I am, of course, aware that many (perhaps most) computers in the world are effectively appliances, but at some level, the great glory of this glorious, epochal machine -- the "personal computer" -- is one's ability to program it and make it do something new. It is not just a machine; it's a machine for creating machines.
Take that away, and . . . to what shall I compare it? It's like giving someone a deck of cards and telling them that these cards can only be used to play blackjack. You can't invent a card game, or change the rules, or build a house of cards, or do card magic. Putting such stipulations in place isn't just annoying or inconvenient. It's a kind of basic betrayal of the concepts and affordances that underlie the thing itself.
[edit: grammar]
When he was squeezed out of management in his own company, it is not a coïncidence that he elbowed his way into Jef Raskin's Macintosh project: Raskin was also interested in building information appliances, the difference between the two men was that Raskin was coming to the notion of an information appliance from the HCI perspective, and wanted to focus on simplicity and low cost. The UX he designed was text-centric and used high-speed incremental search as its navigation paradigm.
Jobs was infatuated with what he'd seen at Xerox Parc, and also wanted to build an information appliance, but he wanted it to be powerful and flexible and centered on the WIMP paradigm.[1]
Jobs was the boss, so Raskin left the project and the company. But Jobs never lost his vision that Apple should sell appliances, and people who wanted to "wrench their own devices" should buy PCs.
You present an excellent historical case of how Apple got here, but here's where I see a dichotomy: Back in the day, tools like RezEdit, Hypercard, AppleScript came included. There were countless "apps" to reconfigure how the Mac looked and felt to create a personalized experience. Average users had developer-like tools that enabled them to become producers. Even today, things like Swift Playground send a message that Apple wants a technically-enabled user base.
Perhaps this is really an issue like centralized vs decentralized computing, states vs. federal, IE: there will always be a fundamental fight where some people within Apple want a black box appliance, and others want a fully customizable hackable device.
Back in the beginning there was lots of talk of "toasters" as an appliance every household has and even a child can use (to the point there was a famous screensaver of flying toasters).
The Mac 512, Plus, and SE were embodiments of this. (The Apple //c with LCD attachment and carry handle was an earlier attempt.) Note that all of those included portability as a feature, while the all-in-one Macs (not the Apple //c) emphasized usability by non-tech and non-tech job people. Their spiritual successor is the last 3 years of iPad Pro w/ magnetic magic keyboard/stand.
It's pretty clear there's only a relatively short period of time the hobby shop and hackers are "changing the world", while the real shift comes when "everyone" can access and leverage the new tech (like a toaster, or fluoride in water).
---
* There's another subtle difference between "bicycles for the mind" and "a computer on every desk and in every home." One of those is vendor centric, the other is user outcome space.
And honestly, I don't think information appliances are a bad thing to have in the world. It's not the kind of device I would choose for myself, but there's a class of users for whom a general computing device isn't just overkill, it's downright dangerous.
Android is fine for my use case, and while there are specific policies I wish Apple would change, I don't begrudge them the philosophy.
That sounds exactly like emacs with company-mode or ido-mode.
YES! I feel offended in Apple's ecosystem. Consistently.
When I can't upgrade, can’t even fix my own overpriced laptop because of soldered parts.
When I can't copy MY photos out of MY device, without uploading it to Apple's cloud.
When I can't buy OEM parts for older Apple devices because Apple put a noose around independent suppliers.
When (like the OP found) I can’t run MY CODE on MY DEVICE without notarizing and authorizing.
There's a much longer tail of issues I can fix and address myself.
These are fundamental, They eclipse all other (hard) things Apple deserves credit for like hardware quality and performance and integration with other Apple products. Despite their price gouging.
I am myself pulling away from Apple. I do not buy them any more. Don’t recommend Apple to any makers and hackers. The only persona I see happy using Apple laptops are ones who don't care about these. Those that got them handed down from work. They don’t tinker with them. They use them like appliances.
They don’t have my problems. I do.
Wait, what? (Not an Apple user - genuinely curious)
Yeah, as others are also saying, welcome to the 21st Century where they're not really computers anymore that they're selling. Your mistake is to still believe that they are.
I view the phone the way perhaps a ham (ham radio operator) viewed the transistor radio. For those of us where a computer is a tool to build with, a thing to tinker with, these new pocket devices are not for us. Too bad.
I've moved completely away from developing for "mobile". It's more of an afterthought for me at this point — "Hmmm, would this also make sense to port to mobile?" My thinking these days defaults to developing for the desktop and the web.
Yep. One of the most glaring examples of this is the complete extinction of portable backups. Back when I was carrying around a PDA I could plug it in, hit one button, and have a total backup of everything on my device. Plug a blank device in, hit one button, and everything is restored. Today if you want a bulletproof device backup you have to pay Apple for the privilege, and even then you're completely crippled by your upload and download bandwidth. It takes a long damn time to back up 512GB of data at 10mb/s upstream. Nearly five straight days, in fact.
