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Apple devices are becoming increasingly unusable for developers. Fantastic opportunity for Linux apps to gain more dev resources, as anyone with a bit of fores

Apple devices are becoming increasingly unusable for developers. Fantastic opportunity for Linux apps to gain more dev resources, as anyone with a bit of foresight sees little future in macOS, iOS, Windows, or Android as development platforms.

realusername 5y ago
I personally gave up, I treat all of their platforms as "legacy" and only port stuff as "best effort" similar to what I was doing with IE in the IE days (yes, that also includes Safari).
- meibo 5y ago
  Recently getting into web development, getting things to look right on Safari has been such a pain... they really just work on Firefox and Chrome, but every time we deploy a new version, the one coworker with a Mac will message us about some arcane difference in behavior for certain CSS we're using on Safari. I wish we could drop it, but our Analytics disagree, sadly.
  - realusername 5y ago
    I hear you... I'm almost to the point of creating a second simplified version for legacy browsers (similar to Gmail's HTML view) and put a banner on the top to upgrade to some more modern browser. I just cannot guarantee that everything will work on their browser anyways.
  - maxwell 5y ago
    Yeah, it's a clear abuse of market power and is holding back the web. They have the resources to fix these issues, and seemingly choose not to, effectively taxing developers, who pass the costs on the consumers. So even well within the current bullshit "consumer welfare" standard: options go down, costs go up, with Apple's apparent "embrace / hold up / extinguish" strategy. I'd love it if you could write up your experiences, ideally with those figures on Safari usage and citations to any relevant WebKit bugs, and send them over to Rep. Cicilline's office in Rhode Island. I thought his office did a good job putting together these questions on anticompetitive behavior by Apple (who has since actually been fixing the protectionist issues that they gave obviously flimsy answers on): https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG-116-JU05-20190716-SD036.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...
  - 015a 5y ago
    What's worse, Apple will insist that the "open web" is the alternative the app store on iOS. Apple controls the portal to that open web too! And either through intention or incompetence, its a non-starter for developers! Even alternate browsers on iOS are forced to use the Safari/WebKit engine; its not even close to "open".
    - realusername 5y ago
      People almost only talk about the missing features on Safari and while that's true that they are blockers in some areas (like PWA for instance, that's not a coincidence...), the main issue for me is that Safari is a very buggy browser engine. It's hard to emphasis how a massive amount of small details aren't right at all, you will encounter Safari bugs even on a basic website. Safari feels like it's in "maintenance mode" at best.
threeseed 5y ago
This comment could have been written a decade ago and it was as laughable back then as it is today. Developers do not dictate the success of a platform. Users do. And they don’t want Linux on the desktop.
- gnrlst 5y ago
  I'm not so sure. It's a chicken egg problem: if developers get so frustrated that they suddenly start building great experiences on Linux, the users will flock there. It won't be a fast exodus, and it won't be clear cut, but it will set in motion a transition. Developers follow demand, but users follow supply. If enough developers create supply elsewhere, and that supply gets interesting, users will come.
  - threeseed 5y ago
    Many OEMs including large ones like Dell have built Linux desktops and laptops over the years. No one buys them. It’s not because of the lack of apps but because the basics are so poor e.g. broken sleep mode, driver instability, poor battery life, changing UI etc
    - mixmastamyk 5y ago
      Been using the dev models for almost ten years, none of those are a problem. Ubuntu Mate is a good choice for a stable gui.
    - wayneftw 5y ago
      > No one buys them. Pfffft. OK! Clearly this is incorrect... We have whole companies like System 76 built around selling Linux desktop systems. We have whole divisions of PC manufacturers for selling Linux desktop systems. If nobody was buying them, they'd cease to exist. Non-developers largely don't buy them, that's all. Also, many developers are aware that Linux runs on anything, so a large portion of Linux users just install it on whatever hardware they already have. The rest buy systems from Dell, System 76, etc. or build their own. > because the basics are so poor e.g. broken sleep mode, driver instability, poor battery life, changing UI etc. Developers obviously buy pre-built Linux laptops that have none of these sleep/driver/battery problems. I work with some of them. If one makes a sensible choice and uses a desktop environment like XFCE, they would notice that there's much, much, much less instability in the UI when compared to Windows, macOS, Gnome or KDE. Personally, I prefer desktop systems and I have never had to spend more than 40 minutes getting Linux running on any desktop PC that I've tried it on outside of my Mac Pro from 2012, which was only problematic because it's not a real PC with a normal BIOS or boot procedure it's a locked down Apple terminal. I've seen way, way, way more problems with macOS and Windows than I have with people running Linux in our office. Certain mice and keyboards won't even work on a Mac!
thysultan 5y ago
Not Linux, maybe a new OS. All the current OS's have settled into their consolidate the empires status, so we're just waiting for the barbarians at the gates to free us from their inevitable tyranny.
- mmis1000 5y ago
  The windows seems actively develop about linux develop environment recently. The implements wsl2 few years ago. Bring gpu accelerate to wsl2 last year. And they recently implements wayland on wsl2 for full graphic support. Although guys here probably don't really like about ms very much. I think they will able to attracts some *nix developers.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> Fantastic opportunity for Linux apps to gain more dev resources The problem is that they’d rather complain about systemd or reinvent the wheel in 10 different ways which in the end means their resources are spread thin and nothing gets done.
kitsunesoba 5y ago
I think Linux needs a better desktop GUI development story before its app ecosystem can really bloom. The most complete it has now are the Qt-based KDE frameworks, but those are natively C++, and many if not most developers are not going to want to have to deal with C++ no matter how many quality of life affordances are offered by Qt. Bindings exist, but are limited to a handful of languages and come with their own quirks. GTK is much better from a bindings standpoint, but isn't as complete as the KDE frameworks meaning devs have to bring a lot of their own stuff, plus GTK devs are subjected to new releases pulling the rug out from under them with new versions. What I'd really like to see is an equivalent to AppKit, which includes practically everything needed for the most app (reducing dependencies to a minimum) and is C-accessible making it reasonable to write bindings for other languages for.

