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Developers and the Fear of Apple
An anonymous reader writes: UI designer Eli Schiff has posted an article about the "climate of fear" surrounding Apple in the software development community. He points out how developers who express criticism in an informal setting often recant when their words are being recorded, and how even moderate public criticism is often prefaced by flattery and endorsements.
Beyond that, the industry has learned that they can't rely on Apple's walled garden to make a profit. The opaque app review process, the race to the bottom on pricing, and Apple's resistance to curation of the App Store are driving "independent app developers into larger organizations and venture-backed startups." Apple is also known to cut contact with developers if they release for Android first. The "climate of fear" even affects journalists, who face not only stonewalling from Apple after negative reporting, but also a brigade of Apple fans and even other journalists trying to paint them as anti-Apple.
Beyond that, the industry has learned that they can't rely on Apple's walled garden to make a profit. The opaque app review process, the race to the bottom on pricing, and Apple's resistance to curation of the App Store are driving "independent app developers into larger organizations and venture-backed startups." Apple is also known to cut contact with developers if they release for Android first. The "climate of fear" even affects journalists, who face not only stonewalling from Apple after negative reporting, but also a brigade of Apple fans and even other journalists trying to paint them as anti-Apple.
So what? Let them stonewall everyone, soon enough there won't be anyone left to talk about them.
And that can only be a good thing.
Haven't had the same experience; as a developer, we found apple to be particularly powerful, robust, and reliable versus the PCs we had prior. Then again, I'm pretty upset with Yosemite, and it's been years, so maybe the environment on the other side of that coin has changed in the interim.
I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't give a crap about what 99% of developers do or say.
The article says,
Why do Millennials tend to get so worked up about negativity? Why do they see it as a bad thing, even in cases when it's perfectly relevant and appropriate?
Typical Hacker News discussion is a great example of this. If anyone isn't gushingly positive about somebody else's work, even when this work is total crap, they'll be torn a new one and likely downvoted. They'll be labeled as "detractors" or as being "disingenuous", and basically shunned.
It's like Millennials can't handle any sort of criticism, even when it's completely correct and deserved.
Why are Millennials so often so thin-skinned?
Oh dear is the big bad bully beating up on you and taking your lunch money ?
Then stop fawning around after them, grow a pair and USE SOMETHING ELSE.
This sounds likes the whining of battered spouses "Oh I know they broke my nose again but I know they can change".
There's a reason we have multiple operating systems.
Apple are dying fast developers dont need to card and can say whatever they like. Most say apple sucks balls so there stupid story teller of crap. Apple are a dead and very dead company, they are dead. dead. dead.
It sounds like you're talking about Apple hardware rather than Apple as an organisation...given that the article is about the latter, you're kind of comparing apples with oranges (no pun intended....oh, OK, maybe just a bit intentional)
It's just the way I *am*
| stonewalling from Apple after negative reporting, but also a brigade of Apple fans and even other journalists trying to paint them as anti-Apple. Negative reporting on Apple is painted as anti-Apple. Film at 11.
I'm toning down my (hopefully) constructive criticisms about many things.
Criticizing the USA, even if just for reminding the great values on which the nation was built upon, is labeled almost immediately as anti-American.
As a foreigner from a country which has its own problems, I guess I can do without such kind of retaliation. Trying to help someone and being called creep is not funny.
Even *here* things work that way -- try to complain about registered guys automatically getting score 1 or 2.
The exception is Linux, where some ordinary guy can point out problems and Linus does not try to put make up on them; instead the ones involved can expect "full sincerity" from him. This is why I personally expect him to be able to freely express what he thinks, so that we can, too, and don't have the need to flatter anyone to say something is broken.
Competitors gonna compete! I built my app for a competitor first and now they won't talk to me? Oh noes!
That's some grade-A whining right there.
Apple OS quality now matches M$
Yep, yep, sorry... Apple (as an organization) has consistently delivered hardware that we could count on, met or surpassed our needs (and alternative vendors), etc... then again, we haven't had any trouble with them when delivering apps for googleplay and ios side by side (re, the article), but they're not centric to our organization's offerings just yet, either.
At least in the fourth article, the one posted. I read the first three and found them to be largely unconvincing. I think you can like the flat look or not, like Material Design (barely mentioned, but brought up a few times) or not, and that's cool. But one of the main thrusts of his argument in the first three articles was that the defense of these designs was riddled with 'artspeak', a nonsense language used to dissuade criticism. I don't dispute it; I like Material Design (Android user here) but having watched the Material Design sessions from I/O 2014, I definitely got annoyed at all the 'artspeak' going on from the lead guy at Google (Duarte I think his name is). What's funny is that what rubbed me the wrong way about him was how 'Apple-ish' he sounded, so go figure.
But back to the first three articles -- they seemed riddled with a different kind of 'artspeak'. Churlishing comparing the simplish people imagery from Google with Children's books and comparing Apple's design to the child who can paint like Pollock didn't feel particularly high-brow.
Still, the over-arching point that I felt was useful was that criticism is not well-received at Apple (or Google from the sounds of it). That's a point worth dwelling on, especially since Apple in particular has the reputation of having the 'zealots' come out in force whenever anyone says anything ill of Apple. It was quite interesting to hear in the fourth article that -- unless I misunderstood it? -- there's someone at Apple whose job is to rile up the crazies when they get wind of that kind of thing on the interwebz.