Edit: Mac -> computer
Let me guess, Xfinity?
"Phones" can be beautiful appliances. We can admire them for many reasons. But calling them "personal computers" is a stretch, and honestly AFAICT no one does. FWIW, people refer to "phones" by other terms, such as "device". Mobile phones today contain computers, but that is about as far as we can make the comparison to the personal computer.
Arguably every new appliance does or will eventually contain a computer. That hardly means its owner will be able to control it. Good news is it's still possible to build a PC from parts and there are more small form factor development boards than ever before.
Apple reminds me of the diamond industry. How does it manage to charge such amounts of money for something that is so readily available. It sells people a story. De Beers is apparently now entering into the synthetic diamond businesss. Apple's next move should be similarly amusing.
An analogy to a deck of cards would have to include a means by which the company that makes the boxes for the playing cards collects data on how people use them, where the people travel with the cards, and so on, sending it to the box maker outside of the card owner's awareness because there is no longterm business viability for selling boxes to playing card companies, so the box maker becomes a front for a surveillance and advertising company.
The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook.
That Macs are still somewhat open is just a happy historical accident. Enjoy it while it lasts :/
Why should your personal view obviate the devices' nature?
These are all computers. *Whose* computers is the more important question. And from a look at a lot of these 'narrow focused computer devices' have the company you bought it from still exert control years after your purchase... It's almost like you unwittingly agreed to a rental that was misclassified as a sale. How many times were features removed at a later 'update'? How many features did the device support but didn't make available? How many features were kept because it would keep you from prematurely throwing it away to get the new thing?
Or better yet, with devices that have user-reprogrammable hardware means that the ecological aspect of "obsolete" hardware is that the new feature makes it nearly good as new, all the while keeping it out of the landfills. Sure, stuff going obsolete will still happen... But with repair and upgrades as options means the "Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Recycle" will lead to better outcomes for all. But that's not good for capitalism and profit.
> The iPhone is an appliance that can download "apps" that Apple permits. When I want a "computer" I open up my MacBook.
And, why is your opinion on what a "computer" is important? What criteria are you using? I ask this because we even have "Doom played on a pregnancy test" https://www.pcmag.com/news/yes-doom-is-playable-on-a-pregnan... . Basically any justification or rubric on what a computer is sure looks to me as artificial and gatekeepy.
Look at the trackers like AirTag. A gadget to find your keys is incredibly useful, but can also turn into a device to aid criminal activity pretty readily.
Nobody sane is arguing for a vulnerable computer.
The desire is just less friction and fewer restrictions on what code can be written and executed by the owner on the device. Really this is what virtualization is for, and the only thing keeping mobile operating systems working as they do is that most consumers don't demand the same features as businesses, but in my opinion they should.
Fortunately systems are designed for multi users, with sandboxes and access controls and heuristics now, and it's less of a problem for most people.
Our ability to sideload apps, or install pwa that are full featured doesn't need to affect your safe little bubble of protection. You'll be ok, I promise.
Don't even start me on the symbolism of their anti workers rights bs.
You said it better than I could.
The irony of this being Apple today. What would be the computer industry even be if the Apple ][ had existed under this twisted restrictive mindset.
Apple does sell real computers under the Mac line.
You can use this argument to justify anything companies want to lock down.
The "only run approved software" part is a restriction imposed by Apple. It is not because of a physical limitation that makes them not real computers.
The flaw here is you're assuming that true general-purpose computing is free when it is not. You've heard the saying "constraints free, freedom constrains"? It's true. Artists often set artificial limits on themselves (such as only using one color of paint) in order to try to bring forth pure creativity without the added stress of making choices. Or perhaps you've read the classic essay "worse is better"? If not, you should. It's thought-provoking.
Millions of people buy cards that can only be used to specifically only play, say; 'Magic: the Gathering' (MtG).
You could probably invent some sort of new game with MtG cards, or do some sort of card magic with them (no pun intended); but MtG cards are very intentionally not designed to be 'general purpose' cards or tools to design new card games with. They have a very specific audience in mind.
Magic the Gathering cards are also much more expensive than a regular deck of playing cards I can grab from my local dollar store. They have a lot less utility than said cards I can acquire for a $1.15CDN, taxes in; and they also have a bit of a stigma from people who seem to not like MtG for various reasons.
Somehow, still; it's one of the largest and most widely played card or tabletop games in the world; easily - and it's got an enthusiastic community of passionate and fascinating people.
Is Magic: the Gathering ruining card games? It is 'an offence against the entire notion of' what card games are?
Fuck no. Apple isn't some offence to the notion of computers, either.
