7 ms·

Tim Cook's too busy with Jonathan Ive and Angela Ahrendts, turning Apple into a luxury goods company, to even know what just hit him. Slowly but surely the bes

by notsony 11y ago

Tim Cook's too busy with Jonathan Ive and Angela Ahrendts, turning Apple into a luxury goods company, to even know what just hit him. Slowly but surely the best developers are going to leave the Mac platform leaving only consulting body-shops and corporates on iOS. Developing for the Mac and iOS is miserable. It wasn't always that way, but it is now. Developers* are sick of proprietary stacks, from the language (Swift), to the APIs (Cocoa/CoreX/iOS), to the conditions attached (iCloud SDK only available for Mac Apps sold through the Mac Store), to the penny-pinching (pay your $99 fee and 30% even though we're raising $billion in debt to buy-back shares and hand out dividends because we're too tight-fisted to repatriate overseas funds and pay taxes on it) to the still broken XCode which only runs on a Mac, which must run Yosemite which feels like a Fisher-Price toy rather than a workstation for developers. *Well, ok, I'm sick of it, but I'm sure a few people reading this are feeling the same way.

hockeybias 11y ago
Honestly, I find that XCode is exceedingly painful, almost laughable to work with relative to Visual Studio.
pasta_2 11y ago
2/10 troll
karpodiem 11y ago
thank you for pointing out the money part, I share the same sentiment as you do on this. I've been itching for someone to stick it to Apple since they're really being tight with money in some places (annual developer fee as you mentioned), and wasting it on share repurchases. It's time for someone to really compress Apple's margins.
kaolinite 11y ago
Do you have anything to back that up? Personally, I feel developing for Apple platforms has never been better. Companies are still, for the most part, launching on iOS first and I don't know who the developers you're talking about are, but there are a hell of a lot of great developers still in the platform: Panic, OmniGroup, etc. As for your comment on the 30% fee, that's industry standard and few serious developers complain. The $99 fee is nothing compared to the amount of time it takes to build and design a quality app.
- notsony 11y ago
  Panic and OmniGroup were big 10 years ago. The fact that nobody has appeared on the scene, innovated and become a name that you or I can quote is quite telling. Where is the new blood? I personally know many long-time Mac developers who have sold their products to others to maintain, or have quietly slipped away and let sales slide. The 30% fee is not an industry standard that was debated and researched and rationalized. It's an abitrary number picked out by Apple first and then followed by others in order to maximize income from the work of third-party developers who are forced to pay or quit the platform. It's a de facto standard imposed by the platform gatekeepers. Calling it an "industry standard" sounds like it's an ISO recommendation :-) There is no reason at all to charge a $99 fee to developers given the vast income generated from the 30% and the overall health of the company. This is nickle'n'diming developers. Some people claim that "Apple Developer" is a cost-center, an independently run business silo that must generate a profit to justify its existence, that it's not a charity... i say no. It contributes to the overall well-being of Apple Inc as a whole, just like human resources and research and development does, it helps contributes to the overall profits of the company, so when we look at the company's overall financial health, in my mind, there is no doubt that developers are being taken for a ride because... ...they have nowhere else to go because their Apple centric skill-set is not transferable to other platforms.
  - adripop 11y ago
    Pixelmator team ?
    - notsony 11y ago