But ultimately, the discussion about the problems of the App Store is more interesting. The 'race to the bottom' is something anyone with half a brain can see, and anyone who's a developer looks at that and must feel some gnawing fear. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like we're all pushed to mobile (if you're not on mobile, you're out of touch!) and when I look at the market, it gives me the willies. I don't think the Google Play Store is doing any better in that regard either. Worse, I don't have the foggiest idea of how to correct the problem, not even one that would take Herculean effort from either company to employ.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
As a developer, it is the performance that counts, so no Apple stuff. Easy as 1-2-3.
Apple users don't think like that. For them it's a status symbol and a sign that they're truly dedicated to the cult. They'll not only happily overpay for the latest version of whatever Apple is hocking, they'll STAND IN LINE FOR HOURS for the privilege. Most Apple users aren't making a logical decision, they're making an emotional one.
Apple isn't a technology company. They're a marketing company and religious cult that also happens to make technology.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Climate of fear? Really?
I could buy Apple being more robust or more reliable (because it's probably WinDOS we're talking about here) but the idea of the PC being less powerful just sounds like you swimming in the kool-aid.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The 'race to the bottom' is just utterly normal for any market with lots of competition. The only way to escape then is setting yourself apart enough to command higher prices instead of trying to undercut the cheapest offers and this in itself is a highly competitive field (as in: works only for a few apps, not for all).
Face it, apps are like cups of coffee: Either you sell just coffee and people will buy the cheapest one or you manage to add some (real or subjective) value to your cups of coffee so you can sell with better margins.
But yes, it's almost impossible to make a living from $0.99 apps.
Marco's comments, and other valid criticisms of Apple get taken way to seriously by the mainstream press and distort the intent and strength of the criticisms. Apple does many things right, they do some things wrong; in trying to correct behaviour you need to have it be correctible, not merely a bitch session of unaddressable issues without resolution.
If you criticize your child for making a poor decision you don't subsequently publish that criticism in national newspapers...
Find me a developer willing to go on the record about anything with a statement not written by PR and I'll show you someone who either already has a net worth in the high six/seven figures or is exiting the industry.
If they are being arseholes on this kind of level surely the FTC should get involved the way the did when MS were being arseholes.
The difference between MS & Apple is MS just want your money Apple seem to want your soul too.
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Remember Apple is the same company that collaborates with the Chinese government to censor talk about freedom. Apple is in this business to win, and if they have to trample all the little people to make a few more bucks, or morally support brutal regimes such as the Chinese Communist party, so be it.
This entire aritcle reads like a google-android-freetard fantasy. You guys so desperately want to believe that apple will fail that you are now making up even more endless lies and exagerations to try to make it a reality. Slashdot fucking sucks and I hope Apple takes a good hard look at why they are allowed free reign to post stories like this where iPhone and iPad users can see them.
Considering my macbook pro has outlasted the top of the line HP laptops I owned at only about 15% of a premium? Yeah, it's just all status.
Hate on Apple all you want to for whatever irrational reasons but Apple hardware is fantastic. That, in itself, makes it worth the price.
The whole Apple ecosystem is built, designed and operated like a cult. People on both sides of debate frequently refer to it as a "Church". It funnels more and more money from the fanatical congregation into the pockets of the leadership through convincing them that they absolutely, positively *need* to upgrade to the next Operating Thetan, erm, I mean "version". Seriously, Scientology could take lessons from them. WTF did you expect?
Forget to put on our tinfoil hat and take our medication this morning did we?
Maybe they just want to be liked...in the Facebook sense...not in the real world sense.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
Yep, yep, sorry... Apple (as an organization) has consistently delivered hardware that we could count on, met or surpassed our needs (and alternative vendors)
Devils Advocate here, look what Apple did by gutting the hardware specs of the latest release of the Mac Mini. In addition they had slowly been morphing their hardware into something that is pure commodity - no user changeable RAM, Flash etc so you have to pay the full Apple price for those items when you buy the complete system, and you are limited by what they offer on the Apple store. As a result their hardware offerings are becoming less desirable every year to the point that I am considering that my next apple computer will be a hackintosh.
And I say that with 2 Apple computers, an iPad, an iPod touch and an iPod nano on my desk (and a Mac Mini in the other room)
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Oh for fuck's sake...
That's it. I'm done. Today is my last visit to Slashdot. I've been here since the beginning (and not as an AC) and back in the day I was all onboard with the Microsoft hate. Yay, Linux on the Desktop Forever! Hell, I used to work as an embedded Linux dev. I ported kernel modules to new architectures and even contributed a couple patches. I earned my open source wings and fought the good fight against proprietary corporate bullshit.
But then, something funny happened. Apple came along and fucking delivered on Unix on the Desktop - something that Linux *STILL* hasn't been able to do. If that wasn't enough, they followed up with a smartphone that was ACTUALLY smart ... and didn't require a master's degree in obscure Linux window managers to operate (Hello Nokia n810 and n900!). What have *you* done recently, Slashdot crowd?
I'm sick to fucking death of the irrational hate for Apple here. It's irritating as all fuck since no one has provided a better alternative. As for the Apple store, "developer slave labour", blah blah blah - Apple didn't invent the race to the bottom price wars. That was capitalist developer behaviour all on its own. Too many people jumping on a successful platform with poor software to offer - if you can't improve quality to sell enough copies, you drop the price. End of story.