Maybe it's not to your taste, but just because a product is designed for a specific set of purposes or utilities that don't suit your preference doesn't mean you have to jump to the dramatic conclusion that these products are 'ruining' the entire notion of what a product is. It's just a different product. Get over it, and use a different one. Take a valium and realize people like and use different things, and that's okay.
On a side note, I develop hobbyist apps for WatchOS, iOS, MacOS, the web; and SEGA Saturn, all on my Mac; and I've never had any issues actually achieving the results I wanted.
It would be if a WOTC employee came to my table every time I tried playing, personally overseeing every turn of the game to ensure that I didn't break the rules, engage in unsportsmanlike conduct, use my imagination, taunt my opponent or profit unfairly with their platform.
And people did, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering_Commander, which is now the most popular MtG format. So yes, even in this case the freedom to explore and experiment is good.
I love that example, since I have thousands of Magic The Gathering cards, but I have never played the game ever. The cards are very useful and I don't care what game they are meant for. Like many others I use Magic cards for print'n'play card games. Print out cards on regular paper, cut out, and put in sleeves with a cheap Magic card behind as backing.
The above link is nowhere near close to exhaustive. Many of the formats on it were made up by fans, and then eventually made quasi "official" once a popularity threshold was reached, like Commander.
In fact, the entire premise, from the get-go of Magic: The Gathering was incredibly flexible modularity. Every time you change your deck, you're 'changing the rules' of the game. It's Turing complete, and people have made some really wacky stuff with MTG cards.
And, there's no small amount of proxying going on. Many, if not most Commander players allow a few proxy cards. High level tournament preparation involves 100% proxies. Online platforms allow you to play with any card in Magic's history for free, if you're willing to don the pirate hat; and if not, you can play MTGO or Arena.
Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent.
Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.
I've seen this developer-Apple dynamic at least since the late 90s. "Daddy Apple" was more available back then, but it's wasn't like it cater that much to the hobbyist-developer community ( unless we see the past with rose-colored glasses ).
The App Store is a multi-billion dollar business, like a moderately high-end mall, there is no place for hobbies in that world.
I hope for a time when developers understand this and stop feeding Apple execs for free. Ironically that would be the day Apple would be "nicer" to them.
If he were a farmer writing angry blog posts about how VW has made it damned-near impossible to plough a field with a VW beetle, it wouldn't be any more absurd.
The simple truth of the matter is that Linux and other open source OSes are the only compute platforms that can still meaningfully be thought of as providing "general purpose computing". ...maybe the JVM does, too, but that's more like a general purpose computing sandbox within appliances that's under heavy guard and for some reason tolerated by appliance makers.
...have zero presence on mobile
...don't spend a cent on marketing to developers, so the awareness isn't there
I think that changed years ago. The iPhone made Apple very mainstream, which dilutes the fanboy effect considerably.
Tesla fans are much, much worse at this point. I say that as a two-time (and current) Tesla owner who is decidedly not a Tesla fanboy (and in fact going the opposite direction a little more every day).
> this list never ends
The list is different for everyone. Everyone thinks their own choices are the only rational ones.
I still remember when Satya Nadella went "all-in" with Linux and Open Source, the whole "running Linux on Windows", etc. Many people went nuts and in a matter of months Microsoft was the hot new "hip" company. Which anyone looking into Microsoft's business for 5min would laugh at all that non-sense. Just an example: MS makes around 2 billion dollars every year in software patents/royalties, and the list of Microsoft being Microsoft goes on.
My point is: This behavior is something more to do with the people than the companies themselves, they mostly cater and exploit it.
I think people like yourself should be more thoughtful more about why these products are so popular.
Instead of reducing these people who may simply like their products to being cult members who can't make educated, independent choices.
Let me give you another perspective as an apple user - I don't think about Apple at all.
I have a glass brick that sends 20 - 30 text message a day and a couple times I'll use GPS to go to a new restaurant. Sometimes I'll do crossword puzzles. This brick happens to do it best.
I don't think about Apple.
I wonder how much of this is "the thing I'm used to is the best thing?" every time I hear this sort of comparison (regardless of which type of machine the commenter thinks is "best".)
The thing that makes me wonder is because my experience is the opposite of yours -- I think Android is much superior to iOS. But I suspect much of my opinion is because I'm much more used to Android than iOS.
Nokia tried in 2009/10 with the N900 running a Linux-based OS. It flopped, partially because Nokia was about to jettison their entire software stack to shack up with Windows Phone OS. But also partially because it came way too early, at a time when Apple and Google were spending millions to tell consumers that smartphones without app stores were useless and dangerous.
What is it about Android and Android devices that sucks? Does this apply to all Android devices? For example Samsung and Pixel phones get regular updates but the others don't.
