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Only Apple can get away with something like this. "Hey guys sorry we where down for days but now everything is fine again enjoy" No aftermath report. No detail

by spdy 13y ago

Only Apple can get away with something like this. "Hey guys sorry we where down for days but now everything is fine again enjoy" No aftermath report. No details on anything.

dragontamer 13y ago
Can they really get away with it? Will people actually put up with this kind of treatment?
- autodidakto 13y ago
  iOS 7 is requiring lots of work from app developers, to both fix what ios 7 broke in their app and to make their UIs fit in with the new design language apple is pushing. (To be fair, there are new APIs some apps are benefiting from). Developers response to the need to do a lot of work for no gain? "This is a great opportunity!" Anyway, it comes down to who has the power in the relationship. Though both parties are obviously necessary, the devs need Apple more than Apple needs the devs. Add to that the fact that the biggest devs are making tons of money, what's the point in rocking the boat?
  - zackmorris 13y ago
    I've been rewriting my code through Apple System 6->System 7->System 8/9->Carbon->OS X->PPC to Intel->iOS. Honestly most of my memories dealing with Apple have been deprecation and rewrites. Every time Apple touts some new technology, I think to myself that they'll be sunsetting it in 5 years or whatever. I'm coming to terms with nearly the entirety of the code I wrote the last 24 years being useless. I highly recommend to anyone getting started in software development to only use open source and cross platform tools. My own theory for why most software projects can only reach a million lines of code is that this is the limit of entropy. Think of it as, what's the largest boat that you can safely bail out with a bucket of water? Your apps will be quite a bit smaller on Mac OS than say, Windows or Linux, or else you'll find yourself keeping up with changes more than making stuff. And I don't believe deprecation is a necessary evil to innovate or pivot. Apple could and should do much better in this department.
    - aryastark 13y ago
      This is my current frustration. I have a Macbook from 2008. It can't run the newer OS X. I was looking into doing a little iOS development this weekend. Turns out, newer Xcode requires newer OS X. I could upgrade to, I think, Lion. But I'd still have to upgrade to Snow Leopard first. And with Mavericks coming out and obsoleting Mountain Lion, I'd get what... a few months use maybe? On top of this, I can't even run the latest iTunes to sync with my iPhone 5. My perfectly fine Macbook is about as useful as a doorstop right now. I mean, a Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM is outdated. No one will dispute that. But these aren't the days of Pentium vs 486 or 386. It's pretty silly and arbitrary.
- wmeredith 13y ago
  As long as Apple owns the best platform in terms of potential profitability for developers, yes.
  - endgame 13y ago
    You mean the one where people can't be sure that their app will even be published once they finish developing it?
    - wmeredith 13y ago
      That's the one! It's a feature (for the users) not a bug.
- biot 13y ago
  > Will people actually put up with this kind of treatment? Dramatic much? Some services were offline for a few weeks and that inconvenienced some developers. Nobody's getting beaten or abused. Life will go on. The extreme horror and PTSD that some may feel over a service disruption will fade in time, like tears in rain.
wonderzombie 13y ago
FWIW the details, such as they are, came earlier: In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.
- MBCook 13y ago
  I was amazed they did that. To admit almost anything was very un-Appley. I wouldn't mind them opening up a little more.
shaggyfrog 13y ago
Member Center is one of four services still not back up again. "Everything" is not fine yet, and they haven't stated anything to that effect. Why don't you wait for the issue to be resolved before expecting a post-mortem?
Klarifier 13y ago
QQ Noob!
pkaler 13y ago
Only Apple can get away with something like this. Yeah, you're right. And that's because of their behaviour the other 364 days of the year. Broke the screen on my iPhone, they replaced it for free. Lost a plastic insert on my headphones, they replaced it for free. My Earpods stopped working after a few months and they replaced them for free. The logic board on my MBP stopped working, they replaced it for free. So yes. Only Apple can get away with something like this. Apple does get a free pass. I don't think anyone would deny that. But come on. They treat their customers pretty darn well.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Up to a point. If there is a technical issue the inevitable result, at the genius bar at least, is to reimage the Mac every time without attempting to diagnose the problem. It's like doing a heart transplant without working out what is wrong with the heart. Inevitably the chain of events that caused the issue to occur will happen again and nothing ever ends up ultimately resolved. Case in point: recently someone came to me as a last resort after refusing the genius bar "wipe the machine" solution. The problem was a runaway process in an HP provided print driver (pdf2pdf) due to a bug. The outcome was to flatten the machine and start again. When the user got home, they were to be told to install the HP driver software again from the CD with their printer. Now that would just cause it to happen again straight away. My solution: 1. Actually bother to use Activity Monitor to work out what is going on (beyond the average Genius Bar staffer). 2. Google it (also beyond the average Genius Bar staffer). 3. kill the process, install updated driver. Duh. It makes me wonder how many people have been screwed. You've just been bought off with free kit because they can't make a lasting product [1] [1] MBP logic board failures are very common, as are earpods. I'm on my 3rd logic board for an MBP and around the family, the 9th (!) set of replacement earphones. Whereas my Lenovo T61 and Sennheiser earphones are both 6 years old with no problems...