You know what all this Apple hate is? Jealousy. Jealousy from Linux devs and sysadmins who have spent their lives being told that their way is better, only to have discovered that it actually isn't. I was one of you once, so I understand where this is coming from. But get over it. Move on. Stop railing against a platform that actually *works* for the majority of its users. If you think you can do better, then fucking do it, or shut up and get off your soap box.
I'll diss Apple publicly anywhere, anytime. Their walled garden represents easily one of the top 3 threats to computing freedom, and if you're a developer they're nothing but bad news - a nasty middleman who will dictate what your app can do and take your money for the privilege of doing it. For developers, the app store is a microcosm of the American dream, they'll tell you that you can make it on merit, but only a tiny minority will, the rest will just tread water and only enrich Apple in the process.
For users, it's the worst of '90s computing powered by the latest technology - a store full of shitty shovelware that you have to pay for or be annoyed by ads or restricted by a "trial version." And now you can suffer the latest shovelware technologies such as "freemium" gaming and rampant privacy violation! But because it's on a tablet this time, they think it's OK for some reason...the dumb fucks.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Let's be honest, this behavior of a company shunning a person/publication because they criticized the company isn't new. Many companies do this all the time. Electronic and car companies employ have been employing this behavior for quite some time. I'm not saying it's right, it's just the way business is. The company is in the market of selling something and if you bad mouth it or hurt the company, why should they give you access to them or their products. Now the difference is that developers are actually providing something that can help the companies sell more products. But from Apple's perspective there are new developers that can replace any that decide to leave. I imagine that they don't want to lose those developers, but right now it's not hurting their bottom line.
I think with people like Marco Arment and other people that were mentioned in the article, they know some of the guys that are working on iOS or MacOS and may of felt bad cause they criticized their work. As a developer my self, I never want to release a buggy product and work my hardest to fix as much as I can, but sometimes that choice is out of my hands. And obviously given that some of these people make their living off of writing about Apple, I think it's understandable they may be concerned that their words could hurt their reputation with the company and thus their living could be impacted. But that's a risk when you take a stance on something that impacts someone else.
If things get bad enough there's an actual 'revolt' against the platform, that would be something.
Agreed though there is no evidence I can see that such an event has happened or is likely in the near term.
Am I right in thinking the iPhone market-share is decreasing?
No. Apple's marketshare has been remarkably consistent for about 5 years. Apple also gets >50% of the smartphone industry profits which is arguably more important.
Whatever will we do without the sweet sound of your constant whining?
"Performance" in that context is highly subjective. Apple stuff does what I want pretty much out of the box; Android phones don't. For some people, it will be the other way around. These days I have more money than time to dick around with devices, so I am willing to pay top euro for whatever device works best for me, even if it is overpriced (in terms of profit margin).
As a developer, I understand that the race to the bottom is even worse on the Play store, at least it was a while ago, perhaps the App Store has caught up by now.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I have been around here a long time too. Never seen an Apple product that seemed good enough to justify the high price. When I was given Apple kit at work for a development project I found the restrictions they imposed on what I could do with it - in order to preserve their control and profits - frustrating and damaged my productivity.
I found the skeuomorphic interface annoying and inferior to what I was used too with GNOME on Linux.
I don't hate Apple products - I just don't think they are any good.
Jobs was heavily into the kind of 'eastern religion' where you go spend a month with an expensive Guru. If he hadn't gotten started by successfully selling blueboxes to steal long distance time from the phone companies, you might today pass him by at the Airport beating on a drum.
Yeah, way to paint hundreds of millions of people with a brush that is appropriate for maybe 500 people.
For every one person who stands in a line, there are 100 that think that guy is an idiot, but still prefer to use Apple products to the competition. But go on trying to paint the picture that everyone that uses their stuff is some zealot that kneels facing Cupertino five times a day. That grew old in the late 90s.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Aluminum works just as well and you don't have to order it from a Scientific Reagents Supply House.
And if you look into the memes surrounding what you typed above, you'll find that the tinfoil hat stuff refers to the cult members.
And Steve should have taken his meds. If he hadn't been such a crackpot cultist he'd likely be alive today.
I concur completely on your description of that age group. Sad it is, and quite disturbing. I've noticed over the last 5-10 years how a sort of "groupthink fog" has enshrouded Millenials.
A groupthink fog engendered by conforming to the whims of "social", instead of thinking for themselves.
However, I must point out, anyone who would be under the 24/7 influence of the smartphone/app/FB/twitter/texting paradigm they have been brought up in would end up the same way.
Interesting times indeed.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Has learned?! A priori the walled garden was counter to everyone else's interests, bar none. You didn't have to to be a Nintendo developer to see they were teaching companies how to become the rest of the industry's enemies.
A walled garden always means "fuck you." It never means anything else than "fuck you." And if you buy into a walled garden, you're saying "fuck me."
You don't need experience with Apple on this; it's not something you need to learn. It's in your face before you start. If you need to learn it, then you're probably unable to learn it. I just don't think it's at all credible that any developer "learned" the walled garden was bad. It's too much like asking "will the gunshot to my skull harm me?"