God, could you be any more snide? Please keep your personal vendetta against <whatever MacOS user harmed you> off of HN.
https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-sa...
Apple tries really hard to pretend they own the relationship between the app developer and the user because they made the iPhone and iOS, when in fact, for most developers, the necessity to publish on the app store isn't the godsend Apple thinks it is. It's an asinine obstacle they have to clear to get their app out to the world. I've seen Apple reject iOS apps for nonsensical reasons on many occasions. For most developers, the discovery aspect of the app store is, in fact, irrelevant. They do their own marketing and user acquisition anyway.
Mac shows this very clearly. There's the same app store, with the same rules, but with one exception: its use is not mandatory. So most developers end up simply ignoring it and doing their own app distribution. In other words, this model doesn't work very well when it's not the only distribution channel and when there's no draconian lockdown on the OS level. The notarization requiring a $100/year account is also optional. So you can, if you wish, distribute a Mac app without any Apple involvement whatsoever.
Users installing applications is the default. Walled gardens are the weird dangerous thing.
Video games seem to be an outlier, as the enormous size of most games means it can't be streamed well just yet.
Downside is that I see bunch of corporate apps that are total trash on app store.
Apparently the nanny state is repugnant to many, but nanny corporations that don't trust us to make our own choices, or have our own tastes and standards, is much more acceptable. The huge loss of customer freedom doesn't actually achieve the exclusion of "trash" apps nor malware.
They apparently strive for a superior user experience, and then go about destroying the customer experience of what they seem to consider is their phones.
That being said, what customer are you referring to when you talk about "destroying the customer experience." Hundreds of millions of users express very high customer satisfaction with the experience. The vast number of users have no interest in sideloading and they love the simplicity of the app store. Apple is bringing in about 85% of the smartphone market profits and they have huge repeat purchase numbers. That is not because those billion users are unsatisfied or feel the experience has been "destroyed." The numbers are just too overwhelming.
Many HN readers are not the target market if openness is of paramount importance to them. It is hard to avoid, but we need to try and avoiding generalizing our preferences to the broader definition of "customer."
I guess the bot and scam usage of APIs cause more headache for companies than the hobby usage benefit they get.
Thanks apple for reminding me why I'll continue with the lesser evil for now.
Both of the things you listed are side effects.
I’ve been paying $99 a year for early access to iOS betas and for my own test apps since the program debuted in 2008. I’ve never published an app in the App Store under my own account. But if I’m honest, I do feel I’ve gotten value out of that $1500 or whatever.
If it isn’t worth $100 a year to you, that’s fine. Plenty of people will sell you a slot on their account for less and give you a signing key. Or you can choose not to play. But it seems silly to bitch about something that has literally been the status quo since the inception of the App Store back in March 2008, when the iPhone SDK was released.
I should also note that the $99 in 2008 was significantly less than Apple used to charge for student access for Apple Developer Accounts for Mac before that. (Although those gave you nice Apple hardware discounts).
The arguments for paying for review, distribution, advertising, search, etc feel so disingenuous when the company is worth so much money and these apps are contributing to its bottom line.
I really hope that the EU is the one that finally breaks down this annoying wall. I might consider using an iOS device at that point, but absolutely and definitely not before that.
I don't know where Apple went wrong -- third-party software made them as big as they are today, and they decided to turn on developers at some point and make them jump through hoops for nebulous "reasons". And yet the app store is still just filled with so many low-quality apps, scams and the like. They just look semi-pretty on launch and don't crash within the first minute or so.
Are they, though? If you don't have the $99 for a dev account, you don't have a marketing budget either, so your app won't make money, so Apple doesn't care.
I think the best argument to be made for catering to hobbyists is to attract new developers to the platform, but I doubt Apple cares about that any more. Apple wants developers who care about making money. Developers who care about making money will come to Apple because of how much Apple users spend on apps.
It’s a token amount, just enough to prevent spammers from creating thousands of accounts. It’s $99 for your entire organization for a year. Go check what Microsoft charges for a Visual Studio license per seat, per year.
$99 doesn’t even buy you 1 hour of a developer’s time. Even if you develop apps a a hobby, this is not a large amount of money. Few hobbies are a cheap as this.
This seems reasonable when you look from the point of view of a corporation. But hobbyists are single individuals, not corporations. So this basically makes development a privilege for corporations or for people in the first world for whom $99 is nothing.
Let me guess, you’re from a 1st world country and probably make 6 figures a year (pre tax), likely working in FAANG?
As a guy in a 3rd world country, $99 is a hell lot of money. Your comment comes across as quite tone deaf. If you grew up middle-upper class and relatively sheltered that’s not necessarily your fault, but trust me in many parts of the world $99 is worth much more converted.
