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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" compla

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.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Ask yourself this, then. Would you be content to replace your iPhone with an older iPhone that fulfills the same needs? Maybe an iPhone 6S for a half-decent camera by today's standards? Or even an iPhone 5c? If you only need it for essential needs, how basic should an iPhone be?
    - oarsinsync 5y ago
      I'd gladly go back to my iPhone SE (2016) if I could downgrade it back to iOS 13, where it was able to do both turn-by-turn navigation and music playback when using wired CarPlay. The only reason I bought a new iPhone was because that functionality stopped working reliably under iOS 14, and it effectively became and either/or proposition, which wasn't acceptable.
    - r00fus 5y ago
      Absolutely - till this year I was rocking an iPhone 7+ as my daily driver. If the screen didn’t crack I’d have kept it for another year. I put on a screen protector, gave it away to a friends kid, and I hear he still uses it.

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.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Ask yourself this, then. Would you be content to replace your iPhone with an older iPhone that fulfills the same needs? Maybe an iPhone 6S for a half-decent camera by today's standards? Or even an iPhone 5c? If you only need it for essential needs, how basic should an iPhone be?
  - oarsinsync 5y ago
    I'd gladly go back to my iPhone SE (2016) if I could downgrade it back to iOS 13, where it was able to do both turn-by-turn navigation and music playback when using wired CarPlay. The only reason I bought a new iPhone was because that functionality stopped working reliably under iOS 14, and it effectively became and either/or proposition, which wasn't acceptable.
  - r00fus 5y ago
    Absolutely - till this year I was rocking an iPhone 7+ as my daily driver. If the screen didn’t crack I’d have kept it for another year. I put on a screen protector, gave it away to a friends kid, and I hear he still uses it.