Not at all, the parallels are pretty obvious if you think about it and as a business model it's working very well for Apple just as it has for many religions. They're not the only organization doing this, far from it, but Apple is just so much better at it than anyone else around at present. Steve Jobs wasn't some real-world parallel of Tywin Lannister who shat high-value dollar bills; those tens of billions in cash Apple is sitting on came from people who paid into the cult by buying Apple's hardware, and in many cases bought essentially the same hardware all over again just because the version number changed and a few things got slightly better... then did so again... and again. They didn't *really* need to, but they were obviously convinced that they had to, so just like a cult in other words.
I'm not faulting it; it's clearly working very well for Apple and their shareholders, but acting shocked and surprised that breaking ranks with such a setup puts you on the receiving end of a fatwa or jihad (to stick with religious parallels) from those still on the inside? Those are the people that are off their meds.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Come on. Not so big of a deal.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Their walled garden represents easily one of the top 3 threats to computing freedom,
How do you figure? Not saying you are right or wrong but I'm not seeing a credible argument backing up this assertion.
and if you're a developer they're nothing but bad news - a nasty middleman who will dictate what your app can do and take your money for the privilege of doing it.
"Nasty middleman"? As if Apple provides no value here. Apple created the f-ing platform, both hardware and software as well as the distribution system. It is WILDLY successful and popular. If you don't like how they do it, go somewhere else. Android or Blackberry or Microsoft are all options. Whether you like it or not, Apple reviewing apps does keep malware and other shitty or problematic apps out of the ecosystem. Are there downsides to this? Absolutely. Is Apple sometimes unfair? No doubt about it. But let's not pretend that there is no benefit either. Apple has created something that a huge number of people value very highly and are willing to pay for. There is nothing wrong with being a middleman as long as you are providing value and Apple clearly does to a lot of people. Maybe you don't value what they are selling (and that's totally fine) but many others do.
For developers, the app store is a microcosm of the American dream, they'll tell you that you can make it on merit, but only a tiny minority will, the rest will just tread water and only enrich Apple in the process.
Let's be frank. 99.999% of the apps on the app store are crap (see Sturgeon's law) and do not deserve any of our money. Just because you put something out there doesn't mean it is automatically valuable to anyone else. If someone is delusional enough to think that developing a crappy piece of software entitles them to anything then I have no sympathy.
For users, it's the worst of '90s computing powered by the latest technology - a store full of shitty shovelware that you have to pay for or be annoyed by ads or restricted by a "trial version."
So every developer is supposed to live the dream and somehow be part of the 1% and they all develop undiscovered gems but you admit that most of the software is actually crap not worthy of purchase. So which is it? You're contradicting yourself. If the developers develop something worth buying, people tend to buy it. If they make shovelware then they deserve to lose money. Neither is Apple's fault or responsibility. Apple just makes both possibilities available. It's up to the developer to make something people will actually give a shit about.
the great American company, modeled after the great american government.
control with fear. then tell people what the need and desire
I'm surrounded by Apple users. iPads, iPhones, iThis and iThat...
Have been for years.
I was going to get an iPhone after my BB became annoying...
I got a Galaxy instead.
Yes, they are both very tied into their respective "camps". And I understand the evil ways of Google too well...
However, I cannot stand Apples UI.
I have never understood the appeal of being forced to do things a certain way, when there are other devices that allow multiple ways to achieve things on a device.
Never understood the appeal.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
This stuff is there for them.
It is working for them.
Developer's see a problem in this, but MBA's don't..
Until/unless a competitive threat comes along, they are heading down the IBM/uSoft path of we are the best so we don't have to pay attention to staying that way.
The problem is natural to human nature.
Hunrgy ==> pay attention to customers and details
Fat => why worry, be lazy
Mr. Jobs may have been a sort of mystical antidote to this problem.
If so, they really need to regain this mentality.
Sacrificing a few chickens probably won't help.
But a few MBA's might?
Page one of Google search for "Apple Church" throws up The church of Apple. No shit. And a parody Apple news site. I like this one. Plus a couple of serious articles full of worlds like devotion, mecca, evangelical fervor, reverence... you get the idea.
Human Rights, Article 12: Freedom from Interference with Privacy, Family, Home and Correspondence
Must be the magic fairy dust foxconn spreads on the exact same parts and the competing PC.
Apple runs a fine line between giving what we want/need versus equipment that forces people to upgrade.
If Apple wanted to give customers what they wanted, they would be selling a "Mac Pro Mini" with an easy to replace SSD card (open a panel, pop the card out, similar to RAM upgrades in some iMacs), replacable video card, easily upgradable CPU, and so on. The enterprise would get the XServe back with a solid drive array, Infiniband, and software that would allow connected Macs (via Infiniband) to use each other's drive arrays, similar to how EMC Isilon nodes work.
However, Apple learned its lesson from the early 1990s and Power Computing. Apple makes very high quality machines... but they are not going to be bleeding-edge fast machines. Macs end up with just a helping of RAM and drives to have a usable computer... and not much more. For example, with virtualization, even an entry level machine needs 8-16 gigs of RAM because it is a wise thing to do one's Web browsing and other applications in separate containers [1]. The latest MacBook shows this exactly. It is decent... but expandability is extremely limited [2].
Apple knows that people will use the machines until the version of OS X is not supported, then will toss them and buy a new one. This has helped to keep them top dog for over a decade now.