realusername 5y ago

I personally gave up, I treat all of their platforms as "legacy" and only port stuff as "best effort" similar to what I was doing with IE in the IE days (yes, that also includes Safari).

meibo 5y ago
Recently getting into web development, getting things to look right on Safari has been such a pain... they really just work on Firefox and Chrome, but every time we deploy a new version, the one coworker with a Mac will message us about some arcane difference in behavior for certain CSS we're using on Safari. I wish we could drop it, but our Analytics disagree, sadly.
- realusername 5y ago
  I hear you... I'm almost to the point of creating a second simplified version for legacy browsers (similar to Gmail's HTML view) and put a banner on the top to upgrade to some more modern browser. I just cannot guarantee that everything will work on their browser anyways.
- maxwell 5y ago
  Yeah, it's a clear abuse of market power and is holding back the web. They have the resources to fix these issues, and seemingly choose not to, effectively taxing developers, who pass the costs on the consumers. So even well within the current bullshit "consumer welfare" standard: options go down, costs go up, with Apple's apparent "embrace / hold up / extinguish" strategy. I'd love it if you could write up your experiences, ideally with those figures on Safari usage and citations to any relevant WebKit bugs, and send them over to Rep. Cicilline's office in Rhode Island. I thought his office did a good job putting together these questions on anticompetitive behavior by Apple (who has since actually been fixing the protectionist issues that they gave obviously flimsy answers on): https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG-116-JU05-20190716-SD036.pdf https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...
- 015a 5y ago
  What's worse, Apple will insist that the "open web" is the alternative the app store on iOS. Apple controls the portal to that open web too! And either through intention or incompetence, its a non-starter for developers! Even alternate browsers on iOS are forced to use the Safari/WebKit engine; its not even close to "open".
  - realusername 5y ago
    People almost only talk about the missing features on Safari and while that's true that they are blockers in some areas (like PWA for instance, that's not a coincidence...), the main issue for me is that Safari is a very buggy browser engine. It's hard to emphasis how a massive amount of small details aren't right at all, you will encounter Safari bugs even on a basic website. Safari feels like it's in "maintenance mode" at best.