Obviously the glaring difference is that you can side load apps on Windows without using the app store at all. The day that becomes a serious barrier is definitely a line too far in the history of computing. But Apple has always been a very closed off ecosystem - going back to the nineties they were never very friendly to developers or third party hardware. To me this is just Apple doing Apple - their phone, IMO, is still miles ahead of anything else, though.
> few hobbies are as cheap as this
Quite true.
I think that what you buy with your 99$ is the privilege of asking for the privilege of publishing (which is not given at all).
No, they are not. We are talking about hobby apps and maybe free ones. Those don't contribute to their bottom line.
We might say they contribute to the platform. For hobbyist they make it viable. But for paying customers maybe they add a lot of low value junk to the store. If a developer doesn't feel their app is worth a few dollars, maybe it's not worth having on there at all.
The AppStore is currently filled with low-value junk published by people paying $99/year (1.8 million apps out there, of which most outside of the top X lists are terrible). Will hobby apps really decrease the average quality? I highly doubt it.
[1] I'll admit that this appeared to be the trend early on, but in the long term both platforms have converged to something similar.
They didn't go wrong. They are making money - the most important thing.
That they hurt developers that got them there in the first place? Who cares.
Then even few years ago I heard: "If you don't like that platform, create your own!" I wonder where that crowd is now.
I mean this fee has been there since forever no? Early on not even the iOS updates were free. You can argue about the merits of the fee but don't frame it as some recent change that disparages early adopters.
I'm not an apple fan. Most of my personal devices run Linux, but I feel essentially trapped on an iPhone. It doesn't seem like there's a truly useful open phone out there. I don't like Apple, and I don't trust them or their ostensibly pro-privacy stance much, but I want as little privacy invasion and as little advertising as possible on my phone, and I think as bad as Apple is, they're still better than a fully Googled version of Android. Unfortunately, a lot of people, myself included, need at least some apps that require either an iPhone or a fully Googled version of android.
I suppose there's always the option to dual-wield and use a Linux or de-googled android phone for daily use and keep a second device around for the apps that won't run there, but that is both a pain I don't expect many people to buy into. I'm just about at the point of going this route for myself, but it does feel more like admitting defeat than anything else.
Eventually there may be a non-Android 100% free software alternative but as it stands now the above solution works fine and keeps the data vampires from your door.
This is a genuine question, not an attempt to paint Apple as the be-all and end-all or a paragon of perfection (for all that I'm an unapologetic Apple fan, I recognize that they have serious faults).
I think there is a strong case to be made that the limitations Apple has placed on the iPhone are instrumental in guaranteeing the privacy and (relative) freedom from crap that makes it as good as it is. There is also a strong case to be made that it should be possible to create a phone (or computer) with nontrivial privacy safeguards, but without the specific limitations Apple imposes.
I lean somewhat toward the former camp, as I believe that in a space like smartphone apps, bad actors are both willing and able to do whatever is necessary to make their unethical money, whether that's with extra ads, crapware apps, or just actual malware, scams, and theft. But I would genuinely love to be proven wrong, and I hope that there comes a day when we have a meaningful competition in the space without sacrificing our collective ability to use our phones without fear.
It seems to me that it's inevitable that if we let these megacorps control our devices, they will use it against us in one way or another. The only way for us as users to actually have freedom, security, and privacy is if we can control what entities the device trusts ourselves. We must create choice where the corps would rather we have none.
I will also point out that I consider Apple's rent seeking and censorship, that is more or less literally impossible to avoid, to be unethical use of this power they wield over users, and a pretty clear and meaningful way that users are harmed by it. In very concrete ways it can be considered more harmful than malware. But few seem to care enough to ask for control of their devices back, and in many of these threads more seem willing to jump to the defence of these practices than see them as a problem.
The phone will be used for exchanging calls and texts. The computer for everything else.
I was thinking about this but what happens with on-the-spot payments? This seems like a functionality that's really convenient (not having to carry a bank card) but that would be on the official device, not the daily use device due to security issues. But paying for stuff in person is a daily use activity.
YMMV, but I don't (and won't) use my smartphone for this right now anyway. It's fine. Barely an inconvenience.
Even when you do plan to distribute it it's hard to justify that it's for a good purpose. The review process is so broken and infuriating that I often find myself thinking that _they_ are the ones who should be paying us to go through the stress of trying to publish an update to an app.
In 80% of the cases they never even logged into the app before giving us the OK (all logins and actions are logged, so it is easy to tell)
About 20% of the updates to my app get rejected for no reason other than that the reviewer clearly didn't bother reading the attached review instructions. I have a hard time thinking that _all_ of them are this stupid, so nowadays I started thinking they do this on purpose.
Apple exec scribbles furiously
From what I've seen, a lot of startup are Mac-only - with the local dev stack and built system being built specifically for OSX. It's only a matter of time before vendor lock-in become so strong that companies would pay another four-figure a year fee to unlock development on OSX.
