awesome stuff" made with a Microsoft product? If it were just about developers, Linux would be number one.

danso 8y ago
Stardew Valley, and many other games I imagine: https://twitter.com/concernedape/status/750858584603242496 https://twitter.com/concernedape/status/750858584603242496 VS Code seems to have gained significant traction among developers.
- bduerst 8y ago
  XNA is basically just some high-level APIs. Even ConcernedApe (StardewValley developer) has recommended against using it: https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/game-development-and-engine-decision.25210/#post-989009 https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/game-development...
freehunter 8y ago
Stack Exchange?
e12e 8y ago
Windows now run Linux binaries.