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I'm sure SwiftUI has been in development for a long time, but it seems to me to be Apple's response to frameworks like React Native and Electron. We get a simp

I'm sure SwiftUI has been in development for a long time, but it seems to me to be Apple's response to frameworks like React Native and Electron. We get a simple way to make UIs for multiple platforms, we get a nice batteries-included language, and Swift 5.1's dynamic method offers a similar functionality to hot reloading. Of course, it can't answer everybody's needs (no Windows, Linux, or Android support) but combine SwiftUI with Project Catalyst, and I'm really hoping to see plenty of high-quality cross-platform apps that don't have a whole instance of Chrome underlying them.

robertAngst 7y ago
>Of course, it can't answer everybody's needs (no Windows, Linux, or Android support) I don't understand how my fellow developers could ever tolerate Apple doing this. This goes one way, and its been like this for decades.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  Because not all of your "fellow developers" have the same priorities as you. For a lot of developers, targeting just the Apple platforms is still a worthwhile investment in itself: Apple's customers tend to pay higher prices for quality Mac software — yes, outside the Mac App Store, too — and they will very often be happy to pay for the accompanying iOS app if it's worth doing so. There have been Apple-only development houses since the year dot and this won't change just because Apple decided to release a platform to make it a little easier for its developers; they're not beholden to the rest of the world and it's ridiculous to believe so.
  - robertAngst 7y ago
    Given the high cost, high cost options exist on other platforms that are also fantastic. So if everyone can spend 3,000 dollars and get best in class computing, what are you paying for with Apple? They have lots of marketing that psychologically makes you feel good?
    - mwfunk 7y ago
      Perhaps they like the things that they're paying for, and no one's tricking them into anything, and maybe they even looked at those alternatives and still decided that they liked what they had. Crazy, I know. Something to consider though.
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      The notion that all of Apple's users are just fools for good PR is not one to which I bother to respond because I choose not to be called a pawn. Treating other people like that is, to my mind, a shallow dismissal of an opinion you did not have the good patience to discover in the first place.
    - tspike 7y ago
      > what are you paying for with Apple? For me, it's vertically integrated privacy.
  - Quenz 7y ago
    There sure are a lot of developers only interested in developing for Apple platforms. But wouldn't it be beneficial for Apple to extend the framework outside their ecosystem? I doubt the reason they haven't is to limit expending resources.
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      It wouldn't be beneficial to Apple. The direct comparison one might make is to Microsoft, who recently opened up .NET to have official Linux and macOS compatibility. The result is that enterprise and small businesses can deploy Microsoft technology on their Linux servers, possibly moving towards deploying on Azure. The cloud is Microsoft's big money maker — providing cross-platform tooling is one way to support that business. Apple makes their money from selling devices, not from offering a cloud infrastructure. Therefore, it makes no sense for Apple to offer their high-quality tooling and frameworks for other operating systems — the aim is to have developers selling their software for Apple platforms, eventually having people pay for services like iCloud storage, Apple Music, Apple TV — and then stay with using Apple's hardware. Maybe a person tries an iPad. Then they get an iPhone. Then they get a Mac. Apple recognised this about two decades ago when they officially cancelled development on the Windows version of Yellow Box (later to be named Cocoa, the base frameworks for Mac and the ancestor to UIKit, the base frameworks for iOS). It has worked well for them. Is it right or wrong? That depends on one's perspective about lock-in. However, I don't see a problem with it in the sense that nobody is being duped — unlike Microsoft in the 90s practically forcing Internet Explorer on practically every PC available, Apple doesn't have a market monopoly. Apple's strategy has remained consistent since the early days of OS X: you don't trap users, you make simply make sure they never want to leave. That's the pitch they make to developers, too.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Some other fellow developers are happy to target just Windows, just PS4, just XBox, just Wii, just Switch, just Android, just Arm mbed, just Tizen, just whatever OS. Not everyone has this urge to create FOSS software, available as free beer in every possible OS out there.
binthere 7y ago
I wouldn't call anything close to cross-platform if it only works on Apple's products and devices.
- zapzupnz 7y ago
  You're welcome to your definition, but if you think developing for desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets, with all the differences they encompass is trivial, you're in for a shock. Even with other cross-platform offerings like Flutter, React, Electron and so on, getting one codebase to work out of the box on just two platforms can be a challenge. On mobile, there tends to be a need to drop down from the cross-platform stuff to something native for performance reasons — Discord does this for its chat buffer on iOS, Facebook does this for practically everything. So while people take to their ideological high horses, there'll be people out there who can really benefit from being able to develop for Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs with a single, familiar, and easy yet powerful API to provide a glass of ice water in cross-platform hell.
  - banachtarski 7y ago
    You are literally the only person I have ever heard to use "cross-platform" in the sense you just described. Did you mean "cross form-factor" or something?
    - zapzupnz 7y ago
      No. Macs run macOS, iOS devices run iOS (and now, iPadOS), Apple Watches run watchOS, and Apple TVs run tvOS. They might have shared heritage but they are decidedly not the same platforms; these are not different form factors for the same thing (aside from iPhone/iPod touch and iPad), these are different platforms with different use cases, different capabilities, different sets of available frameworks including what languages are supported both in terms of compiled code and what can run as an interpreter on-device, different kinds of considerations for interaction, different userbases with different expectations. This is not some far flung usage of the term 'cross-platform'. Nobody would doubt that Windows 10 and Windows Mobile/Windows Phone are/were different platforms. Nobody would imagine a modern Linux distribution and Android were remotely the same thing, despite their shared heritage and the fact that Android can very happily run optimised for pretty much any form factor that an OEM decides. It's merely because all of these different platforms are made by the same company that even the slightest bit of skepticism creeps into peoples' minds but make no mistake, they are different beasts with different needs. If they were as similar as people think they are, iOS developers wouldn't need something like Project Catalyst to bring their apps to the Mac, they'd already be doing it.