[1]: I use that term loosely, and a good container can be a jail, VM, sandbox, or Linux partition (Docker). The main thing is that the browser is separated from everything else so when it gets compromised, the damage is limited.
[2]: I'm sure the MB will create a market for mini-NAS devices, maybe even BlueTooth 4.2 hard disks that use Wi-Fi direct that supposedly gets up to 250 Mbps.
IMO this is an example of exclusive dealing arrangements and restricting free trade.
15 USC Code 1 Trusts..
Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.
From that, $100 mil is a slap on the wrist, wait, a mosquito bite for Apple.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/we...
Exclusive dealing agreements require a retailer or distributor to purchase exclusively from the manufacturer. These arrangements make it difficult for new sellers to enter the market and find prospective buyers, thus depressing competition. However, because companies widely-use requirements contracts, which essentially are exclusive dealing agreements, for purposes that promote competition, exclusive dealing arrangements only face rule of reason scrutiny..
Section 2 makes illegal a firm's refusal to deal with another firm if the refusing firm refuses for the purpose of trying to monopolize the market. Meanwhile, section 1 prohibits a group from refusing to deal with a particular firm. A group refusal to deal is known as a group boycott. Because of seemingly contradictory Supreme Court decisions over the years, the question of whether group boycotts are subject to the rule of reason or a per se rule has been left murky.
Apple with it's walled garden can certainly dictate who's allowed in but I think there could be legal grounds for challenging that in court. Sure Apple can say "we're protecting our customers" but at the same time they're restricting competition and free access to markets, namely the app store.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
In an article about 'developer fears of Apple' it probably isn't tactful to boast about the loot Apple rakes off the top.
Who'se boasting? I have no affiliation and no particular affinity with regard to Apple. The fact that a few developers are terrified of Apple is not evidence of a widespread problem and the fact that Apple is hugely profitable is pretty much the worst kept secret on the planet.
It isn't expensive anymore to use an eCommerce framework to sell direct to your customers.
Care to wager on that? (Disclosure: I'm a certified cost accountant.) Just because you can set up some software to do ecommerce does NOT mean that it is cheap to reach consumers. In virtually any software company you care to mention, only about 10-20% of cost is in engineering and development. The VAST majority comes of cost to a software company comes from Sales, General and Administration with Sales accounting for the lion's share. Doesn't matter what software company you mention from Microsoft on down to little tiny firms, the basic cost structure is roughly the same. Gross margins are usually somewhere between 60%-80% and net margins are somewhere between 10%-30% with sales and marketing making up most of the difference between the two margins. Microsoft for example spends about 2X as much on SG&A as they do on R&D. If you think selling software is cheap you have never tried to sell software on any sort of scale.
Selling software is not merely a matter of setting up an ecommerce platform. Even ignoring the technical issues, there has to be a reason for people to go there in the first place. That requires marketing (read $$$) even for a very good product, much less the shovelware that accounts for most mobile apps. You'll easily spend as much or more as Apple takes in most cases setting up a system that probably won't work as well and which almost definitely will be more annoying to customers.
Wait... are you stupid? "powerful ... versus the PCs we had prior." The right PCs are more powerful than any other commodity computer out there. You can replace everything or have it built that way to begin with. The drivers for video cards and other things are also better developed in most cases because that's where most of the money is.
So basically, as far as I can see, you're comparing $4,000 pro APL computers with $500 PCs and saying "OMG IT'S BETTARZ".
I'm pretty cheap, so I tend to run computers into the ground until it literally breaks. Of all the computers I've had in my family in the past 10-15 years, all but one of them is still working (ironically, the workstation / home server class Xeon desktop). This is coming from about 5 laptops, and 4 desktops. Hell, I'm typing this on a Pentium 4 class computer right now and it's perfectly fine...
We even have a Thinkpad from when IBM still owned the brand, and although it's slow sometimes (512MB RAM will do that) it's still working.
Compare that to the i Laptop failures due to Nvidia's shoddy craftmanship failures from 2 years ago... So yeah, not sure what you mean by being more robust...
I have one Sony mid-range laptop ($1,500 when it came out) that's running Windows Vista that's still working perfectly fine. A Pentium 4 Desktop (probably $1,000) that use to run XP now runs 7, also perfectly fine. I have a Compaq laptop from when they were Compaq ($500 when bought, think from Costco), use to run XP, now runs Win8. A ThinkPad from when IBM stilled owned it ($2500+).
To everyone else: this guy probably dropped his HP and ran it over with a car and then bought his i thing and proclaimed it better. LOL or for the more pedantic: My anecdotal one-off story is better than his one-off story =P
You mean Apple, the company that has built closed env for 30+ years, has always inflated prices of their equipment beyond 50% margin, and sues/attacks anyone that tries to build cheaper equipment for their HW ... is evil? Really, that is so surprising. Guess the sheep will wake up far too late to realize that they've given all their money, all their time, and all their children to a trillion dollar company that doesn't give a damn. Well done all. Way to end the human race.
How about these scared developers just target android and windows metro store and forget about apple, problem solved.
Fuck apple's walled garden approach
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
Apple is more robust? Tell that to the 100s of thousands of people with 2011 macbooks which overheat and die, even after multiple motherboard replacements. It has reached class-action status because Apple is unwilling to acknowledge any defect.
