3 ms·
> And it seemed a little suspicious how quickly they were able to deliver a 3rd-party SDK and developer documentation. How much of this is explained by needing
by geofft 7y ago
> And it seemed a little suspicious how quickly they were able to deliver a 3rd-party SDK and developer documentation.
How much of this is explained by needing an SDK and developer documentation for internal apps? (That is, had Apple not built an App Store, it would have been all the more important to make sure Mail, Maps, Safari, the built-in YouTube app, etc. were high-quality.)
In part I'm curious if the engineering culture was that reasonable-quality docs were expected for internal developers.
- kijiki 7y agoNever worked at Apple specifically, but every place I've worked had little to no docs on internal tools. The expectation was that you'd go ask the person who wrote it, or absorb the tribal knowledge as part of on-boarding. There was even low-level resistance to folks who tried to document the ambient knowledge to help out new employees. Also, keep in mind, in the timeframe that is relevant here, the only apps were Mail and Safari. Apple making Mail a native app from the start was another tell that "you should just build web apps" was disingenuous.
- geofft 7y agoWeren't YouTube and Maps also part of iPhone OS 1.0?