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Just another "individual's life crushed by faceless corporate machinery" story. > Suggestions to improve the developer experience: > • Offer a paid support mo

Just another "individual's life crushed by faceless corporate machinery" story. > Suggestions to improve the developer experience: > • Offer a paid support model where we can speak to a human. A reasonable compromise? IMO this growing category of perfectly avoidable injustice should be brought under legislative control, with something like a right to adequate non-algorithmic support where automated (or "rubber stamped") livelihood termination is concerned (IANAL as if you couldn't tell.) If companies can't provide human decency "at scale" voluntarily, they need to be brought to heel by regulation.

FredPret 3y ago
There’s a better and quicker solution: stop developing native apps. Make mobile webapps instead, wherever possible.
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  That is a workaround, not a solution. The issue is much wider than app developers.
hammyhavoc 3y ago
Apple offers "Technical Support Incident" credits that you buy as a pack of x quantity. The idea being that devs can talk to a real human being. The support sucks. Frequently given non-answers and non-solutions, and have paid for the privilege of being given boilerplate copy-paste without them having actually read and understood the problem. It's especially poor when you consider that publishing apps on Google Play means a one-off fee for your account, but publishing apps on Apple's App Store requires an annual subscription, with TSI credits on top of it. At least you can say with Google that you get what you pay for in terms of support and experience (not much—it's passable), can't say the same for Apple.
- ttctciyf 3y ago
  Hence the need (in both cases) for regulatory teeth.
- jgimenez 3y ago
  Not really, you get 2 TSI credits included in the annually fee and I've only needed to use them once in 10 years for a really obscure problem I couldn't figure out. My experience with Apple support is that sometimes can be slow and frustrating but it works, unlike Google support. Similar to Apple, I'd happily pay a yearly fee for better support with the Google developer program
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    It really depends what you're doing. If you're working on developing hardware with a companion app, you're probably going to have a rough time with support, and assuming an iOS update every year, you'll probably need more than just those two TSI too. I think the worst support thus far is probably Facebook/Meta for Facebook ads, and likewise, Twitter, for their respective ad platform. What a terribly broken and unreliable system Twitter has, even pre-acquisition. Breaks in all kinds of strange ways.

FredPret 3y ago

There’s a better and quicker solution: stop developing native apps. Make mobile webapps instead, wherever possible.

ttctciyf 3y ago
That is a workaround, not a solution. The issue is much wider than app developers.

hammyhavoc 3y ago

Apple offers "Technical Support Incident" credits that you buy as a pack of x quantity. The idea being that devs can talk to a real human being. The support sucks. Frequently given non-answers and non-solutions, and have paid for the privilege of being given boilerplate copy-paste without them having actually read and understood the problem. It's especially poor when you consider that publishing apps on Google Play means a one-off fee for your account, but publishing apps on Apple's App Store requires an annual subscription, with TSI credits on top of it. At least you can say with Google that you get what you pay for in terms of support and experience (not much—it's passable), can't say the same for Apple.

ttctciyf 3y ago
Hence the need (in both cases) for regulatory teeth.
jgimenez 3y ago
Not really, you get 2 TSI credits included in the annually fee and I've only needed to use them once in 10 years for a really obscure problem I couldn't figure out. My experience with Apple support is that sometimes can be slow and frustrating but it works, unlike Google support. Similar to Apple, I'd happily pay a yearly fee for better support with the Google developer program
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  It really depends what you're doing. If you're working on developing hardware with a companion app, you're probably going to have a rough time with support, and assuming an iOS update every year, you'll probably need more than just those two TSI too. I think the worst support thus far is probably Facebook/Meta for Facebook ads, and likewise, Twitter, for their respective ad platform. What a terribly broken and unreliable system Twitter has, even pre-acquisition. Breaks in all kinds of strange ways.