We have a 2011 macbook here that has had the motherboard replaced 4 times, and is now out of warranty and Apple wants $1200 to replace it again. Fortunately we found a place that will "re-ball" the chips that keep separating from the motherboard, for $250 a pop. Still quite horrible for a laptop that cost too damn much to begin with.
Apple is notorious for removing cooling to make their product more "beautiful". That is quite the opposite of "robust". Their latest macbooks have no fans at all, and I doubt that will go well for them in the long-run based on past experience. But, their laptops have to be "beautiful" or people won't buy them.
You're a troll, but you're not wrong.
... Something other than anecdotal evidence to be persuaded.
I find a number of facts to be in basic conflict in the report. Most developers can't make a living through the app store, yet they are afraid of Apple for some reason - even though they cannot make a living. First the App store makes it fairly simple for every tom, dick and harry to write an app and put it on the store shelves. They don't need to package it, they don't need to setup their own web-sales site.... The problem is that you have a bunch of app developers that think if they write some small app that a trail of customers will beat a path to them and buy it, they think that any stupid app will make money. A lot of small apps will drive down prices for those apps, the smaller the easier to make the app the more competition. I remember 30 years ago that there were many substantive applications to do some basic functionality... word processing. I don't know how many different ones were created, but there were quite a lot. I know my father had 9 installed on his Windows computer just to compare them himself (head of an institution) to see which ones were any good. Most of those companies went bankrupt quickly - even though there was substantive (much much more than most apps in the store) development put into them. Unfortunately the current generation seems to think they are somehow privileged and if they write something they should be able to make a living at it... it is not the way the world works. You have to compete, you have to invest time developing an app that you are passionate about, you have to risk losing time/money on the venture. You have to market your own app outside of the store, and you have to differentiate your product from all others. If you are really lucky and you do all those things correctly, then maybe you can be one of the few that can turn it into a viable business. What it strikes me is that there are a lot of cry babies out there that either have not invested enough or have enough skills to make a go of it. Apple does not owe you anything -- it is up to you to market it. You have to approach it like Apple would which means you have to differentiate your product and worth more to people to buy it than the other products -- even if the other products are lower priced. All the app store did was give you a place where someone can enter the credit card and buy it.... Apple does not owe you anything. As far as developers being afraid... guess what.... it is not that much different than normal business.... When I do business I don't go out of my way to stab companies that I am working with -- it is just not good business. I usually approach it with two faces.... one for when I am dealing directly - where I am more honest and then one that is a public face where I don't air any dirty laundry because it is not good business.
Really? I had to get a new battery for it, but my 2010 HP Envy 15 Macbook competitor is still running fine, and has a faster GPU than they ever had. And I've even been able to upgrade the RAM and replace the hard drive in it, hauled it with me on an airplane twice a week for over a year, and generally used the hell out of it.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Hate on Apple all you want to for whatever irrational reasons but Apple hardware is fantastic. That, in itself, makes it worth the price.
"better than HP" does not mean "fantastic". You've got to be better than the high-end Toshibas and Lenovos of the world, not just HPs. HPs have never been known for being particularly good, only for HP being willing to pack the highest-end parts into the machines. Their case design is usually beyond awful. That's one place Apple shines, but they're not the only ones.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Perhaps this was true at a time when Apple's user base was rather small, but they're shipping hundreds of millions of phones and far, far more computers than they ever had before. In the U.S. they have something near a 50% market share for smart phone purchases. Calling it a cult at that point seems more than a little disingenuous.
Haven't had the same experience; as a developer, we found apple to be particularly powerful, robust, and reliable versus the PCs we had prior. Then again, I'm pretty upset with Yosemite, and it's been years, so maybe the environment on the other side of that coin has changed in the interim.
Posting Anonymously to avoid messing up moderation:
I'm just curious as to exactly why you're upset with Yosemite, and what version did you run right before it?
So does half of all US smart phone consumers belong to a cult?
Samsung spends far more on marketing than Apple.
Ever since Jobs died there has been a lot of negativity about Apple. It's the kind of noise that used to surround Bill Gates and Microsoft. What happened? Is this negativity just a reaction to Apple's success or has something fundamentally gone wrong?
.... "Apple and its sycophants channel the Democratic party."
is that most people using Apple gear now never knew the old Apple (I'm the inverse: I no longer use Apple products except for one old Powerbook running Win 7.) The build quality died around the time the first iMac's came out (getting a new Mac used to be like getting a new Mercedes) and the attitude began to fail about the same time. Then OS X came along and the emperor tossed his last shred of underwear shortly thereafter.
I LOVED Apple. I wouldn't work on anything else for years, and I evangelized like a madman. When OS X appeared, I was happy at first: I actually liked Objective C. Then they froze out Metrowerks (who literally saved Apple 6 years before) in favor of their own tools (free and still not worth it); they went wild with fad libraries that were more trouble than roll your own, (I was safe there: I was burned by QuickDraw3D, saw what happened to the OpenDoc adopters.) Then their attitude changed to what it is today, and voila -- it's not fun to develop for Apple any more.
I'm proud to say that I recognized the truth behind this article early enough that I never considered developing for iOS - not liking my one iPhone helped, though.
Bing's first search result for 'Apple Church' is an app called 'Church' in iTunes. Go figure.