Apple could sell the security angle on this too.
The whole process around entitlements and app review is absolutely maddening for small teams that don't have insider connections at Apple.
For context, there are things that your device is capable of, but the OS will prevent you from doing without Apple's blessing (an "Entitlement"). Even in test code that you're not shipping to the app store. Most apps you'll use day to day will use a bunch of these entitlements.
A pretty common scenario is that you want to be able to remove a notification that is no longer relevant. The process to do that is: 1. Pay the $99 (ugh, okay) 2. Build marketing materials for your app (even if you're the only user) 3. Write a proposal to Apple explaining why you need this entitlement and this is a good user experience. 4. Wait 4-8 weeks for Apple to deny your request without actually reading the proposal. Seriously, they only skim read what you write. 5. Go to 4
If you want to publish your app, you'll go through this all again with app review.
This process is absolutely maddening and is extremely time consuming. Apple's policies assume you have a large team to manage them, create marketing assets etc.
At bigger companies you escalate thus via your Apple internal contacts who chase things up for you. Indie developer? SOL.
I got the same notice.
Had to scramble to rebuild/provision and re-install on my device from my Mac that was in another part of town - for which I had to drive.
And then I got some strange errors because apparently I had to update either my OS or XCode?
Ended up just showing the Android version and that worked fine of course.
It's very annoying indeed, but at the end of the day, complaining probably won't get me anywhere, it's been this way since, what, 2007?
P.S. Developers complain about a bunch of things on the Andrdoid platform too, particularly Google Play, so it's hard to win.
Apple has plenty of reasons for people to be upset, but testing your live demo an hour before going on is not their fault.
I mean, I ask, because I haven't found that to be the case with OS X at all. iOS is indeed a walled garden, and I think it's a stronger platform BECAUSE of it (though I understand that this view is heretical at HackerNews).
If I wanted to build Apple apps, yeah, I'd pay the $99. I don't do that now -- no time -- but I have in the past. I can install any software I want on my Macs. I have greater control of my experience on the Mac than I do on the abomination that Windows has become, and I still get access to software with a level of finish that remains super rare under Linux.
To be very clear I'm not saying "it's hopeless why bother you're wrong" etc. I'm just curious what your solution(s) is. I'd love to decouple myself from these groups as much as I can over time.
> You can't do that
When the others are all shouting:
> Hey do this irrelevant thing
That said, there is a lot to consider for companies like Apple in this world. Yes, it is not only Apple that does this. Apple is just apparent as with the iPhone it became so ubiquitous.
Apple wants to be known for a clean platform for consumers without worrying about viruses and such things. Ever heard about a ransomware on your shiny iPhone? If you want to maintain this, then you need a strict enforcement of who can run what on the platform. These days such enforcement is done via certificates. At first Apple was somehow lax on that enforcement. That allowed side-loading of apps on your iPhone. For development purposes good. Of course for personal use great. But the first actors appeared and used that to distribute their apps. I remember when Google Ingress where a thing way befor Pokemon Go. Ingress was Android only. No iPhone. Because it was from Google. Then some people came along and build an iOS app, which you could download from Github. Then when some shady actors got banned from the Appstore they distributed their apps via shady websites. I assume at one point the decision grew that they need to do something to prevent this.
Another thing is, the development tools are not free as in free beer. Maintaining development tools costs resources. That's why I need to buy the development tools. If I do embedded I may need to buy a Keil compiler. If I do FPGA I may need to buy Altera or Xilinx. But the Apple tool chain is free of charge. Maintenance costs resources. That's why in the past you needed to buy the Development account to have access to the tool chain at all. Now, these days, the tool chain is free-of-charge. So you could ask "Hey, they are such a money maker, why can't they just cross finance that?" That is valid. On the other, why? Why shouldn't that business unit finance itself?
So there are many different things to consider.
I don’t see it that way for iPhones specifically. If I want to build an iPhone app, I’m technically required to have Mac hardware and MacOS, so that’s a pretty hefty cost barrier if I otherwise have no need for that platform. Yes, there are virtualized, rentable, and legally dubious workarounds to this, but on paper the requirement is still there. And it’s entirely a case of vendor lock in, right?
Good? It's built on free software like LLVM and Clang, if Apple charged for that it would be like pricing CUPS as an additional MacOS feature.
If Apple cares about security, they should build it into their OS, not their services. You can paint this however you want, but regulators have already seen the marketing side of it. Now they want to bring the world's largest company to heel.
Apple effectively decides what can run on macOS, and if you don't pay their yearly toll and jump through their hoops, your apps won't run on users' macOS installations. If you don't pay them, Apple will make it seem like your app is either broken or malicious to unsuspecting users.
It's a racket and it's not worth the trouble to deal with it.
