> and sometimes we literally can't comment on things; which leads to the speculation being very often the absolute most negative possible interpretation This h

> and sometimes we literally can't comment on things; which leads to the speculation being very often the absolute most negative possible interpretation This happens everywhere, it's not a problem exclusive to games. It's a problem fundamental to trust - when you stop communicating with your audience, what do they assume from your behavior? Gamedevs feel this pressure as a consequence of releases like Duke Nukem Forever and No Man's Sky that promised the world and came out with nothing. Apple feels this scrutiny for the same reason - the quality of software they make is markedly worse than what they put out 15 or 25 years ago. We have to hold them accountable, Apple's silence is an unacceptable response to the rift they've created with the software standards community. Apple has plenty of unexplained fees and double-standards, as developers we've learned better than to ask why. There is no reason Apple makes me pay $99 per year to improve their platform - they have no justification to arbitrarily deny third-party payment processing. The obvious reason, on the surface, is that offering another business the same full-fat feature access that you have threatens the service you intend to sell. When Apple creates institutions like the App Store, iMessage and Apple Pay, they are implicitly asking themselves how they will treat their competitors. When they design these institutions around features with no third-party parity, they are creating unfair businesses and sustaining them on a policy of secrecy. We are not stupid people, we can surmise why Apple cares about service revenue by looking at their quarterly financials. > What if; it's actually much harder than we realise to make it easy to use and secure? So what? HTTPS is hard to secure, but Apple's not going to stop supporting that over some unnamed ideological protest. NFC and USB are comparatively simple, and you can implement every feature that Apple uses without resorting to DRM or middleware. The only tangible explanation comes in the form of licensing fees for MFi and Apple-branded serial connectors. It's about control and money, two perfectly acceptable explanations for a business as greed-oriented as Apple. You have to be arguing in entirely bad faith to look at the rest of the technology market and assert that it's the standards forum's fault for not responding to issues that Apple won't even confirm they have in the first place. Not only is that one hell of a baseless assumption, it's an apologia based on a source that doesn't exist. Faith is not a virtue, in the business world.