The second link is to the 'Church of Apple' site. First article there is one that absolutely gushes about the Apple Watch.
If Steve were alive the Watch would already be in the glass display case next to the Newton. But fans will gush, because it's a lifestyle, not a choice.
WHY would you expect HP *anything* to last?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
look what Apple did by gutting the hardware specs of the latest release of the Mac Mini.
Posting as AC to preserve moderation:
I wouldn't call the differences between the late 2012 and 2014 Mac mini a "gutting of the hardware specs".
Some people are butthurt about the move to soldered-in RAM (and I am kind of in that camp, too); but I really don't think that the change to a dual-core architecture is as much about "gutting specs" as it is an admission of heat-buildup issues with the quad-core CPUs. Note that you can BTO the new 'mini up to a 3.0 GHz i7 with "Turbo Boost" up to 3.5 GHz). Even at 2 vs. 4 cores, that isn't exactly a slow machine; OTOH, I have seen some pretty ugly benchmarks when comparing multicore performance between the 2012 and 2014 models, too, especially at the high-end of the CPU options (although curiously not at the low-level, where I would suspect the majority of the 'mini's sales are). Having said that, the GPU seems much snappier, boasting an up to 80% performance boost over the 2012 model. So maybe, for most applications to which the 'mini is suited, the tradeoff might not be as noticeable.
And you didn't mention that the 2014 Mac mini has two Thunderbolt 2.0 ports, and 802.11ac WiFi, which gives it far-faster data and display connectivity over the previous model.
So, all-in-all, I'd call the new 'mini to be better in most ways that matter to most of its target audience, and the return of the $500 price-point is just "right" for this product. Yeah, I'd like to have seen a quad-core BTO option; but I really think there must have been a heat and/or power-budget constraint that prevented that from being offered. In fact, a quick perusal of Google shows a lot of complaints regarding overheating 2012 Mac minis...
you can loudly proclaim "This sucks!" with no fears of reprisal from MS or the community. But god forbid you ask why you can't remove useless built-in iOS apps.
Do your homework before building a hackintosh. I've built several over the past five years, and Apple is quietly making them less compatible, at the moment by restricting iMessage and Facetime to machines with legitimate serial numbers. For my next machine, still a few years down the road, I'll save up the extra dollars and buy the one I want from Apple, properly outfitted from the start.
So... You're trying to prove the article's point with clever satire?
Compare that to the i Laptop failures due to Nvidia's shoddy craftmanship failures from 2 years ago... So yeah, not sure what you mean by being more robust...
And so now Apple (who I assume you mean by saying "i Laptop") is responsible for a VENDOR's "shoddy craftsmanship"?
You DO realize, of course, that many other brands of laptops had the same problem, for the same reason, right?
Must be the magic fairy dust foxconn spreads on the exact same parts and the competing PC.
No, it's the Quality Control, the Mechanical Design, and, oh yes, THE FUCKING OS, which, having to live in a Windows world at work, is far superior.
Why should this surprise anyone?...
Lucky you. I guess you weren't affected by the GPU failures in that line of laptops. Overheating is pretty common.
Forget to put on our tinfoil hat and take our medication this morning did we?
Can't think of a response the argument presented? Just resort to Ad Hominem attacks against the writer instead.
The story was submitted as anonymous, in order to avoid problem with Apple. I rest my case.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
The reality is that those things are actually becoming less important for the consumer market. I hate to be of the '8GB should be enough for anybody' ilk, but for the kind of things that people are actually doing, that's probably true.
Think of it this way: the Macbook is the laptop you should be recommending to MOST people that ask you for advice. You only deviate from that advice if they have some sort of restriction or requirement. There are times where you might want to recommend the air, and for nerds you should recommend the pro. But the stock Macbook is going to be my recommendation every time without any extra info.
Similarly, if you need something with upgradable RAM, you're simply not the market for a Mac Mini anymore. I had my Mom buy a new Mini last year when her old one kicked it. She will never need to upgrade the RAM. For the things she does (playing MP3s, watching YouTube, email) the machine is vastly overpowered for her needs. That they make it in very few configurations is less of an issue because it's reached appliance status. You may as well complain that your fridge doesn't come with an upgradable cooling unit and spare bays for future extensions. It's just not that sort of tool when you're talking to most people.
For my part, I'm still on an early 2009 iMac with a 2013 Mac Mini that runs headless. 8GB of RAM really IS enough for 100% of what we do at home. I'd only want more RAM because it's one of those things that it's always nice to have more of just so you don't have to care about what's running, but it's not really necessary. I'm already running a lot more things than I need to.
"the industry has learned that they can't rely on Apple's walled garden to make a profit."
Profit was never guaranteed. Anywhere. I wonder what part of the lessons in economics and capitalism did these "Industry" people miss out on? Did they fail the class too? Did they just skip class all together?
And I'm sure you'd like them to get off your lawn too.
Generally speaking when people think young people have changed, what they're not realising is they themselves have changed. Young people aren't different, and neither are older people. You've just moved from one set to the other, and so your outlook on others has changed.
http://www.macworld.co.uk/news... Looks like you were in for a treat but your blatant and unjustified negativity towards Apple has just disqualified you. Now get a PC and start complaining to Dell. -Tim
Fanboys wars, Apple has their armies, Google has their followers so do Microsoft and Linux.