robertAngst 7y ago

>Of course, it can't answer everybody's needs (no Windows, Linux, or Android support) I don't understand how my fellow developers could ever tolerate Apple doing this. This goes one way, and its been like this for decades.

zapzupnz 7y ago
Because not all of your "fellow developers" have the same priorities as you. For a lot of developers, targeting just the Apple platforms is still a worthwhile investment in itself: Apple's customers tend to pay higher prices for quality Mac software — yes, outside the Mac App Store, too — and they will very often be happy to pay for the accompanying iOS app if it's worth doing so. There have been Apple-only development houses since the year dot and this won't change just because Apple decided to release a platform to make it a little easier for its developers; they're not beholden to the rest of the world and it's ridiculous to believe so.
- robertAngst 7y ago
  Given the high cost, high cost options exist on other platforms that are also fantastic. So if everyone can spend 3,000 dollars and get best in class computing, what are you paying for with Apple? They have lots of marketing that psychologically makes you feel good?
  - mwfunk 7y ago
    Perhaps they like the things that they're paying for, and no one's tricking them into anything, and maybe they even looked at those alternatives and still decided that they liked what they had. Crazy, I know. Something to consider though.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    The notion that all of Apple's users are just fools for good PR is not one to which I bother to respond because I choose not to be called a pawn. Treating other people like that is, to my mind, a shallow dismissal of an opinion you did not have the good patience to discover in the first place.
  - tspike 7y ago
    > what are you paying for with Apple? For me, it's vertically integrated privacy.
- Quenz 7y ago
  There sure are a lot of developers only interested in developing for Apple platforms. But wouldn't it be beneficial for Apple to extend the framework outside their ecosystem? I doubt the reason they haven't is to limit expending resources.
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    It wouldn't be beneficial to Apple. The direct comparison one might make is to Microsoft, who recently opened up .NET to have official Linux and macOS compatibility. The result is that enterprise and small businesses can deploy Microsoft technology on their Linux servers, possibly moving towards deploying on Azure. The cloud is Microsoft's big money maker — providing cross-platform tooling is one way to support that business. Apple makes their money from selling devices, not from offering a cloud infrastructure. Therefore, it makes no sense for Apple to offer their high-quality tooling and frameworks for other operating systems — the aim is to have developers selling their software for Apple platforms, eventually having people pay for services like iCloud storage, Apple Music, Apple TV — and then stay with using Apple's hardware. Maybe a person tries an iPad. Then they get an iPhone. Then they get a Mac. Apple recognised this about two decades ago when they officially cancelled development on the Windows version of Yellow Box (later to be named Cocoa, the base frameworks for Mac and the ancestor to UIKit, the base frameworks for iOS). It has worked well for them. Is it right or wrong? That depends on one's perspective about lock-in. However, I don't see a problem with it in the sense that nobody is being duped — unlike Microsoft in the 90s practically forcing Internet Explorer on practically every PC available, Apple doesn't have a market monopoly. Apple's strategy has remained consistent since the early days of OS X: you don't trap users, you make simply make sure they never want to leave. That's the pitch they make to developers, too.
pjmlp 7y ago
Some other fellow developers are happy to target just Windows, just PS4, just XBox, just Wii, just Switch, just Android, just Arm mbed, just Tizen, just whatever OS. Not everyone has this urge to create FOSS software, available as free beer in every possible OS out there.

binthere 7y ago

I wouldn't call anything close to cross-platform if it only works on Apple's products and devices.

zapzupnz 7y ago
You're welcome to your definition, but if you think developing for desktops, notebooks, smartphones, and tablets, with all the differences they encompass is trivial, you're in for a shock. Even with other cross-platform offerings like Flutter, React, Electron and so on, getting one codebase to work out of the box on just two platforms can be a challenge. On mobile, there tends to be a need to drop down from the cross-platform stuff to something native for performance reasons — Discord does this for its chat buffer on iOS, Facebook does this for practically everything. So while people take to their ideological high horses, there'll be people out there who can really benefit from being able to develop for Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and Apple TVs with a single, familiar, and easy yet powerful API to provide a glass of ice water in cross-platform hell.
- banachtarski 7y ago
  You are literally the only person I have ever heard to use "cross-platform" in the sense you just described. Did you mean "cross form-factor" or something?
  - zapzupnz 7y ago
    No. Macs run macOS, iOS devices run iOS (and now, iPadOS), Apple Watches run watchOS, and Apple TVs run tvOS. They might have shared heritage but they are decidedly not the same platforms; these are not different form factors for the same thing (aside from iPhone/iPod touch and iPad), these are different platforms with different use cases, different capabilities, different sets of available frameworks including what languages are supported both in terms of compiled code and what can run as an interpreter on-device, different kinds of considerations for interaction, different userbases with different expectations. This is not some far flung usage of the term 'cross-platform'. Nobody would doubt that Windows 10 and Windows Mobile/Windows Phone are/were different platforms. Nobody would imagine a modern Linux distribution and Android were remotely the same thing, despite their shared heritage and the fact that Android can very happily run optimised for pretty much any form factor that an OEM decides. It's merely because all of these different platforms are made by the same company that even the slightest bit of skepticism creeps into peoples' minds but make no mistake, they are different beasts with different needs. If they were as similar as people think they are, iOS developers wouldn't need something like Project Catalyst to bring their apps to the Mac, they'd already be doing it.