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It's surely not perfect, and so much is quite horrible, but at least try to keep the facts in check. AppKit and auto layout are still working fine, they aren't

It's surely not perfect, and so much is quite horrible, but at least try to keep the facts in check. AppKit and auto layout are still working fine, they aren't going anywhere any time soon, there is no need to rewrite all the UI code. Core Data threading? Well, it has got its pitfalls, but those are known, and anyway, nothing is forcing you to use it. Xcode is so slim these days, it a ~3 GB download, it doesn't take an hour to unxip, and it can be dowloaded from the developer website. Swift? It might be needed for a bunch of new frameworks, Objective-C isn't going anywhere anytime soon either.

gjsman-1000 1y ago
Let's also keep in mind that the Linux desktop commits most of these offenses, but worse. Core Data threading? Does Linux even attempt something like Core Data? How well is that going? Swift? I remember when Linux diehards invented Vala. The Swift of Linux, but with none of the adoption. As for UI code, Linux is finally starting to get a little more stable there. GTK 2 to 3 was a disaster; Qt wasn't fun between major upgrades; if you weren't using a framework, you needed to have fun learning the quirks of Xorg; nobody who builds for Linux gets to lecture Mac about UI stability. Or, for that matter, app stability in general. Will a specific build of Blender outside of a Flatpak still work on the Linux desktop after 2 release cycles? No? Then don't lecture me about good practices. Don't lecture me about how my website or app was sloppily engineered because it has dependencies.
- 4ndrewl 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - gjsman-1000 1y ago
    Even Wikipedia says Whataboutism can be completely deserved in some cases. It is absolutely deserved here - Apple built a 100 foot tower, and it's grown hairy over the last few decades. Linux built 7 30 foot towers without stairs in the same timeframe; but yelling about the overgrowth on the 100 foot tower is still somehow defensible. If they can't build their own towers correctly, they have no right to act like the main tower was built worse than their own. (Edit, posting too fast: For the complaint that Apple has money, Linux does too. 90%+ of work on Linux comes from corporate sponsorship, and has since 2004 when it was first counted. They are fully capable of doing better.)
    - mixmastamyk 1y ago
      Apple has money… like coming out of their ears.
    - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
      Corporate sponsors on Linux provide a fraction of the money Apple does and even what they do are geared towards their own needs. But more relevant is the fact that their donations are focused on running Linux as servers and there Linux is miles ahead of anything Apple provides, to the point that Apple has abandoned its server OS.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      “Linux” isn’t a person or a company. Different people contribute to it with different goals. > 90%+ of work on Linux comes from corporate sponsorship And approximately 0% of these corporate contributors care about the “Linux desktop” experience. Unlike Apple their goal is not to build a consumer-targeted OS. Linux on the desktop is very, very niche, and even among the people who do use it, a lot of them will spend almost all their time in just a few windows (e.g. terminal, browser, emacs), not a rich array of desktop applications.
      - amlib 1y ago
        If you haven't used linux desktop for a while, even a year ago, try again. Use a bleeding edge distro like the latest Ubuntu or Fedora ideally running Wayland and you will be surprised how smooth and feature-full it has become, with gobs of high quality apps available with no finicky compile instructions or crazy installation steps needed to follow. Whatever rough edges you may encounter will keep being sanded down at a speed I haven't witnessed since when linux was the hot new thing in the 90s. Linux desktop felt stale and abandoned trough-out the 2010s but nowadays its pretty marvelous how fast it's becoming a real alternative to windows and mac. I truly believe that if it had the proper developer adoption and first class hardware support from OEM vendors it would already be a true alternative.
        Klonoar 1y ago
  - betterThanTexas 1y ago
    People complaining about whataboutism are more obstinately committed to avoiding decent conversation than the people who commit it. This ain’t a formal debate.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - betterThanTexas 1y ago
        Formal in what sense? There's certainly no set form for discussion outside of threading. But there's certainly no assumption of persuasion or sense of shared goals or values.
- hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
  You seem to be conflating 2 different things. Apple’s OS proficiency and the associated technologies they support on their OS and Apple’s dev tools proficiency. People use Apple’s dev tools because they are the only/best way to deliver apps on Apple’s OSes. If we changed the situation, so that Apple Dev Tools could be used to create applications for non Apple OSes, or non Apple Dev tools were first class citizens for creating Apple apps, I bet the vast majority of people would use the non Apple dev tools to create both Apple and non Apple apps. What’s keeping Apple Dev Tools in the game is their privileged position in the Apple OS ecosystem.
- graemep 1y ago
  Why bring Linux up? Are the target users for this likely to use Linux (rather than Windows) if the ditched Apple? > Swift? I remember when Linux diehards invented Vala. The Swift of Linux, but with none of the adoption Plenty of languages used on Linux. Why pick one that did not gain traction? > f you weren't using a framework, you needed to have fun learning the quirks of Xorg; Who does that? > GTK 2 to 3 was a disaster; Qt wasn't fun between major upgrades But they are cross platform. > Will a specific build of Blender outside of a Flatpak still work on the Linux desktop after 2 release cycles? Does that matter? Maybe a bit of extra work for packagers - and people can use Flatpack or Snap.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  And the UI situation still has issues. If you want flexibility in language choice, GTK is the only modern-ish framework option there is. The rest are tied to 1-2 languages, bad at accessibility, look archaic, etc.
ryandrake 1y ago
I wouldn't call Xcode slim. It currently sits at 13GB+ as installed on my drive, and that does not include the simulators which are, what, 10GB each or something? Xcode is by far the largest application I have installed on my "daily driver" Mac.
- galad87 1y ago
  It's still compressed on disk, so it takes only 5,4 GB of space, not 13 GB+. Sure, the simulator and the iOS or the other SDKs will take more space, but those aren't needed to develop macOS apps.

