8 ms·

You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? Get out of town! I don't believe it. Despite all of the rig

by alttab 14y ago

You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? Get out of town! I don't believe it. Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. Right now, when one pissed off developer leaves or goes bankrupt because their app was yanked from the store or wasn't approved for some BS reason, 50 developers replace him.

technoslut 14y ago
>You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? GET OUT OF TOWN! I don't believe it. This isn't something that is exclusive to Apple though this has always been an issue with them even regarding security issues with OS X. >Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. They develop for iOS because that is where the money is though this isn't the issue. It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs. >Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. You're right. Apple puts the interests of their customers first (not trying to be smug here). The developers come second. The only time you do hear complaints that go unanswered for devs it is usually only answered when there's a public (consumer) interest regarding it. A good example of this is Phil Schiller replying to customer's email about the Rogue Amoeba situation. I'm certainly not defending Apple but this is a problem that has existed for as long as I've been interested in tech.
- duiker101 14y ago
  Wrong, Apple puts money before everything. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287
  - technoslut 14y ago
    I did click on the link and did read the article though it lacked virtually any detail. Of course Apple cares about money but they make their money by customers buying their hardware. They put their customers first because that is where they make their money. As a counterpoint, Apple refuses to pay employees on commission because Jobs didn't want them upselling to consumers because there is a less chance of them being a returning customer. It's the goal of every business to make money. It's how you go about it that tells the story.
    - alexqgb 14y ago
      Actually, the goal of a business is to create a customer.
      - chris_wot 14y ago
        Yeah - customers who spend money.
        alexqgb 14y ago
        Is there any other kind?
        chris_wot 14y ago
        Only by degrees.
      - alttab 14y ago
        From Apple's standpoint as a publicly traded company, their mandate is to maximize shareholder value.
        jrockway 14y ago
        Their mandate is to do whatever their prospectus says they are going to do. As for maximizing shareholder value, I think they've done pretty well there. I don't care for their software that much, but in terms of running a publicly-traded corporation, they've done an excellent job.
  - podperson 14y ago
    Apple wants money. Apple makes nice product I want to buy. Microsoft wants money. Microsoft makes a product that its customers (until recently, third party hardware manufacturers and enterprise IT) buy to put on their crappy products in the hope of selling them to me. To support their wafer thin margins, they rent out advertising space on the hardware they well. Google wants money. Google gives goods and services away and convinces its customers (advertisers) that they will be able to sell its users stuff that they see advertised when they use their free product or service running on some crappy product someone else sells them. Everyone is after money. It's called capitalism. When it works well it leads people to do things that make other people happier in pursuit of getting money. Apple is making money because they're better at capitalism than these other guys. For as long as it's existed, Apple has believed that the way to make money is to create products people -- actual end-users -- want to own and use, and for a long time this was successful but not as successful as making PC manufacturers happy, or making advertisers happy. Right now, it's working very well for Apple, and once they stopped doing stupid random half-arsed things they started making ridiculous amounts of money. Is Apple doing something illegal w.r.t. warranties in Italy? Who knows? (a) It's the register. (b) There's no telling if the warranty Apple is obliged to provide in Italy in any way resembles AppleCare. In general, Apple seems to handle "defects in manufacturing" very generously everywhere the world over. AppleCare covers you against all kinds of stuff that you'd be very lucky to get covered by warranty anywhere else. And if this Italian warranty policy is so all-pervasive, why do Apple's customers need to be told about it? "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." John Updike
- drieddust 14y ago
  Not true at all. Please read through their stance on requirement of antivirus on the machine in response to flashback Trojan [1]. Instead of arguing against or for Antivirus, they are blaming windows. " Do I need anti-virus software? Ah! The loaded question. That's up to you. To date, all of the Mac anti-virus software still checks primarily for Windows viruses. The anti-virus companies have literally stopped counting how many Windows viruses there are. The Flashback trojan didn't even qualify to be called a virus. Still, all Windows users run anti-virus software. The only growth opportunities for them are Macintosh and Android. Expect a hard sell. Nothing sells better than fear. My advice? Be fearless!" For hacker news audience ,who can take care of their own security, antivirus may just be snake oil but for clueless end user it is a big help. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3271 https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3271
  - DigitalBison 14y ago
    As far as I can tell, that post you're quoting was written by a user totally unaffiliated with Apple. It's a pretty enormous stretch to call this "their stance on requirement of antivirus".
    - saurik 14y ago
      Here is an Apple commercial that cuts strait to their opinion on viruses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g .
      - comex 14y ago
        (...from 6 years ago.)
        saurik 14y ago
        (if you can show me anywhere where Apple has made a public correction, I would find that interesting; otherwise, it is irrelevant when it is from...) (edit: in offline conversation with comex, he came up with an article from last week that implies a change in Apple's stance on this subject) http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/mac_viruses/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/mac_viruses/
- greggman 14y ago