by spdy 13y ago

Only Apple can get away with something like this. "Hey guys sorry we where down for days but now everything is fine again enjoy" No aftermath report. No details on anything.

dragontamer 13y ago

Can they really get away with it? Will people actually put up with this kind of treatment?

autodidakto 13y ago
iOS 7 is requiring lots of work from app developers, to both fix what ios 7 broke in their app and to make their UIs fit in with the new design language apple is pushing. (To be fair, there are new APIs some apps are benefiting from). Developers response to the need to do a lot of work for no gain? "This is a great opportunity!" Anyway, it comes down to who has the power in the relationship. Though both parties are obviously necessary, the devs need Apple more than Apple needs the devs. Add to that the fact that the biggest devs are making tons of money, what's the point in rocking the boat?
- zackmorris 13y ago
  I've been rewriting my code through Apple System 6->System 7->System 8/9->Carbon->OS X->PPC to Intel->iOS. Honestly most of my memories dealing with Apple have been deprecation and rewrites. Every time Apple touts some new technology, I think to myself that they'll be sunsetting it in 5 years or whatever. I'm coming to terms with nearly the entirety of the code I wrote the last 24 years being useless. I highly recommend to anyone getting started in software development to only use open source and cross platform tools. My own theory for why most software projects can only reach a million lines of code is that this is the limit of entropy. Think of it as, what's the largest boat that you can safely bail out with a bucket of water? Your apps will be quite a bit smaller on Mac OS than say, Windows or Linux, or else you'll find yourself keeping up with changes more than making stuff. And I don't believe deprecation is a necessary evil to innovate or pivot. Apple could and should do much better in this department.
  - aryastark 13y ago
    This is my current frustration. I have a Macbook from 2008. It can't run the newer OS X. I was looking into doing a little iOS development this weekend. Turns out, newer Xcode requires newer OS X. I could upgrade to, I think, Lion. But I'd still have to upgrade to Snow Leopard first. And with Mavericks coming out and obsoleting Mountain Lion, I'd get what... a few months use maybe? On top of this, I can't even run the latest iTunes to sync with my iPhone 5. My perfectly fine Macbook is about as useful as a doorstop right now. I mean, a Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM is outdated. No one will dispute that. But these aren't the days of Pentium vs 486 or 386. It's pretty silly and arbitrary.
wmeredith 13y ago
As long as Apple owns the best platform in terms of potential profitability for developers, yes.
- endgame 13y ago
  You mean the one where people can't be sure that their app will even be published once they finish developing it?
  - wmeredith 13y ago
    That's the one! It's a feature (for the users) not a bug.
biot 13y ago
> Will people actually put up with this kind of treatment? Dramatic much? Some services were offline for a few weeks and that inconvenienced some developers. Nobody's getting beaten or abused. Life will go on. The extreme horror and PTSD that some may feel over a service disruption will fade in time, like tears in rain.

wonderzombie 13y ago

FWIW the details, such as they are, came earlier: In order to prevent a security threat like this from happening again, we’re completely overhauling our developer systems, updating our server software, and rebuilding our entire database. We apologize for the significant inconvenience that our downtime has caused you and we expect to have the developer website up again soon.

MBCook 13y ago
I was amazed they did that. To admit almost anything was very un-Appley. I wouldn't mind them opening up a little more.

shaggyfrog 13y ago

Member Center is one of four services still not back up again. "Everything" is not fine yet, and they haven't stated anything to that effect. Why don't you wait for the issue to be resolved before expecting a post-mortem?

Klarifier 13y ago

QQ Noob!

pkaler 13y ago

Only Apple can get away with something like this. Yeah, you're right. And that's because of their behaviour the other 364 days of the year. Broke the screen on my iPhone, they replaced it for free. Lost a plastic insert on my headphones, they replaced it for free. My Earpods stopped working after a few months and they replaced them for free. The logic board on my MBP stopped working, they replaced it for free. So yes. Only Apple can get away with something like this. Apple does get a free pass. I don't think anyone would deny that. But come on. They treat their customers pretty darn well.

harrytuttle 13y ago
Up to a point. If there is a technical issue the inevitable result, at the genius bar at least, is to reimage the Mac every time without attempting to diagnose the problem. It's like doing a heart transplant without working out what is wrong with the heart. Inevitably the chain of events that caused the issue to occur will happen again and nothing ever ends up ultimately resolved. Case in point: recently someone came to me as a last resort after refusing the genius bar "wipe the machine" solution. The problem was a runaway process in an HP provided print driver (pdf2pdf) due to a bug. The outcome was to flatten the machine and start again. When the user got home, they were to be told to install the HP driver software again from the CD with their printer. Now that would just cause it to happen again straight away. My solution: 1. Actually bother to use Activity Monitor to work out what is going on (beyond the average Genius Bar staffer). 2. Google it (also beyond the average Genius Bar staffer). 3. kill the process, install updated driver. Duh. It makes me wonder how many people have been screwed. You've just been bought off with free kit because they can't make a lasting product [1] [1] MBP logic board failures are very common, as are earpods. I'm on my 3rd logic board for an MBP and around the family, the 9th (!) set of replacement earphones. Whereas my Lenovo T61 and Sennheiser earphones are both 6 years old with no problems...