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This is quite the rant from Alex. Given the context of his years of butting heads with Apple, I can understand his frustration. But it's still definitely a rant

This is quite the rant from Alex. Given the context of his years of butting heads with Apple, I can understand his frustration. But it's still definitely a rant. Apple is doing what Apple has always done: Being obtuse, secretive, stubborn and difficult in order to further their own agenda and prevent competition from encroaching on any area Apple views as theirs alone. Given their history, this is also understandable.

olliej 4y ago
Alex has always demonstrated an unprofessionally intense dislike of Apple, and his attitude towards engineers at apple was one of the reasons I really did not enjoy working with chrome folk back in the day. That he is ranting about apple is pretty much par for the course from him. He demonstrated an unwillingness to accept that any opinion other than his own had merit in pretty much every part of the web ecosystem I ever had to interact with him in, and took the opinion that any problem anyone had with a proposal he wanted was made up or fundamentally invalid.
threeseed 4y ago
> Being obtuse, secretive, stubborn and difficult in order to further their own agenda and prevent competition from encroaching on any area Apple views as theirs alone No. They just put their users ahead of developers. And the huge success of the App Store model proves they were correct.
- jraph 4y ago
  > They just put their users ahead of developers Users can go fuck themselves the day Apple decides to stop supporting hardware they bought but still prevent other vendors to provide alternative, up-to-date browsers on it. I know, I inherited an iPad 2 that was lying around in a drawer. This machine is way less useful than what it could be because of its ancient Safari version. This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult.
  - agsnu 4y ago
    But on the flip side, Apple provides a much longer support lifespan for iOS devices than Android vendors do. I wouldn’t want to use the latest Chrome on a device running iOS 9 anyway.
    - jraph 4y ago
      > Apple provides a much longer support lifespan for iOS devices than Android vendors do True, but for many Android devices, you can install a custom ROM when the vendor decided to stop supporting their product. Still not good enough though, those custom ROMs are usually built using outdated drivers anyway, usually eventually blocked on a given Android version because the kernel can't be upgraded, and it is not trivial to install them. What's more, Apple is a bit better than Android for this, but that's because Android is incredibly bad at it to begin with. Both are pretty bad. The mobile scene is clearly in a bad shape in this respect. We are happy when a mobile device is supported for a few years, but I'm used to being able to run an up-to-date OS on a desktop computer or a laptop for decades, until it dies.
  - adiabatty 4y ago
    > I know, I inherited an iPad 2 that was lying around in a drawer. This machine is way less useful than what it could be because of its ancient Safari version. That iPad 2 probably pre-dates Windows 8, and Google went and dropped support for Windows 8 just last month. Plus the OS wouldn't have gotten security updates. Here's a serious question: what good is a web-browsing device that you wouldn't trust to log in to anything on? > This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult. It's a fairly popular meme in Apple-developer circles that Apple prioritizes itself first, users second, and developers third. This priority list tends to crop up often when complaining about Apple's developer tools and/or (lack of) documentation. It's something one tends to hear alongside complaints like "I like Swift the language, but the compiler crashes all the frigging time" on the Apple-developer podcasts I listen to.
    - jraph 4y ago
      > That iPad 2 probably pre-dates Windows 8, and Google went and dropped support for Windows 8 just last month I use Firefox. Windows 7 was out 2 years before the iPad 2 and the latest Firefox supports it. > Here's a serious question: what good is a web-browsing device that you wouldn't trust to log in to anything on? There are still plenty of useful things you can do without logging in. But my counter question would rather be: why don't Apple let people write alternative OSes for its hardware then? You can install an up-to-date Linux distribution on computers from the 90s. The iPad is a popular product, I'm sure there would be enough people interested in building a Linux-based OS for it. The problem is that perfectly good hardware is just getting disposed of instead. An heresy, from an environmental standpoint. >> This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult. > It's a fairly popular meme in Apple-developer circles that Apple prioritizes itself first, users second, and developers third Okay, thanks for the context, I didn't know that.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  > They just put their users ahead of developers. And Apple ahead of both, of course.
saagarjha 4y ago
I can understand being frustrated, but I don’t really think it excuses being so vehemently strident. Especially when a lot of it is just straight-up opinion…
dmitriid 4y ago
> Given the context of his years of butting heads with Apple, I can understand his frustration. I can't. He has an intense irrational hatred towards Apple. But during all the years of him working at Google he never ever accepted any criticism towards Chrome and Google. The moment he went to work for Edge, he wrote a piece that leveled some criticism at Chrome but then kept on bashing Apple, and only Apple. Imagine writing "Apple gutted Mozilla's chances" (https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-browser-engine-choice/#how-apple-gutted-mozilla's-chances) https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow... when it's well known that Google was first and foremost who gutted them (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116871231792455686.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116871231792455686.html) And so on and so forth. He's vitriolic and spiteful, but sadly well-known and moderately influential.