  > It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs Patches welcome
  - dockd 14y ago
    Wouldn't most devs rather tackle their own defect backlog than spend their time repairing Android? I'd probably spend my time trying to work around the bug rather than submit a fix and wait for it to make it into production.
    - TheCapn 14y ago
      Difference being though is that you can submit a fix instead of having your report go to a private system in which you can never follow.
batista 14y ago
>Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Yes, strange, I wonder why that is, they must be irrational or something, unlike us sane guys. It's not like there are money to be made there, or that is the most successful mobile app ecosystem in sales volume, returns and customer base. Or that it has a nice platform overall, despite having the occasional 2 year old unfixed bug... That said I've seen 2 and 5 year old unfixed bugs in open source software too. Come to think of it, Webkit, which powers Mobile Safari, is open source itself. Why not go and submit a patch there?
- delinka 14y ago
  > Why not go and submit a patch there? Because WebKit is a rendering engine, not a UI. The Safari UI wrapper is responsible for receiving those touch events and properly notifying the rest of the browser code.
  - batista 14y ago
    Ah, snap. Haven't thought of that.
  - saurik 14y ago
    Much of this code actually is in WebKit, but Apple's form of WebKit is not open-source. Apple carefully redacts code that would provide other mobile device platforms any help against Apple's usability features, and multi-touch is one of these defended systems. Really, as WebKit is under a BSD license, Apple can thereby leach off other developer's work without having to contribute back. They have to make a token effort at releasing their modifications to WebCore (a part of WebKit that is under LGPL), but even there they release binary object files for anything remotely related to the mobile UI. (Aside: this is possible, as LGPL does let you static ally link against closed-source code as long as you provide the half-compiled binaries required to re-link a complete binary with modifications to the LGPL parts made by third parties.)
mikeash 14y ago
Entirely correct. But what are we supposed to do about it? Switch platforms? As you point out, 50 developers will replace me if I do that.
- CodeMage 14y ago
  I can't say anything about arguments other people have offered, but yours is the textbook example of the prisoner's dilemma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma You're stuck in a Nash equilibrium and something tells me that it'll last until some new factor disrupts it.
franzus 14y ago
Dealing with Apple can be frustrating sometimes. The Mac App Store review times are ridiculously long nowadays: https://devforums.apple.com/thread/154948?tstart=0 https://devforums.apple.com/thread/154948?tstart=0 (developer account needed) 2 - 3 weeks seems to be the norm. That's pretty frustrating if you consider that people's income depends on that. And that developers pay $100 + 30% share for this.
EnderMB 14y ago
The fact that so many of the comments replying to yours are quick to defend Apple says it all really. Developers will put up with more crap than they should when platform religion gets in the way. Sure, there are arguments against switching platforms to Android or Windows, but most of these mean very little. Those that refuse to ditch iOS aren't doing so because they'll miss out on potential customers, it's because they like the idea of building apps for the most popular phone on the market, despite the crap they have to put up with. It's the equivalent of dating a bitchy model. You could be a lot happier with the cute girl next door, but you'd rather put up with her shit just because you can say to your mates "I go out with a model".
- bradshaw1965 14y ago
  ... Those that refuse to ditch iOS aren't doing so because they'll miss out on potential customers, it's because they like the idea of building apps for the most popular phone on the market, despite the crap they have to put up with. ... Trying to assess peoples motivations is unlikely to be accurate or useful.
  - ineedtosleep 14y ago
    > Trying to assess peoples motivations is unlikely to be accurate or useful.
  - EnderMB 14y ago
    How else do we come to a meaningful conclusion when posed the question "why won't iOS app developers leave the platform if the conditions are so poor" if it's not from assessing the motivations of those that build them?
    - bradshaw1965 14y ago
      >>>Conditons are so poor<<< is your interpretation. It does not take a mass delusion Stockholm syndrome sort of interpretation to figure out that a lot of developers get great satisfaction working on the platform. I'm sure to a person there are things they dislike and would change, but that doesn't mean they are being abused. It's much easier when you accept that people have different opinions about just about everything and that those differing opinions don't always indicate a lack of reason or ulterior motive.
guscost 14y ago
I put up with developing for iOS because it is the only mobile platform that can do low-latency audio on every device. There isn't always a philosophical choice involved.
WiseWeasel 14y ago
It's no secret that third party developers fall pretty low on Apple's list of priorities. I get the sense that Apple's priorities are 1) balancing user interests with Apple's bottom line, 2) satisfying the interests of carrier partners, and finally 3) serving the needs of third party developers. This doesn't mean that fixing this bug in Mobile Safari should be expected to be unimportant to Apple, since it affects one of their top priorities, the users. It would rather seem to be an indication of either a sub-optimal process for dealing with bug reports, or an issue with the author's submission, which given his liberal use of strong language, doesn't seem to be out of the realm of possibility to me.
- taligent 14y ago
  This is such nonsense. You only have to take a look at the WWDC videos and the vast array of well documented APIs provided to know that Apple does care about developers and treats them. So Apple doesn't have an open bug tracking system. Big deal. It's rare to see a company that does.
  - WiseWeasel 14y ago
    I don't understand how the WWDC example nullifies my claim that developers fall below users, their own bottom line and carrier partners in priority for Apple.
earl 14y ago
Willie, why do you rob banks? "Because that's where the money is"
neya 14y ago
You're talking like an Apple Sales-man, except that we know for sure you aren't getting paid.

