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I think the core sentiment here is being lost. This isn’t so much a call to action against Apple’s fees. It’s pointing out something that I’ve felt building o

I think the core sentiment here is being lost. This isn’t so much a call to action against Apple’s fees. It’s pointing out something that I’ve felt building over the last couple of years out of Apple, which is an attitude of hubris, contempt, and a “taking for granted” of Apple’s developers. The WWDC spiel of how much they value us has become trite and transparent. They do produce some really nice tools and APIs. I can’t knock what they provide developers. But often times the attitude beneath the veneer is a precursor of things to come, and it’s becoming noticeable that Apple’s culture seems to care less about its developers now than before. You might say “sure, but so what? Developers are part of the means to an end of selling stuff”, and you’re not wrong. But one of the things I loved about Apple circa 2009 was their respect for their user. It was palpable and magical, even. Then, learning Cocoa and Interface Builder coming from Eclipse and Java, that same respect seemed to permeate their dev environment as well. That seems lost. Following some of their tech leads on Twitter exposes some rather vitriolic feelings towards people in general. Customers, be they users or devs, deserve respect. Apple used to be great at giving that respect. I fear it’s slipping away culturally, and is worth calling out.

hobs 5y ago
afaict Apple has never had respect for the developer, the user sometimes, maybe, but often they would make choices for you because it was The Apple Way, and any other way was left to languish. Sometimes The Apple Way was awesome, sometimes, meh.
josephg 5y ago
> They do produce some really nice tools and APIs. I can’t knock what they provide developers. I wish that were true. But Xcode today feels like a bloated, buggy mess. It crashes regularly, and sometimes it lags so badly writing swift code that it drops keystrokes. It feels like permanently beta software, where the team never has time to fix the bugs in the last version before they’re rushing the next version out the door. Working in javascript and rust sets the bar for tooling and documentation much higher than Apple seems currently able to reach.
- physicsguy 5y ago
  It pissed me off as a non-iOS developer that it doubled in size overnight because of the ARM stuff. I'm not even writing Mac Apps, I just need the system libraries so I can install Homebrew GCC and get on with my work.
giantrobot 5y ago
Mac developers have been bitching about Apple for 30+ years. There are lots of valid criticisms. At the same time I find the "Apple takes us for granted" complaints a little hollow. I think a lot of developers discount the platform and think it's all their apps that bring in iOS uses. This was more true in the 90s on the Mac. The platform Apple provided was good but it was the third party software that really made the platform what it was. There's a handful on Windows applications I remember today. It's only because I used them all the time. On the other hand there's a ton of Mac apps I remember candidly even though I used them far less frequently. The iOS platform of 2021 is not the Mac platform of 1995 or even 2001. Apple moves more iOS devices in a quarter than they moved Macs for the entirety of the 90s. Third party apps a an important part of the iOS platform but they're not the primary driver of device sales.
- saurik 5y ago
  The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty; they happen to provide a platform on which I can conveniently access Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/TikTok, Lyft/Uber/DoorDash/Instacart, or Flippy Unicorn / Geometry Racer. Many people said Windows Phone's UI was amazing--I even know stanch Apple people who said that--and pretty much everyone I knew thought Palm's WebOS was better than iOS in myriad ways... but I wouldn't even consider buying either of those devices because I wouldn't be able to use the apps I use literally all day every day. Hell: apps are so important that before Apple introduced the APP store, like 50% of the few people who owned the original iPhone (which had potential, but did kind of suck) were jailbreaking it, so they could do something as simple as play a game, as Apple had seriously shipped a phone without even a copy of Snake. The iPhone would merely be an "extravagance" for most people... were it not for the apps that it has managed to get to develop often uniquely for their platform (something I would argue is done using anti-competitive lock-in strategies, and at the extreme disadvantage of the user, more than simply by good engineering).
  - Silhouette 5y ago
    The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty Others might have a different perspective. For example, personally I use an iPhone because the following are my requirements in descending order of priority: 1. I now need a smartphone running one of the two major platforms. 2. I do not want anything to do with Google, ever. 3. I don't like a lot of what Apple do but they aren't as bad as Google. I do use a small number of third party apps on my iPhone, because they are now a practical necessity to function as part of society without extreme restrictions. For example, I do not want to spend 20 minutes trying to navigate a phone system with bad voice recognition in a noisy environment just to pay for 30 minutes of parking, nor do I want to break the law, and that leaves exactly one other option in many of the places I visit: use one of the well-known parking apps. Other than using those few essential apps when I have to, I mostly use my phone as it was when it came out of the box: for communications, as a poor-but-present web browsing device, and as a general tool with a useful camera, mic and light.

