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> "it's mostly frustrating that this is still the rhetoric from Apple now that they are the largest company in modern existence." But why should it change? The

> "it's mostly frustrating that this is still the rhetoric from Apple now that they are the largest company in modern existence." But why should it change? They've become the most profitable for sure, but they became that while ignoring docs etc. Why should they now change, considering it's been unquestionable proven that it doesn't matter for their financial success? PS: i still don't understand how people some people call it largest, doesn't that adjective describe size...? It doesn't have the most employees, it doesn't have the most locations etc. It definitely has the largest pile of money, but that's still a very unfitting description for that, at least in my opinion, as that's usually called richest.

smoldesu 4y ago
> But why should it change? Because I'm not buying Macbooks anymore. In fact, over the past 5 years I've increasingly seen people develop on a dedicated Linux box or Linux VM. Apple's appeal is shrinking to developers, and it has been on a steady decline for the past 10 years. For all of MacOS' POSIX certification, it hasn't stopped people from trying to implement Linux just so they can run privacy-respecting software and benign GPU libraries that Apple refuses to officially support. Their plan here isn't working. It might placate the 80% of users who don't care about this stuff, but the technical sentiment towards Apple's technologies is waning. I'm frustrated with WebKit, I'm frustrated with Swift, and everyone is frustrated with their 30% tax. Something has to give, and it's probably going to be Apple's facade of benevolence. > It definitely has the largest pile of money, but that's still a very unfitting description for that, at least in my opinion. All businesses are constrained by a set of limiting factors. The most important factor will always be capital, since you can trade it for any one of the lesser factors. Apple uses their 200 billion USD cash reserve to buy goodwill in the form of advertising, first-in-line tickets to TSMC and the finest lobbyists in the nation. They have every protection that lesser companies do not, which is why their valuation supersedes any other publicly or privately traded organization. I'll stop calling them the biggest company when business stops revolving around money.
- satvikpendem 4y ago
  > Because I'm not buying Macbooks anymore. You're not but many people still are [0]. Many people started to see Apple's developer experience wane in previous years, true, but their Apple Silicon changed that. Their price/performance/battery life ratio is simply unbeatable for devs and anecdotally many people I know bought AS Macs where before they would've bought or used a Windows or Linux computer, including me. There are some things I will agree with you on though, such as their 30% tax, as a mobile developer myself. [0] 2021 Mac shipments grew twice as fast as overall PC shipments - https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/2021-mac-shipments-growth/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/2021-mac-shipments-growth/
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    With all due respect, if you're a mobile developer you don't get much of a choice which laptop you buy. A Macbook is the only machine that lets you meaningfully deploy to iOS, so I'm not sure if I agree that Windows/Linux machines were competing products. Apple Silicon only reverses their hardware quality (which was truly awful 2015-2018). Their software quality has still been in rapid decline since Mojave, and it's developer experience out-of-the-box is still marred with coreutils older than dinosaurs and increased restrictions around running software. I know a lot of developers that are happy with Apple Silicon, but I know exactly 0 developers that don't complain MacOS.
    - satvikpendem 4y ago
      You're right, I do complain about macOS. I guess the stuff I'm doing isn't as dependent on the OS itself (web, mobile dev) so I don't see the same problems as others might who are working on lower level stuff. I used to use tools like Codemagic which ran macOS in the cloud for deploying mobile apps, so buying a MacBook wasn't necessarily a blocker for me.
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        > I used to use tools like Codemagic which ran macOS in the cloud for deploying mobile apps, so buying a MacBook wasn't necessarily a blocker for me. Codemagic, from my understanding just does code-signing and deployment. I don't know how you did it, but a Mac would still be necessary for access to Xcode libraries, Objective-C, and iOS simulators.

smoldesu 4y ago

> But why should it change? Because I'm not buying Macbooks anymore. In fact, over the past 5 years I've increasingly seen people develop on a dedicated Linux box or Linux VM. Apple's appeal is shrinking to developers, and it has been on a steady decline for the past 10 years. For all of MacOS' POSIX certification, it hasn't stopped people from trying to implement Linux just so they can run privacy-respecting software and benign GPU libraries that Apple refuses to officially support. Their plan here isn't working. It might placate the 80% of users who don't care about this stuff, but the technical sentiment towards Apple's technologies is waning. I'm frustrated with WebKit, I'm frustrated with Swift, and everyone is frustrated with their 30% tax. Something has to give, and it's probably going to be Apple's facade of benevolence. > It definitely has the largest pile of money, but that's still a very unfitting description for that, at least in my opinion. All businesses are constrained by a set of limiting factors. The most important factor will always be capital, since you can trade it for any one of the lesser factors. Apple uses their 200 billion USD cash reserve to buy goodwill in the form of advertising, first-in-line tickets to TSMC and the finest lobbyists in the nation. They have every protection that lesser companies do not, which is why their valuation supersedes any other publicly or privately traded organization. I'll stop calling them the biggest company when business stops revolving around money.

satvikpendem 4y ago
> Because I'm not buying Macbooks anymore. You're not but many people still are [0]. Many people started to see Apple's developer experience wane in previous years, true, but their Apple Silicon changed that. Their price/performance/battery life ratio is simply unbeatable for devs and anecdotally many people I know bought AS Macs where before they would've bought or used a Windows or Linux computer, including me. There are some things I will agree with you on though, such as their 30% tax, as a mobile developer myself. [0] 2021 Mac shipments grew twice as fast as overall PC shipments - https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/2021-mac-shipments-growth/ https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/12/2021-mac-shipments-growth/
- smoldesu 4y ago
  With all due respect, if you're a mobile developer you don't get much of a choice which laptop you buy. A Macbook is the only machine that lets you meaningfully deploy to iOS, so I'm not sure if I agree that Windows/Linux machines were competing products. Apple Silicon only reverses their hardware quality (which was truly awful 2015-2018). Their software quality has still been in rapid decline since Mojave, and it's developer experience out-of-the-box is still marred with coreutils older than dinosaurs and increased restrictions around running software. I know a lot of developers that are happy with Apple Silicon, but I know exactly 0 developers that don't complain MacOS.
  - satvikpendem 4y ago
    You're right, I do complain about macOS. I guess the stuff I'm doing isn't as dependent on the OS itself (web, mobile dev) so I don't see the same problems as others might who are working on lower level stuff. I used to use tools like Codemagic which ran macOS in the cloud for deploying mobile apps, so buying a MacBook wasn't necessarily a blocker for me.
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      > I used to use tools like Codemagic which ran macOS in the cloud for deploying mobile apps, so buying a MacBook wasn't necessarily a blocker for me. Codemagic, from my understanding just does code-signing and deployment. I don't know how you did it, but a Mac would still be necessary for access to Xcode libraries, Objective-C, and iOS simulators.