by alttab 14y ago

technoslut 14y ago

>You're telling me Apple is unresponsive to support requests from their developer ecosystem? Really? GET OUT OF TOWN! I don't believe it. This isn't something that is exclusive to Apple though this has always been an issue with them even regarding security issues with OS X. >Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. They develop for iOS because that is where the money is though this isn't the issue. It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs. >Apple will continue to treat their developers like second class citizens until there is a financial incentive to do otherwise. You're right. Apple puts the interests of their customers first (not trying to be smug here). The developers come second. The only time you do hear complaints that go unanswered for devs it is usually only answered when there's a public (consumer) interest regarding it. A good example of this is Phil Schiller replying to customer's email about the Rogue Amoeba situation. I'm certainly not defending Apple but this is a problem that has existed for as long as I've been interested in tech.

duiker101 14y ago
Wrong, Apple puts money before everything. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193287
- technoslut 14y ago
  I did click on the link and did read the article though it lacked virtually any detail. Of course Apple cares about money but they make their money by customers buying their hardware. They put their customers first because that is where they make their money. As a counterpoint, Apple refuses to pay employees on commission because Jobs didn't want them upselling to consumers because there is a less chance of them being a returning customer. It's the goal of every business to make money. It's how you go about it that tells the story.
  - alexqgb 14y ago
    Actually, the goal of a business is to create a customer.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      Yeah - customers who spend money.
      - alexqgb 14y ago
        Is there any other kind?
        chris_wot 14y ago
        Only by degrees.
    - alttab 14y ago
      From Apple's standpoint as a publicly traded company, their mandate is to maximize shareholder value.
      - jrockway 14y ago
        Their mandate is to do whatever their prospectus says they are going to do. As for maximizing shareholder value, I think they've done pretty well there. I don't care for their software that much, but in terms of running a publicly-traded corporation, they've done an excellent job.
- podperson 14y ago
  Apple wants money. Apple makes nice product I want to buy. Microsoft wants money. Microsoft makes a product that its customers (until recently, third party hardware manufacturers and enterprise IT) buy to put on their crappy products in the hope of selling them to me. To support their wafer thin margins, they rent out advertising space on the hardware they well. Google wants money. Google gives goods and services away and convinces its customers (advertisers) that they will be able to sell its users stuff that they see advertised when they use their free product or service running on some crappy product someone else sells them. Everyone is after money. It's called capitalism. When it works well it leads people to do things that make other people happier in pursuit of getting money. Apple is making money because they're better at capitalism than these other guys. For as long as it's existed, Apple has believed that the way to make money is to create products people -- actual end-users -- want to own and use, and for a long time this was successful but not as successful as making PC manufacturers happy, or making advertisers happy. Right now, it's working very well for Apple, and once they stopped doing stupid random half-arsed things they started making ridiculous amounts of money. Is Apple doing something illegal w.r.t. warranties in Italy? Who knows? (a) It's the register. (b) There's no telling if the warranty Apple is obliged to provide in Italy in any way resembles AppleCare. In general, Apple seems to handle "defects in manufacturing" very generously everywhere the world over. AppleCare covers you against all kinds of stuff that you'd be very lucky to get covered by warranty anywhere else. And if this Italian warranty policy is so all-pervasive, why do Apple's customers need to be told about it? "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy." John Updike
