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I once had to setup an Apple developer account to have one of our municipality apps shown as ours. I'm not sure why that was considering all our other apps neve

I once had to setup an Apple developer account to have one of our municipality apps shown as ours. I'm not sure why that was considering all our other apps never needed that, but it was what it was. It was a pretty terrible experience. First I needed an Apple account, and since I didn't really want to use my private one, I needed to create one for work. I couldn't create an "organisation account" so it was tied to me. Luckily we had an old iPhone waiting to be thrown out, so I could use that. Then I had to wait for days to have Apple confirm who I was, but this was basically just Apple calling the person I had listed as my boss and then having him say yes. I hope they did more research than that, but I'm not sure they did, and the people who called us were even worse at English than us so it was hilarious to say the least. Then we had to set up payments, because for some reason you need to pay money to have an Apple developer account. Whatever, in the budget of an entire city of 60.000 people, that's not even going to show up anywhere, right? Well... Since it's a foreign subscription and since Apple has no way of doing this as a B2B purchase that can be easily registered with our local tax agency, it had to go under yearly reviews. It was also only possible to pay with a credit card which again tied it to something the organisation would need an actual person to renew and since organisational credit cards are tied to people, and since people change jobs, and since you need to be in actual human contact with Apple to change owners... well you can imagine how much fun that was. This was some years ago, so maybe things have changed, but out of any of our 300+ enterprise IT solutions that I ever worked with, Apple was the only one that was this horrible. To be fair, I'm a developer, I'm not sure how I ended up with the task and maybe these things are simply more common in the operations side of IT than I know.

coliveira 3y ago
> This was some years ago This is probably worse today, they're all the time throwing more roadblocks to avoid people to publish apps in their "ecosystem", except if you're a large US company that can easily handle the paperwork.
- bmitc 3y ago
  I have never understood how Apple gets away with it and even more than that gets a huge amount of love. Whereas, if Microsoft just looks at you wrong, pitchforks are out. I'm not cheerleading any company here, but it has been frustrating in my career where people absolutely refuse to touch or even consider anything Microsoft related but love their Apple computer. Apple is probably hundreds of times more agressive, more stubborn, and moat building than Microsoft. Microsoft's dev tools are some of the most open in the world for a big company, certainly more so than Apple and Google.
  - hnfong 3y ago
    As an Apple user, the experience is generally fine, especially when compared to Microsoft. Most of the complaints about Apple seem to have come from devs. And in contrast, Microsoft [in]famously loves developers (Balmer on stage...)
    - bmitc 3y ago
      I was an Apple user and even fanboy for many years. I left because they ignored macOS and then started making it iOS like. I have far less issues on Windows than I do on macOS. Apple sucks dealing with anything that doesn't have their name on it. External monitors have terrible support because Apple refuses to implement a specific protocol making that nice, like everyone else does. You basically have to use Apple's monitors or their overpriced officially supported LG monitors they sell in the Apple Store if you want an integrated monitor experience. Several other issues with Apple exist with peripherals. I have to make special router settings in my home because my partner's work Macbook can't switch between the mesh network. My partner also had to get IT to give her admin access so that she could rename iTunes because it was the only reliable way to keep iTunes from opening every time her non-Apple Bluetooth headphones connected. Search about what it takes to rename an app like iTunes. It is literally insane.
  - bitwize 3y ago
    Apple's entire stock in trade is "computing as it should be". Their stuff is the coolest platform ever to exist, which means that developing for their gear is like getting into Studio 54: only the hottest and coolest are allowed in, permitting anything less would tarnish the club's reputation. Which sucks for most devs but it's part of being the coolest. Microsoft just wants to dominate. They don't care if the UX is garbage, as long as the user doesn't have a choice.
- lm411 3y ago
  What are these new roadblocks? From a North American perspective, the only thing I can think of that has changed is Google now requiring DUNS numbers for business accounts (while Apple has required them for a very long time, for business accounts).
realusername 3y ago
It's still the same, I had some error loop on the iPhone when setting up a developer account and their support just didn't understand what's going on until something like 6 months after, it somehow worked suddenly. It's as random as ever, it might work straight away or you are unlucky and hit some of the random bug in this process and it'll fail for a long time
rstephenson2 3y ago
If you were doing it today it’d probably be much easier from the enterprise procurement side. They often give out single-use virtual card numbers per service now.
morpheuskafka 3y ago
I believe governments and nonprofits are eligible to have the $99 Developer Program membership fee waived, not sure when this started but it is not super new.

coliveira 3y ago

> This was some years ago This is probably worse today, they're all the time throwing more roadblocks to avoid people to publish apps in their "ecosystem", except if you're a large US company that can easily handle the paperwork.

bmitc 3y ago
I have never understood how Apple gets away with it and even more than that gets a huge amount of love. Whereas, if Microsoft just looks at you wrong, pitchforks are out. I'm not cheerleading any company here, but it has been frustrating in my career where people absolutely refuse to touch or even consider anything Microsoft related but love their Apple computer. Apple is probably hundreds of times more agressive, more stubborn, and moat building than Microsoft. Microsoft's dev tools are some of the most open in the world for a big company, certainly more so than Apple and Google.
- hnfong 3y ago
  As an Apple user, the experience is generally fine, especially when compared to Microsoft. Most of the complaints about Apple seem to have come from devs. And in contrast, Microsoft [in]famously loves developers (Balmer on stage...)
  - bmitc 3y ago
    I was an Apple user and even fanboy for many years. I left because they ignored macOS and then started making it iOS like. I have far less issues on Windows than I do on macOS. Apple sucks dealing with anything that doesn't have their name on it. External monitors have terrible support because Apple refuses to implement a specific protocol making that nice, like everyone else does. You basically have to use Apple's monitors or their overpriced officially supported LG monitors they sell in the Apple Store if you want an integrated monitor experience. Several other issues with Apple exist with peripherals. I have to make special router settings in my home because my partner's work Macbook can't switch between the mesh network. My partner also had to get IT to give her admin access so that she could rename iTunes because it was the only reliable way to keep iTunes from opening every time her non-Apple Bluetooth headphones connected. Search about what it takes to rename an app like iTunes. It is literally insane.
- bitwize 3y ago
  Apple's entire stock in trade is "computing as it should be". Their stuff is the coolest platform ever to exist, which means that developing for their gear is like getting into Studio 54: only the hottest and coolest are allowed in, permitting anything less would tarnish the club's reputation. Which sucks for most devs but it's part of being the coolest. Microsoft just wants to dominate. They don't care if the UX is garbage, as long as the user doesn't have a choice.
lm411 3y ago
What are these new roadblocks? From a North American perspective, the only thing I can think of that has changed is Google now requiring DUNS numbers for business accounts (while Apple has required them for a very long time, for business accounts).

realusername 3y ago

It's still the same, I had some error loop on the iPhone when setting up a developer account and their support just didn't understand what's going on until something like 6 months after, it somehow worked suddenly. It's as random as ever, it might work straight away or you are unlucky and hit some of the random bug in this process and it'll fail for a long time

rstephenson2 3y ago

If you were doing it today it’d probably be much easier from the enterprise procurement side. They often give out single-use virtual card numbers per service now.

morpheuskafka 3y ago

I believe governments and nonprofits are eligible to have the $99 Developer Program membership fee waived, not sure when this started but it is not super new.