Users don't understand why they can't run the un-Notarized apps they want to run. Those are the people who suffer.
Apple is a for profit company.
I could turn this around and say that it's greedy to expect a company to offer these tools for free. There's an investment on their end as well.
The line between making a profit and greed is often the subject of vigorous debate on HN. At heart it's a philosophical question. I'm reminded of discussions about price here often centering on Teenage Engineering's products, and whether their stratospheric prices are justified or not.
The reasons for saying "no" to good ideas are sometimes incredibly important, such as "Putting more wood behind fewer arrows, i.e. Focus." And sometimes they make no sense that anyone can discern from reading the tea leaves, but they aren't fatal to the business and so there's no incentive to figure out how to say "yes" to them.
I am in no way saying that I like living in the world where Apple treats ISVs and hobbyists as irritations. I remember having to pay outrageous amounts of money for photocopied developer documentation in the late 80s and early 90s... From Apple! I remember flying to Cupertino for OpenDoc training that cost us three grand a developer. Outrageous, were they trying to recruit a developer ecosystem? Or gatekeeping so that the only OpenDoc developers would come from companies that were already behemoths?
But sigh... OpenDoc failed, Copland failed, Pink was spun of as Taligent and failed... Easy to criticize Apple's choices, but nevertheless they survived and here we are decades later dealing with the fact that throughout its history, Apple has always had a love-hate relationship with hobbyists and ISVs.[1]
And throughout that time, we've all complained. We're not wrong, but then again, we're not right, either.
———
[1]: Guy Kawasaki, Apple's first developer evangelist, wrote at length about how he was trying to drum up interest from indie developers to write software for the Mac. It was a good fit, as being an indie means you can jump into a new platform and exploit first-mover advantage, without any baggage from your existing success to hold you back.
Corporate always shit on that, they wanted big announcements from Microsoft and Lotus and Wordperfect and Ashton-Tate. And how did things play out? The "killer app" turned out to be PageMaker from Aldus, a company nobody had heard of. Later, people wrote business apps for Mac. Did they build them on top of Ashton-Tate's popular database? Nope, they built them on top of something called "Silver Surfer" from France of all places, which was eventually renamed "4th Dimension."
Apple's disdain for small developers is in their DNA.
So to this end I've been trying to connive a way to develop an app for iOS without actually having to use a mac for anything I consider actual development. I'm ideologically opposed to buying a mac just to be able to sign, but not practically or monetarily.
Right now, it's looking something like this:
1. Develop my app in Godot (my app is technically a game but I think you could develop pretty much any non-game app in godot afaict)
2. Buy a mac mini. Shove it in my rack with a dummy monitor hooked up. Use VNC to remote control GUI for when I need to poke UI things. Configure SSH.
3. Develop my app in godot like normal, using their built-in runner for normal dev-test loop.
4. Set up a script to pull my app on the mac mini, build it, sign it, and deploy it to either prod or my test device.
As the author mentions, test apps expire periodically. I wonder if I can automate re-installing it every week/year.
I haven't tested any of this out yet, I'm mainly still making sure I like Godot enough to use it for my game. Then I'll expand out, testing out the mac stuff.
And all of this is hedged that if I for some reason switch away from iOS, I just export my game to android and continue with my day. (or at least something close to that, instead of having to rewrite from scratch).
There are some third-party programs like AltStore that could help with this.
Think about how many Mac Developers have been criticizing many of the policies and features surrounding the App store for their business for years. There's been kerfuffles about lack of update pricing, forced API updates for perfectly working software, bad search functionality, horrendous App approval stories, and many more complaints about features and policies on the App store that causes Apple to make far less money than they should.
IMO, the reason for this is that running a marketplace isn't Apple's core competency.
I do. Isn't that what their extortionate cut is supposed to cover?
Alternatively, make a website like you normally would and in Safari you can "Add to Home Screen". You don't even need a domain name, just save the IP to your Home Screen. Native APIs for websites come a long way.
Don't give them ideas.
The #1 reason we are moving away from iOS native to web app is because of Apple's policies and how convoluted the signing experience is.
Meanwhile Android is 70% market share worldwide with that desired "full PWA support". Where are these amazing PWAs?
I'm waiting now for the new EU regulation that should open the apps store. I hope this also includes side-loading self-compiled apps.
One remark in favor of Apple: They provide a pretty good dev. environment. So a fee for distributing something could be acceptable.
I don't think so. All of this is a statisticall error to their profits.
This just smells of a use case (hobby devs wanting the iOS dev kit but not to distribute apps) they don't care about, and wont do anything to cater for.
Just wait a few years... I predict that they'll charge to develop anything.
What makes you say this? Is there any reason they would do that?
There’s a hell of a lot of misinformation in here and the original post.
