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> iOS developer hates with a passion and gives no useful information That's typical Apple, they are allergic to technical info and error display, when things a

> iOS developer hates with a passion and gives no useful information That's typical Apple, they are allergic to technical info and error display, when things are not working, there's no way to know why.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
All in the name of UI cleanliness and simplicity. Like how there's no way to manually trigger the firmware update for the AirPods. You just have to keep them plugged in next to your iPhone and ... wait ... until some magic pixie in Apple's cloud decides it's time to push the update to you. Steve Jobs used to say it over and over again when criticized by angry developers[1] that their main focus will always be users instead of developers and that the latter will just have to suck it up if they want to get a piece of the lucrative Apple user base pie. In comedic contrast, here's a sweaty Steve Balmer shouting "Developers!" for half a minute.[2] Ah, the early 2000's, with Apple and Microsoft battling it out, what a time to be alive. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs
- realusername 6y ago
  Yeah, I guess some people decided that technical errors helping you to find what is going on are "ugly".
  - fatnoah 6y ago
    Mac/iOS error: App just disappears Android error: App displays error and disappears Windows error: App displays error, possibly writes to error log, dumps memory to disk, and suggests you visit a URL that provides no useful information. None of them are great, but at least Windows gives you something to search for. EDIT: Formatting
    - lern_too_spel 6y ago
      On Android, if you tap the button to report the error, it will show you a stack trace and other information that are often enough to diagnose crashes in third party apps.
    - colejohnson66 6y ago
      Crash logs are available on iOS in the settings.
      - malux85 6y ago
        Yeah agree, and I'd say it's better to hide them away in settings because most users have no idea what those error messages mean. For example my auntie calling me in tears because windows "had performed an illegal operation" (verbatim error message text) and she was terrified she was going to prison.
        ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Stongly disagree, as much as this example is hilarious and toching, it really isn't typical. Many non-dev folks around me have resolved windows errors by typing the error message or code into google - if they are spesific and well written, they enable you to do that!
        tmd83 6y ago
        Strongly agree with you. When Apple things fails to 'just work' it is a nightmare. I used to have this issue for downloading MacOS updates. My internet wasn't too fast and it would get interrupted and restart from zero. Who can't do download resume in the last 10 years, I would assume only apple. My office network was faster and we also had those cache server, it worked for everyone except me. MacOS provided zero hint and it 'just failed to work'. Office internet was fast enough to download in multi MB/s yet Apple update weeks after released (so I don't think there was rush and it was US night) would have speeds 50 KB/s to < 500 KB/s and of course you can't choose a mirror or whatever cause it 's meant to 'just work'. This is just one example that I vividly recall. The simplest of operation downloading of an update, only apple can make it as big a nightmare as it was. Now they do a lot of things fabulously but when the fail they just fall on their face and ignore it or they would fail where I can't even imagine how to fail this bad. The latest blunder (again download), my iPhone lost it's wifi after a fall and wow! behold you can't download an update over cellular. Apple will make you save your money by not using your expensive cellular data after all it's so much more expensive than your $800 phone.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Over here on Windows side not everything is "Developers!" as it should be though.
  - foepys 6y ago
    True, but I can still run my program that I compiled back in 1999.
    - dionian 6y ago
      you also have largely the same OS and hardware architecture that you did in 1999
      - foepys 6y ago
        You make it sound like it's a bad thing. My company can build and maintain a really big program with a minimal number of developers because Windows is so backwards-compatible. No need to rebuild everything every 3 years because APIs changed or some framework got deprecated. It's just running and running and running on our customer's hardware.
      - matheusmoreira 6y ago
        Modern Linux kernels can also run binaries compiled in the 90s. Apple just doesn't care.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Sure, if they're statically compiled with no non-kernel dependencies whatsoever. Once Linux userspace gets involved it is a shitshow.
        matheusmoreira 6y ago