      If I'm not mistaken those guys appeared on the scene back in 2006/2007. They showed off Pixelmator at WWDC and it went down pretty well but that's still their only product, apart from an iOS version. I guess another way to look at it is this: If you had an idea for a desktop app today, would you decide to write for Mac first using a proprietary language Swift and proprietary SDKs like CoreData or would you pick C# and .NET so the bulk of your code could be re-used on both desktop and mobile, and you could bind to native toolkits for the UI?
rbanffy 11y ago
> Developers* are sick of proprietary stacks And Microsoft will rescue them... Yeah, right...
- notsony 11y ago
  Is there any reason not to use .NET now that it has been open-sourced? What's wrong with C# and F#?
  - troels 11y ago
    embrace, extend, extinguish
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    We'll know in a decade. It's too soon to tell whether Microsoft has something up it's sleeve. (The open source stuff is always a version behind Microsoft's latest, maybe?) I've watched Microsoft since the 1980s. One year is way too soon for me to believe that they've changed their stripes. In particular, it's way too soon for me to want to tie myself to their platform.
  - SXX 11y ago
    At moment they only open-sourced core that only useful for running backends on non-Windows platforms which is useless on Mac as nobody run servers on it. Once their open source .Net would get most of Windows version features there may be some use for it with same drawbacks like you have with Java for example.
    - noelherrick 11y ago
      .NET Core is available on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac, so you can use it for servers on Linux.[1] A lot of developers (such as myself) use Macs for their development machines, so it's very useful to have the same framework/runtime for both Mac and Linux. [1] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#get-net-core https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#get-net-core
  - snambi 11y ago
joekim 11y ago
I agree with the feeling. I'm very frustrated that Swift has not been open sourced into LLVM. Apple is in a position to take the wind out of Microsofts sails, but it feels that they're more focused on profits than on what their developers are asking for.
ryanmarsh 11y ago
If you think $99 is expensive just wait until you have to buy your first copy of MSDN.
Sir_Substance 11y ago
I agree wholeheartedly. My standpoint is that by developing on someones platform, I am doing them a favor. I'm happy for them to not roll out the red carpet, but there better not be a bouncer checking me at the door, either. If I have to sign up to used your SDK (unreal, unity), I'll just use something else.
serve_yay 11y ago
Oh, yeah. Everyone knows Apple is doomed.
TheRealDunkirk 11y ago
So you're complaining about the $99 fee for an Apple developer license, but not complaining about needing to buy either the $1,200 or the $6,000 Visual Studio license required to develop commercial software? Oh, and you want InstallShield? And MSDN? And a better widget library, like DevExpress? Am I taking crazy pills?! The situation is hardly comparable. For a SMALL team in a corporation, even with Select and discounts, this is an enormous expense. And developing native Windows applications with Microsoft's tools is still just as proprietary as anything on the OS X platform. The recent open-sourcing of the .NET web stack means nothing in this regard. Unless you're telling me that there's an open source C# compiler that can do the job now? I'm a couple weeks away from paying the Apple license, and starting to write my first iOS app, so I may not know all the costs and foibles of Apple development yet. I'm open to the fact that I may be ignorant of needing some basic things, like on Windows, to REALLY get the job done.