Hell, deploying your app to your phone without a developer license used to require that $99...
Does he or does he not want to publish to the App Store?
And it is kind of weird. Apple only wants signed applications on their devices. They grant a one-week exception for developers because they expect that application to be in constant flux. You should never need more than a week.
But you need to sign your code to run it on a more permanent basis. I look at it more like buying an SSL certificate.
Whether that's right or not for a smartphone/tablet, that's another discussion.
SSL certs are free now.
Oh, come on. Don't say "never" just because you have no need or want here.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/gif-memes-maker/id1644501716
Enroll in the Apple Small Business Program to cut the commission rate to 15%.
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program...
What you have is 'I don't want to pay because Apple is rich'. That's not a valid argument. By your logic, all big profitable companies should either lower their prices (to what, I wonder, breakeven?) or be called greedy and bad.
Apple is a 2+ Trillion dollar company. So yes, they are greedy.
The $100 is a decent value compared to an inflation adjusted $500. But I do agree with this being an affront to all that is good and decent.
To get started developing my own stuff on Windows or Android, the tools and SDKs are free today. I can do whatever I want locally and don't have to pay a dime to anyone.
Assume you could freely push a build onto your device: there would be many secondary stores and pirate platforms providing almost single click ways to download, build, and push apps to your phone.
Apple wouldn't want that. I don't think their intention is to break hobbyists but more like a side effect of their App Store policy.
It doesn’t eliminate it, it just makes is more difficult to even enter the property.
That actually used to be the case with Windows. Windows SDK, MSDN, and Visual Studio we’re all paid options with prices greater than $100.
I accidentally spilled a latte into my M1 MacBook Pro, which cost me $2000 to buy. At that point I decided to just forget about Apple and their entire ecosystem because it is designed to abuse everyone. $99/year, no source code for any of the stuff I'm struggling with, no access to any of the people that can answer questions about the black boxes? No thanks.
What am I doing now? I am rocking a ThinkPad T440p from 2012, which only cost me $285. I spend all my time writing apps in C++ for Haiku OS and I have never been happier. Instead of pouring more of your life and energy into a corporation that has labored tirelessly to destroy your freedom, please consider contributing to the commons instead.
Back when I developed iOS apps, I experienced a lot of pain (especially when everything was covered by an NDA). But I find it pretty bizarre to abandon an ecosystem because you spilled coffee on your expensive device.
I've never understood the reasons that would push a developer to use an Apple device, given how unreasonably constrained they are.
Gotta get ready to have to pay a 'microtransaction fee' to edit one image one time in my own computer. While also paying a subscription for: the hardware, the electricity, the internet, the operating system/app store, and finally (coming soon) each click (or however the most profit is made) on the actual app/program for image editing.
not looking forward to getting triple (then quadruple, and so on until we revolt?) charged (hardware, electricity, internet) for doing things with "my own" computer. then again, it's just like taxes.
Yes the restrictions on being able to install your own apps on your own devices suck.
On the other hand, the headline is over dramatic. Apple was including Xcode with their OSes without additional cost when MSDN was charging several k/year for the same.
Also HN: "I can do whatever I want with this Apple product. It's insecure. It's terrible!"
I've never owned an Apple product in my life, and this is yet another reason to stay far away from the Apple ecosystem.
It's fairly obvious. I've exited the Apple ecosystem and I still see the appeal. "It just works." It may not be your cup of tea, but for millions of others it does the job without a lot of fuss.
I just looked it up, the Windows Developer Program seems to still charge fees to join.
https://www.nordicsemi.com/About-us/BuyOnline?search_token=n...
So why is hardware "worth it" and a software platform "isn't?"
Too hard ? Well, they know that, which is why they know you will pay regardless.
> So basically, I pay a yearly fee to get access to their SDK? Most manufactures provide that to you for free because they really want you to build apps for their platform.
This is a classic case of hyper-focusing on the bottom-line cost of something, and ignoring all of the other costs. Windows 11 comes with ads in the search box. Do you see how that's related to XCode costing $99/year? No? It should be obvious.
Apple’s apps have ads for third parties (App Store) and to upsell their own services (Music, iCloud). They’re also allegedly working on adding ads to Maps: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/08/15/apple-could-bring-ads-t...
The walled gardens have seriously screwed up the open internet and i'm kinda salty about it.
Am I the only one that found it weird to assign a gender to "a programmer". 'Him' & 'her' are both weird sounding. It should be 'them'.
I appreciate they're trying to be woke, but it falls flat.
Apple's main feature is being locked down.
If I want to develop freely on my phone I'll use a OS made for that.
With that said after experiencing "hobby" quality android apps (and worse) I am fine with the higher bar of entry to iPhone. iPhone just works, android can be tinkered with.
Accept them for what they are designed to do and use the one that suits you.