olliej 4y ago

Alex has always demonstrated an unprofessionally intense dislike of Apple, and his attitude towards engineers at apple was one of the reasons I really did not enjoy working with chrome folk back in the day. That he is ranting about apple is pretty much par for the course from him. He demonstrated an unwillingness to accept that any opinion other than his own had merit in pretty much every part of the web ecosystem I ever had to interact with him in, and took the opinion that any problem anyone had with a proposal he wanted was made up or fundamentally invalid.

threeseed 4y ago

> Being obtuse, secretive, stubborn and difficult in order to further their own agenda and prevent competition from encroaching on any area Apple views as theirs alone No. They just put their users ahead of developers. And the huge success of the App Store model proves they were correct.

jraph 4y ago
> They just put their users ahead of developers Users can go fuck themselves the day Apple decides to stop supporting hardware they bought but still prevent other vendors to provide alternative, up-to-date browsers on it. I know, I inherited an iPad 2 that was lying around in a drawer. This machine is way less useful than what it could be because of its ancient Safari version. This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult.
- agsnu 4y ago
  But on the flip side, Apple provides a much longer support lifespan for iOS devices than Android vendors do. I wouldn’t want to use the latest Chrome on a device running iOS 9 anyway.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > Apple provides a much longer support lifespan for iOS devices than Android vendors do True, but for many Android devices, you can install a custom ROM when the vendor decided to stop supporting their product. Still not good enough though, those custom ROMs are usually built using outdated drivers anyway, usually eventually blocked on a given Android version because the kernel can't be upgraded, and it is not trivial to install them. What's more, Apple is a bit better than Android for this, but that's because Android is incredibly bad at it to begin with. Both are pretty bad. The mobile scene is clearly in a bad shape in this respect. We are happy when a mobile device is supported for a few years, but I'm used to being able to run an up-to-date OS on a desktop computer or a laptop for decades, until it dies.
- adiabatty 4y ago
  > I know, I inherited an iPad 2 that was lying around in a drawer. This machine is way less useful than what it could be because of its ancient Safari version. That iPad 2 probably pre-dates Windows 8, and Google went and dropped support for Windows 8 just last month. Plus the OS wouldn't have gotten security updates. Here's a serious question: what good is a web-browsing device that you wouldn't trust to log in to anything on? > This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult. It's a fairly popular meme in Apple-developer circles that Apple prioritizes itself first, users second, and developers third. This priority list tends to crop up often when complaining about Apple's developer tools and/or (lack of) documentation. It's something one tends to hear alongside complaints like "I like Swift the language, but the compiler crashes all the frigging time" on the Apple-developer podcasts I listen to.
  - jraph 4y ago
    > That iPad 2 probably pre-dates Windows 8, and Google went and dropped support for Windows 8 just last month I use Firefox. Windows 7 was out 2 years before the iPad 2 and the latest Firefox supports it. > Here's a serious question: what good is a web-browsing device that you wouldn't trust to log in to anything on? There are still plenty of useful things you can do without logging in. But my counter question would rather be: why don't Apple let people write alternative OSes for its hardware then? You can install an up-to-date Linux distribution on computers from the 90s. The iPad is a popular product, I'm sure there would be enough people interested in building a Linux-based OS for it. The problem is that perfectly good hardware is just getting disposed of instead. An heresy, from an environmental standpoint. >> This is the second time I read this sentence in this thread, it sounds like a cult. > It's a fairly popular meme in Apple-developer circles that Apple prioritizes itself first, users second, and developers third Okay, thanks for the context, I didn't know that.
saagarjha 4y ago
> They just put their users ahead of developers. And Apple ahead of both, of course.

saagarjha 4y ago

I can understand being frustrated, but I don’t really think it excuses being so vehemently strident. Especially when a lot of it is just straight-up opinion…

dmitriid 4y ago

> Given the context of his years of butting heads with Apple, I can understand his frustration. I can't. He has an intense irrational hatred towards Apple. But during all the years of him working at Google he never ever accepted any criticism towards Chrome and Google. The moment he went to work for Edge, he wrote a piece that leveled some criticism at Chrome but then kept on bashing Apple, and only Apple. Imagine writing "Apple gutted Mozilla's chances" (https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-browser-engine-choice/#how-apple-gutted-mozilla's-chances) https://infrequently.org/2022/06/apple-is-not-defending-brow... when it's well known that Google was first and foremost who gutted them (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116871231792455686.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1116871231792455686.html) And so on and so forth. He's vitriolic and spiteful, but sadly well-known and moderately influential.