by notsony 11y ago

hockeybias 11y ago

Honestly, I find that XCode is exceedingly painful, almost laughable to work with relative to Visual Studio.

pasta_2 11y ago

2/10 troll

karpodiem 11y ago

thank you for pointing out the money part, I share the same sentiment as you do on this. I've been itching for someone to stick it to Apple since they're really being tight with money in some places (annual developer fee as you mentioned), and wasting it on share repurchases. It's time for someone to really compress Apple's margins.

kaolinite 11y ago

Do you have anything to back that up? Personally, I feel developing for Apple platforms has never been better. Companies are still, for the most part, launching on iOS first and I don't know who the developers you're talking about are, but there are a hell of a lot of great developers still in the platform: Panic, OmniGroup, etc. As for your comment on the 30% fee, that's industry standard and few serious developers complain. The $99 fee is nothing compared to the amount of time it takes to build and design a quality app.

notsony 11y ago
Panic and OmniGroup were big 10 years ago. The fact that nobody has appeared on the scene, innovated and become a name that you or I can quote is quite telling. Where is the new blood? I personally know many long-time Mac developers who have sold their products to others to maintain, or have quietly slipped away and let sales slide. The 30% fee is not an industry standard that was debated and researched and rationalized. It's an abitrary number picked out by Apple first and then followed by others in order to maximize income from the work of third-party developers who are forced to pay or quit the platform. It's a de facto standard imposed by the platform gatekeepers. Calling it an "industry standard" sounds like it's an ISO recommendation :-) There is no reason at all to charge a $99 fee to developers given the vast income generated from the 30% and the overall health of the company. This is nickle'n'diming developers. Some people claim that "Apple Developer" is a cost-center, an independently run business silo that must generate a profit to justify its existence, that it's not a charity... i say no. It contributes to the overall well-being of Apple Inc as a whole, just like human resources and research and development does, it helps contributes to the overall profits of the company, so when we look at the company's overall financial health, in my mind, there is no doubt that developers are being taken for a ride because... ...they have nowhere else to go because their Apple centric skill-set is not transferable to other platforms.
- adripop 11y ago
  Pixelmator team ?
  - notsony 11y ago
    If I'm not mistaken those guys appeared on the scene back in 2006/2007. They showed off Pixelmator at WWDC and it went down pretty well but that's still their only product, apart from an iOS version. I guess another way to look at it is this: If you had an idea for a desktop app today, would you decide to write for Mac first using a proprietary language Swift and proprietary SDKs like CoreData or would you pick C# and .NET so the bulk of your code could be re-used on both desktop and mobile, and you could bind to native toolkits for the UI?

rbanffy 11y ago

> Developers* are sick of proprietary stacks And Microsoft will rescue them... Yeah, right...

notsony 11y ago
Is there any reason not to use .NET now that it has been open-sourced? What's wrong with C# and F#?
- troels 11y ago
  embrace, extend, extinguish
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  We'll know in a decade. It's too soon to tell whether Microsoft has something up it's sleeve. (The open source stuff is always a version behind Microsoft's latest, maybe?) I've watched Microsoft since the 1980s. One year is way too soon for me to believe that they've changed their stripes. In particular, it's way too soon for me to want to tie myself to their platform.
- SXX 11y ago
  At moment they only open-sourced core that only useful for running backends on non-Windows platforms which is useless on Mac as nobody run servers on it. Once their open source .Net would get most of Windows version features there may be some use for it with same drawbacks like you have with Java for example.
  - noelherrick 11y ago
    .NET Core is available on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac, so you can use it for servers on Linux.[1] A lot of developers (such as myself) use Macs for their development machines, so it's very useful to have the same framework/runtime for both Mac and Linux. [1] https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#get-net-core https://github.com/dotnet/coreclr#get-net-core
- snambi 11y ago

joekim 11y ago

I agree with the feeling. I'm very frustrated that Swift has not been open sourced into LLVM. Apple is in a position to take the wind out of Microsofts sails, but it feels that they're more focused on profits than on what their developers are asking for.

ryanmarsh 11y ago

If you think $99 is expensive just wait until you have to buy your first copy of MSDN.

Sir_Substance 11y ago

I agree wholeheartedly. My standpoint is that by developing on someones platform, I am doing them a favor. I'm happy for them to not roll out the red carpet, but there better not be a bouncer checking me at the door, either. If I have to sign up to used your SDK (unreal, unity), I'll just use something else.

serve_yay 11y ago

Oh, yeah. Everyone knows Apple is doomed.

TheRealDunkirk 11y ago

So you're complaining about the $99 fee for an Apple developer license, but not complaining about needing to buy either the $1,200 or the $6,000 Visual Studio license required to develop commercial software? Oh, and you want InstallShield? And MSDN? And a better widget library, like DevExpress? Am I taking crazy pills?! The situation is hardly comparable. For a SMALL team in a corporation, even with Select and discounts, this is an enormous expense. And developing native Windows applications with Microsoft's tools is still just as proprietary as anything on the OS X platform. The recent open-sourcing of the .NET web stack means nothing in this regard. Unless you're telling me that there's an open source C# compiler that can do the job now? I'm a couple weeks away from paying the Apple license, and starting to write my first iOS app, so I may not know all the costs and foibles of Apple development yet. I'm open to the fact that I may be ignorant of needing some basic things, like on Windows, to REALLY get the job done.