threeseed 5y ago

This comment could have been written a decade ago and it was as laughable back then as it is today. Developers do not dictate the success of a platform. Users do. And they don’t want Linux on the desktop.

gnrlst 5y ago
I'm not so sure. It's a chicken egg problem: if developers get so frustrated that they suddenly start building great experiences on Linux, the users will flock there. It won't be a fast exodus, and it won't be clear cut, but it will set in motion a transition. Developers follow demand, but users follow supply. If enough developers create supply elsewhere, and that supply gets interesting, users will come.
- threeseed 5y ago
  Many OEMs including large ones like Dell have built Linux desktops and laptops over the years. No one buys them. It’s not because of the lack of apps but because the basics are so poor e.g. broken sleep mode, driver instability, poor battery life, changing UI etc
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Been using the dev models for almost ten years, none of those are a problem. Ubuntu Mate is a good choice for a stable gui.
  - wayneftw 5y ago
    > No one buys them. Pfffft. OK! Clearly this is incorrect... We have whole companies like System 76 built around selling Linux desktop systems. We have whole divisions of PC manufacturers for selling Linux desktop systems. If nobody was buying them, they'd cease to exist. Non-developers largely don't buy them, that's all. Also, many developers are aware that Linux runs on anything, so a large portion of Linux users just install it on whatever hardware they already have. The rest buy systems from Dell, System 76, etc. or build their own. > because the basics are so poor e.g. broken sleep mode, driver instability, poor battery life, changing UI etc. Developers obviously buy pre-built Linux laptops that have none of these sleep/driver/battery problems. I work with some of them. If one makes a sensible choice and uses a desktop environment like XFCE, they would notice that there's much, much, much less instability in the UI when compared to Windows, macOS, Gnome or KDE. Personally, I prefer desktop systems and I have never had to spend more than 40 minutes getting Linux running on any desktop PC that I've tried it on outside of my Mac Pro from 2012, which was only problematic because it's not a real PC with a normal BIOS or boot procedure it's a locked down Apple terminal. I've seen way, way, way more problems with macOS and Windows than I have with people running Linux in our office. Certain mice and keyboards won't even work on a Mac!

thysultan 5y ago

Not Linux, maybe a new OS. All the current OS's have settled into their consolidate the empires status, so we're just waiting for the barbarians at the gates to free us from their inevitable tyranny.

mmis1000 5y ago
The windows seems actively develop about linux develop environment recently. The implements wsl2 few years ago. Bring gpu accelerate to wsl2 last year. And they recently implements wayland on wsl2 for full graphic support. Although guys here probably don't really like about ms very much. I think they will able to attracts some *nix developers.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> Fantastic opportunity for Linux apps to gain more dev resources The problem is that they’d rather complain about systemd or reinvent the wheel in 10 different ways which in the end means their resources are spread thin and nothing gets done.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

I think Linux needs a better desktop GUI development story before its app ecosystem can really bloom. The most complete it has now are the Qt-based KDE frameworks, but those are natively C++, and many if not most developers are not going to want to have to deal with C++ no matter how many quality of life affordances are offered by Qt. Bindings exist, but are limited to a handful of languages and come with their own quirks. GTK is much better from a bindings standpoint, but isn't as complete as the KDE frameworks meaning devs have to bring a lot of their own stuff, plus GTK devs are subjected to new releases pulling the rug out from under them with new versions. What I'd really like to see is an equivalent to AppKit, which includes practically everything needed for the most app (reducing dependencies to a minimum) and is C-accessible making it reasonable to write bindings for other languages for.