3 ms·

I don't really understand the sentiment of the author. Xcode is free, and even when it wasn't free it was very very cheap. A decade or two ago it was very commo

I don't really understand the sentiment of the author. Xcode is free, and even when it wasn't free it was very very cheap. A decade or two ago it was very common to charge hundreds of dollars for much much shittier IDEs, the Professional edition of Visual Studio is still at least $500 and Apple is giving away Xcode for free. There are alternatives if you don't like it, JetBrains has an excellent IDE for Objective-C development but you can also use VIM or Emacs. Really, I am puzzled by this level of sense of self-entitlement.

tvon 15y ago
XCode is the tool Apple expects you to use to build products for the App Store(s), I think it's fair to expect a certainly level of quality.
shadowfiend 15y ago
XCode is free in part because it is expected that Apple will make money off of it indirectly. Even if you don't pay for XCode itself, Apple can make money: - because you build a Mac app that attracts people to the Mac - because you build an iOS app that attracts people to iOS - because you build a paid Mac or iOS app that you sell through the app store, and they take a cut Beyond that, if you want to package an app for the app store, as far as I understand, you have to use XCode. So Apple is saying, if you want to make money building for our platform, then generally we'll get money too, and you have to use our IDE for at least part of the process. At that point, it's understandable to expect some quality out of the IDE, I think.
- DrJokepu 15y ago
  This is a fair point; it makes business sense from Apple's point of view to give it away for free, however the same reasoning didn't stop Microsoft and IBM in the 80's/90's to charge developers $3000 for the OS/2 SDK. In response to your second point, I would like to point out that submitting to the App Store is the only part of the process that has to be done in Xcode, which is a very tiny part of the app development cycle.
  - pjmlp 15y ago
    Many people are too young to remember there was a time without free development tools. Where most of them had a cost of several digits.
jroseattle 15y ago
A decent development environment equates to self-entitlement? If there is any sense of entitlement, it's that Apple is the company that tells everyone how they do everything as perfect as possible. Xcode is a gigantic exception to that rule; it's really quite lame, and the OP is simply pointing out an example. On a comparative note, citing software sales practices from 20 years ago doesn't make Xcode not worthy of criticism today.

tvon 15y ago

XCode is the tool Apple expects you to use to build products for the App Store(s), I think it's fair to expect a certainly level of quality.

shadowfiend 15y ago

XCode is free in part because it is expected that Apple will make money off of it indirectly. Even if you don't pay for XCode itself, Apple can make money: - because you build a Mac app that attracts people to the Mac - because you build an iOS app that attracts people to iOS - because you build a paid Mac or iOS app that you sell through the app store, and they take a cut Beyond that, if you want to package an app for the app store, as far as I understand, you have to use XCode. So Apple is saying, if you want to make money building for our platform, then generally we'll get money too, and you have to use our IDE for at least part of the process. At that point, it's understandable to expect some quality out of the IDE, I think.

DrJokepu 15y ago
This is a fair point; it makes business sense from Apple's point of view to give it away for free, however the same reasoning didn't stop Microsoft and IBM in the 80's/90's to charge developers $3000 for the OS/2 SDK. In response to your second point, I would like to point out that submitting to the App Store is the only part of the process that has to be done in Xcode, which is a very tiny part of the app development cycle.
- pjmlp 15y ago
  Many people are too young to remember there was a time without free development tools. Where most of them had a cost of several digits.

jroseattle 15y ago

A decent development environment equates to self-entitlement? If there is any sense of entitlement, it's that Apple is the company that tells everyone how they do everything as perfect as possible. Xcode is a gigantic exception to that rule; it's really quite lame, and the OP is simply pointing out an example. On a comparative note, citing software sales practices from 20 years ago doesn't make Xcode not worthy of criticism today.