hobs 5y ago

afaict Apple has never had respect for the developer, the user sometimes, maybe, but often they would make choices for you because it was The Apple Way, and any other way was left to languish. Sometimes The Apple Way was awesome, sometimes, meh.

josephg 5y ago

> They do produce some really nice tools and APIs. I can’t knock what they provide developers. I wish that were true. But Xcode today feels like a bloated, buggy mess. It crashes regularly, and sometimes it lags so badly writing swift code that it drops keystrokes. It feels like permanently beta software, where the team never has time to fix the bugs in the last version before they’re rushing the next version out the door. Working in javascript and rust sets the bar for tooling and documentation much higher than Apple seems currently able to reach.

physicsguy 5y ago
It pissed me off as a non-iOS developer that it doubled in size overnight because of the ARM stuff. I'm not even writing Mac Apps, I just need the system libraries so I can install Homebrew GCC and get on with my work.

giantrobot 5y ago

Mac developers have been bitching about Apple for 30+ years. There are lots of valid criticisms. At the same time I find the "Apple takes us for granted" complaints a little hollow. I think a lot of developers discount the platform and think it's all their apps that bring in iOS uses. This was more true in the 90s on the Mac. The platform Apple provided was good but it was the third party software that really made the platform what it was. There's a handful on Windows applications I remember today. It's only because I used them all the time. On the other hand there's a ton of Mac apps I remember candidly even though I used them far less frequently. The iOS platform of 2021 is not the Mac platform of 1995 or even 2001. Apple moves more iOS devices in a quarter than they moved Macs for the entirety of the 90s. Third party apps a an important part of the iOS platform but they're not the primary driver of device sales.

saurik 5y ago
The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty; they happen to provide a platform on which I can conveniently access Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/TikTok, Lyft/Uber/DoorDash/Instacart, or Flippy Unicorn / Geometry Racer. Many people said Windows Phone's UI was amazing--I even know stanch Apple people who said that--and pretty much everyone I knew thought Palm's WebOS was better than iOS in myriad ways... but I wouldn't even consider buying either of those devices because I wouldn't be able to use the apps I use literally all day every day. Hell: apps are so important that before Apple introduced the APP store, like 50% of the few people who owned the original iPhone (which had potential, but did kind of suck) were jailbreaking it, so they could do something as simple as play a game, as Apple had seriously shipped a phone without even a copy of Snake. The iPhone would merely be an "extravagance" for most people... were it not for the apps that it has managed to get to develop often uniquely for their platform (something I would argue is done using anti-competitive lock-in strategies, and at the extreme disadvantage of the user, more than simply by good engineering).
- Silhouette 5y ago
  The iPhone without then apps that run on it is somewhat interesting, but is largely a novelty Others might have a different perspective. For example, personally I use an iPhone because the following are my requirements in descending order of priority: 1. I now need a smartphone running one of the two major platforms. 2. I do not want anything to do with Google, ever. 3. I don't like a lot of what Apple do but they aren't as bad as Google. I do use a small number of third party apps on my iPhone, because they are now a practical necessity to function as part of society without extreme restrictions. For example, I do not want to spend 20 minutes trying to navigate a phone system with bad voice recognition in a noisy environment just to pay for 30 minutes of parking, nor do I want to break the law, and that leaves exactly one other option in many of the places I visit: use one of the well-known parking apps. Other than using those few essential apps when I have to, I mostly use my phone as it was when it came out of the box: for communications, as a poor-but-present web browsing device, and as a general tool with a useful camera, mic and light.