        Right. Most Linux user space software actually subscribes to the Apple philosophy of breaking everything in the name of progress. From what I've read, even GNU rejects binary compatibility concerns because to do otherwise would help proprietary software, sometimes resulting in breakages in vital stuff like glibc. > statically compiled with no non-kernel dependencies whatsoever I'd love that. Would be great if we could even get rid of the C library. Compilers should emit Linux system call code directly.
- thinkingemote 6y ago
  Macs only just work, don't expect much else.
  - Yaa101 6y ago
    Until they don't, or put your display to eternal sleep with no way to ever wake up, or...
- trey-jones 6y ago
  I watched the whole video of Jobs, and I enjoyed it and took something away from it. I also don't think that it applies to this conversation. From Jobs's perspective here, App Store developers are also customers. So while he is talking about starting at the customers' perspective, rather than the engineers, I believe he's only talking about Apple engineers. 3rd party software devs that are building the Apple ecosystem are: 1. Paying for the privelege of being an Apple Developer 2. Paying Apple a portion of their own earnings. 3. Opting to develop for Apple, rather than other platforms So if we are Apple developers, we are customers, and according to Jobs's philosophy laid out here, it's Apple's job to deliver value to us (as well as the actual end users).
  - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
    Apple does deliver value - a huge market of higher paying buyers than Android. That's their value. Not that their software releases will always be perfect. None of you will stop making iOS apps over this.
    - trey-jones 6y ago
      Just because some value is delivered in the form of paying customers doesn't mean Apple (or any business) should stop thinking about other ways to deliver value to their customers (being developers in this case). Full disclosure - I have developed many apps for iOS, but have never monetized them. I have used both Hybrid and native tech to do this. It has been probably 5 years since I've done Hybrid and about 15 months since I made a native app.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        I don't think that they are - they've added numerous features to their hardware that software devs can interact with. Honestly we just expect everything of everyone else and nothing of ourselves anymore. So they had some wonky version releases, like none of us on here have ever had issues like that before.
  - m463 6y ago
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > their main focus will always be users instead of developers and that the latter will just have to suck it up if they want to get a piece of the lucrative Apple user base pie Developers are users as well. In the early days of computing, both terms were actually synonymous. If Apple designed the user interface of its programming environment so that the software developer cannot find out what went wrong and why, Apple deserves all the hatred it gets. Also, this "lucrative Apple pie" is the only reason anyone even cares about it. If money is removed from the equation, I have no doubt developers would rather invest their time on a Linux system that doesn't insult their intelligence.
saagarjha 6y ago
Well, I think you might be misunderstanding this a bit. What happens is that you download a compressed application and that is signed by Apple to prevent tampering, I assume to prevent XcodeGhost-like malware. The issue is that 1. this only tells you that the file you have came from Apple but not what it contains and 2. Xcode is massive and downloading it, verifying it and then uncompressing it to run it and check its build number takes ages: you could have a gigabit connection and a 18-core iMac Pro and you’re still looking at half an hour from opening the developer downloads site to being able to check to see what you just downloaded. When Apple messes up their labeling/caching/whatever you can see why a SHA would be extremely useful, as I know people who repeated this process multiple times through the day in hopes of getting the build Apple claimed they should have. (Eventually people started spreading hashes, not verifying the archive, and sharing it around via file hosting sites like Dropbox, which totally defeats the point of all of these things, so good job Apple on making this process so annoying that people will just jump through the hoops to bypass it.)
- valuearb 6y ago
  The last beta was 28Gb, nearly double the size of version 11.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    What? Are delta updates not a thing?
    - easton 6y ago
      Not for beta releases of Xcode, since they’re only provided through the developer site (not the App Store) and you have to download a full installer every single time.
      - saagarjha 6y ago
        Not an installer, but a compressed (and signed) archive of the thing.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