drieddust 14y ago
Not true at all. Please read through their stance on requirement of antivirus on the machine in response to flashback Trojan [1]. Instead of arguing against or for Antivirus, they are blaming windows. " Do I need anti-virus software? Ah! The loaded question. That's up to you. To date, all of the Mac anti-virus software still checks primarily for Windows viruses. The anti-virus companies have literally stopped counting how many Windows viruses there are. The Flashback trojan didn't even qualify to be called a virus. Still, all Windows users run anti-virus software. The only growth opportunities for them are Macintosh and Android. Expect a hard sell. Nothing sells better than fear. My advice? Be fearless!" For hacker news audience ,who can take care of their own security, antivirus may just be snake oil but for clueless end user it is a big help. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3271 https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3271
- DigitalBison 14y ago
  As far as I can tell, that post you're quoting was written by a user totally unaffiliated with Apple. It's a pretty enormous stretch to call this "their stance on requirement of antivirus".
  - saurik 14y ago
    Here is an Apple commercial that cuts strait to their opinion on viruses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQb_Q8WRL_g .
    - comex 14y ago
      (...from 6 years ago.)
      - saurik 14y ago
        (if you can show me anywhere where Apple has made a public correction, I would find that interesting; otherwise, it is irrelevant when it is from...) (edit: in offline conversation with comex, he came up with an article from last week that implies a change in Apple's stance on this subject) http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/mac_viruses/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/06/mac_viruses/
greggman 14y ago
> It isn't as if the Android browser doesn't have its fair share of bugs Patches welcome
- dockd 14y ago
  Wouldn't most devs rather tackle their own defect backlog than spend their time repairing Android? I'd probably spend my time trying to work around the bug rather than submit a fix and wait for it to make it into production.
  - TheCapn 14y ago
    Difference being though is that you can submit a fix instead of having your report go to a private system in which you can never follow.

batista 14y ago

>Despite all of the rightful moaning of iOS developers, for some reason they continue to flock to the Apple platform. Yes, strange, I wonder why that is, they must be irrational or something, unlike us sane guys. It's not like there are money to be made there, or that is the most successful mobile app ecosystem in sales volume, returns and customer base. Or that it has a nice platform overall, despite having the occasional 2 year old unfixed bug... That said I've seen 2 and 5 year old unfixed bugs in open source software too. Come to think of it, Webkit, which powers Mobile Safari, is open source itself. Why not go and submit a patch there?

delinka 14y ago
> Why not go and submit a patch there? Because WebKit is a rendering engine, not a UI. The Safari UI wrapper is responsible for receiving those touch events and properly notifying the rest of the browser code.
- batista 14y ago
  Ah, snap. Haven't thought of that.
- saurik 14y ago
  Much of this code actually is in WebKit, but Apple's form of WebKit is not open-source. Apple carefully redacts code that would provide other mobile device platforms any help against Apple's usability features, and multi-touch is one of these defended systems. Really, as WebKit is under a BSD license, Apple can thereby leach off other developer's work without having to contribute back. They have to make a token effort at releasing their modifications to WebCore (a part of WebKit that is under LGPL), but even there they release binary object files for anything remotely related to the mobile UI. (Aside: this is possible, as LGPL does let you static ally link against closed-source code as long as you provide the half-compiled binaries required to re-link a complete binary with modifications to the LGPL parts made by third parties.)

mikeash 14y ago

Entirely correct. But what are we supposed to do about it? Switch platforms? As you point out, 50 developers will replace me if I do that.

