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I think every single platform is struggling with this. Even Electron or Chromium itself. They all have internal or private APIs or things that are not ready for

by st3fan 7y ago

I think every single platform is struggling with this. Even Electron or Chromium itself. They all have internal or private APIs or things that are not ready for prime time or just plain internal details. Opening up private APIs is a commitment that you will support those. Which is no light decision. Personally I think it is fine for any platform to have these. But I do wish that the App Store rules around them were more permissive. From Apples perspective: look at all the shit they are getting for dropping 64-bit support. This was known for a decade and they still are pictured as the bad guys who don’t support developers. A decade! So you can imagine what happens when apps relying on private APIs suddenly break.

madeofpalk 7y ago
To be fair, Apple struggles with maintaining their existing APIs. Who cares about the private ones, they probably break or change just as unexpectedly as the public ones.
lonelappde 7y ago
False equivalency. Changing private APIs without warning is not the same as actively breaking clients. You know all the talk about Google or Facebook or Comcast both owning the platform and competing on the content layer with self-dealing is anti-competitive monopolistic behavior? Same goes for Microsoft Windows in the 1990s (actually litigated these very issues) and Apple today.
- chongli 7y ago
  False equivalency. Changing private APIs without warning is not the same as actively breaking clients. This distinction does not matter in the public sphere. When Apple releases an update — any update — that breaks a popular app, they are blamed for it. By putting their foot down, Apple is putting the onus back on developers to play by their rules. This situation is essentially the normalization of deviance [1]. If you do not enforce a rule, that rule becomes invalid and unenforceable. Apple does not want to lose control of their platform. If they give away all of their private, low level APIs, then cross platform frameworks like Electron will render their platform a commodity. [1] http://danluu.com/wat/ http://danluu.com/wat/
wyxuan 7y ago
Do you mean 32 bit support instead?

by st3fan 7y ago

madeofpalk 7y ago

To be fair, Apple struggles with maintaining their existing APIs. Who cares about the private ones, they probably break or change just as unexpectedly as the public ones.

lonelappde 7y ago

False equivalency. Changing private APIs without warning is not the same as actively breaking clients. You know all the talk about Google or Facebook or Comcast both owning the platform and competing on the content layer with self-dealing is anti-competitive monopolistic behavior? Same goes for Microsoft Windows in the 1990s (actually litigated these very issues) and Apple today.

chongli 7y ago
False equivalency. Changing private APIs without warning is not the same as actively breaking clients. This distinction does not matter in the public sphere. When Apple releases an update — any update — that breaks a popular app, they are blamed for it. By putting their foot down, Apple is putting the onus back on developers to play by their rules. This situation is essentially the normalization of deviance [1]. If you do not enforce a rule, that rule becomes invalid and unenforceable. Apple does not want to lose control of their platform. If they give away all of their private, low level APIs, then cross platform frameworks like Electron will render their platform a commodity. [1] http://danluu.com/wat/ http://danluu.com/wat/

wyxuan 7y ago

Do you mean 32 bit support instead?