All in the name of UI cleanliness and simplicity. Like how there's no way to manually trigger the firmware update for the AirPods. You just have to keep them plugged in next to your iPhone and ... wait ... until some magic pixie in Apple's cloud decides it's time to push the update to you. Steve Jobs used to say it over and over again when criticized by angry developers[1] that their main focus will always be users instead of developers and that the latter will just have to suck it up if they want to get a piece of the lucrative Apple user base pie. In comedic contrast, here's a sweaty Steve Balmer shouting "Developers!" for half a minute.[2] Ah, the early 2000's, with Apple and Microsoft battling it out, what a time to be alive. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o [2]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

realusername 6y ago
Yeah, I guess some people decided that technical errors helping you to find what is going on are "ugly".
- fatnoah 6y ago
  Mac/iOS error: App just disappears Android error: App displays error and disappears Windows error: App displays error, possibly writes to error log, dumps memory to disk, and suggests you visit a URL that provides no useful information. None of them are great, but at least Windows gives you something to search for. EDIT: Formatting
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    On Android, if you tap the button to report the error, it will show you a stack trace and other information that are often enough to diagnose crashes in third party apps.
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Crash logs are available on iOS in the settings.
    - malux85 6y ago
      Yeah agree, and I'd say it's better to hide them away in settings because most users have no idea what those error messages mean. For example my auntie calling me in tears because windows "had performed an illegal operation" (verbatim error message text) and she was terrified she was going to prison.
      - ClumsyPilot 6y ago
        Stongly disagree, as much as this example is hilarious and toching, it really isn't typical. Many non-dev folks around me have resolved windows errors by typing the error message or code into google - if they are spesific and well written, they enable you to do that!
        tmd83 6y ago
        Strongly agree with you. When Apple things fails to 'just work' it is a nightmare. I used to have this issue for downloading MacOS updates. My internet wasn't too fast and it would get interrupted and restart from zero. Who can't do download resume in the last 10 years, I would assume only apple. My office network was faster and we also had those cache server, it worked for everyone except me. MacOS provided zero hint and it 'just failed to work'. Office internet was fast enough to download in multi MB/s yet Apple update weeks after released (so I don't think there was rush and it was US night) would have speeds 50 KB/s to < 500 KB/s and of course you can't choose a mirror or whatever cause it 's meant to 'just work'. This is just one example that I vividly recall. The simplest of operation downloading of an update, only apple can make it as big a nightmare as it was. Now they do a lot of things fabulously but when the fail they just fall on their face and ignore it or they would fail where I can't even imagine how to fail this bad. The latest blunder (again download), my iPhone lost it's wifi after a fall and wow! behold you can't download an update over cellular. Apple will make you save your money by not using your expensive cellular data after all it's so much more expensive than your $800 phone.
pjmlp 6y ago
Over here on Windows side not everything is "Developers!" as it should be though.
- foepys 6y ago
  True, but I can still run my program that I compiled back in 1999.
  - dionian 6y ago
    you also have largely the same OS and hardware architecture that you did in 1999
    - foepys 6y ago
      You make it sound like it's a bad thing. My company can build and maintain a really big program with a minimal number of developers because Windows is so backwards-compatible. No need to rebuild everything every 3 years because APIs changed or some framework got deprecated. It's just running and running and running on our customer's hardware.
    - matheusmoreira 6y ago
      Modern Linux kernels can also run binaries compiled in the 90s. Apple just doesn't care.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        Sure, if they're statically compiled with no non-kernel dependencies whatsoever. Once Linux userspace gets involved it is a shitshow.
        matheusmoreira 6y ago
        Right. Most Linux user space software actually subscribes to the Apple philosophy of breaking everything in the name of progress. From what I've read, even GNU rejects binary compatibility concerns because to do otherwise would help proprietary software, sometimes resulting in breakages in vital stuff like glibc. > statically compiled with no non-kernel dependencies whatsoever I'd love that. Would be great if we could even get rid of the C library. Compilers should emit Linux system call code directly.
thinkingemote 6y ago
Macs only just work, don't expect much else.
- Yaa101 6y ago
  Until they don't, or put your display to eternal sleep with no way to ever wake up, or...
trey-jones 6y ago
I watched the whole video of Jobs, and I enjoyed it and took something away from it. I also don't think that it applies to this conversation. From Jobs's perspective here, App Store developers are also customers. So while he is talking about starting at the customers' perspective, rather than the engineers, I believe he's only talking about Apple engineers. 3rd party software devs that are building the Apple ecosystem are: 1. Paying for the privelege of being an Apple Developer 2. Paying Apple a portion of their own earnings. 3. Opting to develop for Apple, rather than other platforms So if we are Apple developers, we are customers, and according to Jobs's philosophy laid out here, it's Apple's job to deliver value to us (as well as the actual end users).
- ntsplnkv2 6y ago
  Apple does deliver value - a huge market of higher paying buyers than Android. That's their value. Not that their software releases will always be perfect. None of you will stop making iOS apps over this.
  - trey-jones 6y ago
    Just because some value is delivered in the form of paying customers doesn't mean Apple (or any business) should stop thinking about other ways to deliver value to their customers (being developers in this case). Full disclosure - I have developed many apps for iOS, but have never monetized them. I have used both Hybrid and native tech to do this. It has been probably 5 years since I've done Hybrid and about 15 months since I made a native app.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      I don't think that they are - they've added numerous features to their hardware that software devs can interact with. Honestly we just expect everything of everyone else and nothing of ourselves anymore. So they had some wonky version releases, like none of us on here have ever had issues like that before.
- m463 6y ago
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> their main focus will always be users instead of developers and that the latter will just have to suck it up if they want to get a piece of the lucrative Apple user base pie Developers are users as well. In the early days of computing, both terms were actually synonymous. If Apple designed the user interface of its programming environment so that the software developer cannot find out what went wrong and why, Apple deserves all the hatred it gets. Also, this "lucrative Apple pie" is the only reason anyone even cares about it. If money is removed from the equation, I have no doubt developers would rather invest their time on a Linux system that doesn't insult their intelligence.

saagarjha 6y ago

Well, I think you might be misunderstanding this a bit. What happens is that you download a compressed application and that is signed by Apple to prevent tampering, I assume to prevent XcodeGhost-like malware. The issue is that 1. this only tells you that the file you have came from Apple but not what it contains and 2. Xcode is massive and downloading it, verifying it and then uncompressing it to run it and check its build number takes ages: you could have a gigabit connection and a 18-core iMac Pro and you’re still looking at half an hour from opening the developer downloads site to being able to check to see what you just downloaded. When Apple messes up their labeling/caching/whatever you can see why a SHA would be extremely useful, as I know people who repeated this process multiple times through the day in hopes of getting the build Apple claimed they should have. (Eventually people started spreading hashes, not verifying the archive, and sharing it around via file hosting sites like Dropbox, which totally defeats the point of all of these things, so good job Apple on making this process so annoying that people will just jump through the hoops to bypass it.)

valuearb 6y ago
The last beta was 28Gb, nearly double the size of version 11.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  What? Are delta updates not a thing?
  - easton 6y ago
    Not for beta releases of Xcode, since they’re only provided through the developer site (not the App Store) and you have to download a full installer every single time.
    - saagarjha 6y ago
      Not an installer, but a compressed (and signed) archive of the thing.