CodeMage 14y ago
I can't say anything about arguments other people have offered, but yours is the textbook example of the prisoner's dilemma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma You're stuck in a Nash equilibrium and something tells me that it'll last until some new factor disrupts it.

franzus 14y ago

Dealing with Apple can be frustrating sometimes. The Mac App Store review times are ridiculously long nowadays: https://devforums.apple.com/thread/154948?tstart=0 https://devforums.apple.com/thread/154948?tstart=0 (developer account needed) 2 - 3 weeks seems to be the norm. That's pretty frustrating if you consider that people's income depends on that. And that developers pay $100 + 30% share for this.

EnderMB 14y ago

The fact that so many of the comments replying to yours are quick to defend Apple says it all really. Developers will put up with more crap than they should when platform religion gets in the way. Sure, there are arguments against switching platforms to Android or Windows, but most of these mean very little. Those that refuse to ditch iOS aren't doing so because they'll miss out on potential customers, it's because they like the idea of building apps for the most popular phone on the market, despite the crap they have to put up with. It's the equivalent of dating a bitchy model. You could be a lot happier with the cute girl next door, but you'd rather put up with her shit just because you can say to your mates "I go out with a model".

bradshaw1965 14y ago
... Those that refuse to ditch iOS aren't doing so because they'll miss out on potential customers, it's because they like the idea of building apps for the most popular phone on the market, despite the crap they have to put up with. ... Trying to assess peoples motivations is unlikely to be accurate or useful.
- ineedtosleep 14y ago
  > Trying to assess peoples motivations is unlikely to be accurate or useful.
- EnderMB 14y ago
  How else do we come to a meaningful conclusion when posed the question "why won't iOS app developers leave the platform if the conditions are so poor" if it's not from assessing the motivations of those that build them?
  - bradshaw1965 14y ago
    >>>Conditons are so poor<<< is your interpretation. It does not take a mass delusion Stockholm syndrome sort of interpretation to figure out that a lot of developers get great satisfaction working on the platform. I'm sure to a person there are things they dislike and would change, but that doesn't mean they are being abused. It's much easier when you accept that people have different opinions about just about everything and that those differing opinions don't always indicate a lack of reason or ulterior motive.

guscost 14y ago

I put up with developing for iOS because it is the only mobile platform that can do low-latency audio on every device. There isn't always a philosophical choice involved.

WiseWeasel 14y ago

It's no secret that third party developers fall pretty low on Apple's list of priorities. I get the sense that Apple's priorities are 1) balancing user interests with Apple's bottom line, 2) satisfying the interests of carrier partners, and finally 3) serving the needs of third party developers. This doesn't mean that fixing this bug in Mobile Safari should be expected to be unimportant to Apple, since it affects one of their top priorities, the users. It would rather seem to be an indication of either a sub-optimal process for dealing with bug reports, or an issue with the author's submission, which given his liberal use of strong language, doesn't seem to be out of the realm of possibility to me.

taligent 14y ago
This is such nonsense. You only have to take a look at the WWDC videos and the vast array of well documented APIs provided to know that Apple does care about developers and treats them. So Apple doesn't have an open bug tracking system. Big deal. It's rare to see a company that does.
- WiseWeasel 14y ago
  I don't understand how the WWDC example nullifies my claim that developers fall below users, their own bottom line and carrier partners in priority for Apple.

earl 14y ago

Willie, why do you rob banks? "Because that's where the money is"

neya 14y ago

You're talking like an Apple Sales-man, except that we know for sure you aren't getting paid.