gjsman-1000 1y ago

Let's also keep in mind that the Linux desktop commits most of these offenses, but worse. Core Data threading? Does Linux even attempt something like Core Data? How well is that going? Swift? I remember when Linux diehards invented Vala. The Swift of Linux, but with none of the adoption. As for UI code, Linux is finally starting to get a little more stable there. GTK 2 to 3 was a disaster; Qt wasn't fun between major upgrades; if you weren't using a framework, you needed to have fun learning the quirks of Xorg; nobody who builds for Linux gets to lecture Mac about UI stability. Or, for that matter, app stability in general. Will a specific build of Blender outside of a Flatpak still work on the Linux desktop after 2 release cycles? No? Then don't lecture me about good practices. Don't lecture me about how my website or app was sloppily engineered because it has dependencies.

4ndrewl 1y ago
[flagged]
- gjsman-1000 1y ago
  Even Wikipedia says Whataboutism can be completely deserved in some cases. It is absolutely deserved here - Apple built a 100 foot tower, and it's grown hairy over the last few decades. Linux built 7 30 foot towers without stairs in the same timeframe; but yelling about the overgrowth on the 100 foot tower is still somehow defensible. If they can't build their own towers correctly, they have no right to act like the main tower was built worse than their own. (Edit, posting too fast: For the complaint that Apple has money, Linux does too. 90%+ of work on Linux comes from corporate sponsorship, and has since 2004 when it was first counted. They are fully capable of doing better.)
  - mixmastamyk 1y ago
    Apple has money… like coming out of their ears.
  - hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
    Corporate sponsors on Linux provide a fraction of the money Apple does and even what they do are geared towards their own needs. But more relevant is the fact that their donations are focused on running Linux as servers and there Linux is miles ahead of anything Apple provides, to the point that Apple has abandoned its server OS.
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    “Linux” isn’t a person or a company. Different people contribute to it with different goals. > 90%+ of work on Linux comes from corporate sponsorship And approximately 0% of these corporate contributors care about the “Linux desktop” experience. Unlike Apple their goal is not to build a consumer-targeted OS. Linux on the desktop is very, very niche, and even among the people who do use it, a lot of them will spend almost all their time in just a few windows (e.g. terminal, browser, emacs), not a rich array of desktop applications.
    - amlib 1y ago
      If you haven't used linux desktop for a while, even a year ago, try again. Use a bleeding edge distro like the latest Ubuntu or Fedora ideally running Wayland and you will be surprised how smooth and feature-full it has become, with gobs of high quality apps available with no finicky compile instructions or crazy installation steps needed to follow. Whatever rough edges you may encounter will keep being sanded down at a speed I haven't witnessed since when linux was the hot new thing in the 90s. Linux desktop felt stale and abandoned trough-out the 2010s but nowadays its pretty marvelous how fast it's becoming a real alternative to windows and mac. I truly believe that if it had the proper developer adoption and first class hardware support from OEM vendors it would already be a true alternative.
      - Klonoar 1y ago
- betterThanTexas 1y ago
  People complaining about whataboutism are more obstinately committed to avoiding decent conversation than the people who commit it. This ain’t a formal debate.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - betterThanTexas 1y ago
      Formal in what sense? There's certainly no set form for discussion outside of threading. But there's certainly no assumption of persuasion or sense of shared goals or values.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
You seem to be conflating 2 different things. Apple’s OS proficiency and the associated technologies they support on their OS and Apple’s dev tools proficiency. People use Apple’s dev tools because they are the only/best way to deliver apps on Apple’s OSes. If we changed the situation, so that Apple Dev Tools could be used to create applications for non Apple OSes, or non Apple Dev tools were first class citizens for creating Apple apps, I bet the vast majority of people would use the non Apple dev tools to create both Apple and non Apple apps. What’s keeping Apple Dev Tools in the game is their privileged position in the Apple OS ecosystem.
graemep 1y ago
Why bring Linux up? Are the target users for this likely to use Linux (rather than Windows) if the ditched Apple? > Swift? I remember when Linux diehards invented Vala. The Swift of Linux, but with none of the adoption Plenty of languages used on Linux. Why pick one that did not gain traction? > f you weren't using a framework, you needed to have fun learning the quirks of Xorg; Who does that? > GTK 2 to 3 was a disaster; Qt wasn't fun between major upgrades But they are cross platform. > Will a specific build of Blender outside of a Flatpak still work on the Linux desktop after 2 release cycles? Does that matter? Maybe a bit of extra work for packagers - and people can use Flatpack or Snap.
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
And the UI situation still has issues. If you want flexibility in language choice, GTK is the only modern-ish framework option there is. The rest are tied to 1-2 languages, bad at accessibility, look archaic, etc.

ryandrake 1y ago

I wouldn't call Xcode slim. It currently sits at 13GB+ as installed on my drive, and that does not include the simulators which are, what, 10GB each or something? Xcode is by far the largest application I have installed on my "daily driver" Mac.

galad87 1y ago
It's still compressed on disk, so it takes only 5,4 GB of space, not 13 GB+. Sure, the simulator and the iOS or the other SDKs will take more space, but those aren't needed to develop macOS apps.