It makes it really hard to have a real conversation about the shortcomings of any of them :-/
IOW, he's afraid that moronic FUDsters misquote what he said to attack Apple - and the fucking bad article intentionally does just that. Spreading FUDS - Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Stupidity. And the stupid load hit the posters in this discussion big time.
Must be the magic fairy dust foxconn spreads on the exact same parts and the competing PC.
Or the manufacturing Foxconn uses, which they say costs more than that of competing PCs.
I still have an Acer Extensa 5620 that serves me well and runs everything. My father has a MacBook that nearly overheated and died after less than a year on account of a shoddy kext. I don't fool myself into thinking my loyalty is tied to either Asus or Apple. Everyone releases crap, and everyone releases good stuff. Well, generally :).
Still waiting for standards that make upgradable laptops a reality. If/when that happens these ludicrous debates will be a thing of the past. Anyone else with this coward? ;)
You still have no way of operating the GUI elements. Phones have a touchscreen interface.
When the phone is in "pretend to be a desktop" mode, with a Bluetooth keyboard and an external monitor, its touch surface would behave like a trackpad. People who have used Apple's Magic Trackpad would have little trouble adapting.
And in carrying all those bits, you might as well have brought a laptop
I didn't carry a monitor. I carried a phone, a ZAGGkeys Flex keyboard, and an HDMI video cable, and I'm using someone else's monitor that happens to be in front of me.
Samsung spends far more on marketing than Apple.
They have done that in the past, at times massively. Right now Samsung mobile revenues are down, and if they spent the same money on advertising they spent in the past, the would actually lose money. Profits are down as it is.
The semiconductor part that has actually grown in revenue and profit doesn't really need that much marketing.
Now tell me what machine beats a 15" Retina MacBook Pro.
The main thing that's happened is that simple horizontal applications are approaching a price of $0. The answer is don't code simple horizontal applications if you are looking to make money. That doesn't mean the whole model is broken but that there is massive oversupply of particular types of applications.
Apple app store payouts are about $5b growing at a rate of about $1b / year. I'm having a hard time seeing a medium sized and rapidly growing revenue stream as not existing. It is absolutely concentrated though that's true. Where it isn't concentrated is money from vertical and custom applications which far exceed the app store payouts.
I could buy Apple being more robust or more reliable (because it's probably WinDOS we're talking about here) but the idea of the PC being less powerful just sounds like you swimming in the kool-aid.
As someone who did tech support for Macs many years ago, I cant buy them being more robust or reliable.
And this was back in the early 00's where suggesting a Mac had a problem meant Apple sent hired goons to your office. You didn't complain that it took two weeks to get a PSU for an Imac... because it was just better (TM).
Pretty much anything you can get from a Mac these days can be gotten from another manufacturer for less money... Except the wank factor of course.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
o /etc/hosts file listings of local web servers (ie 192.168.1.100 mysite.org) no longer work.
o PPC emulator is gone, so have to run virtual earlier OS in order to run all my PPC software (which otherwise works fine)
o PITA turning off the utterly stupid and broken "app nap" for nearly every realtime app after finding they won't run correctly
o UDP broadcast reception limited to one client (not a limit that makes sense, or is present, for instance, under linux)
10.6.8 -- the last OS version that supported PPC. I stuck with it as long as I could. Then I moved, and now I'm really, really sorry.
(not the original poster)
He sure isn't. My lady has an iPhone 5; I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 4. Guess what she's about to buy? Hint... not another iPhone... We both also have recent iPads. Quite familiar with iOS.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
There's a questionable assumption buried in that: The assumption it takes a year to put out an app. It certainly should not. Unless the developer really, really sucks. And in which case, perhaps that should be considered with regard to remuneration.
A good dev can put a working skeleton of an iOS app or a full blown mac app up in a matter of hours. I can do it in minutes. Filling it with whatever one wants it to do doesn't generally take all that long, certainly not a year, unless you're building something as extended and construct/art heavy as Angry Birds, and in that case... you're likely to make more than 50k.
Now, as for those who are filling the app store (Android too, I'm not discriminating) with 50mb apps that hardly do anything at all... well, there you go. Given the level of what they've produced, perhaps it does take them a year. But I can't say I'm terribly worried about them, either. :/
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It could be Apple hate, or, it could just be showing weaknesses in the Apple ecosystem. It could be self-righteousness, or it could just be reporting the reality of a situation. Don't be so quick to conclude one way or the other.
Apple have done some great things in the past, I'm sure we can all agree. You've certainly mentioned a few. It doesn't mean they're perfect, nor any other system out there. They've still got problems, and this Fear of Apple appears to be one of them. It can only lead to the downfall of Apple, so it's actually in their best interest to air the issue and possibly get a resolution out of it.
As for The Linux Desktop, technically speaking, it's ready. Been that way for years. Gnome and KDE deliver on the Desktop Experience well enough, I'd be comfortable recommending them to my parents. In fact, I have. My father uses a Gnome desktop, and he's fairly below average when it comes to computer literacy. The one thing holding back the Linux Desktop is marketing. That's where open source is the weakest. Convincing others that they need this product ... it's where open source fails, and Apple reigns supreme. Unfortunately, I don't see it changing any time soon.
Being a dev for over 40 years, I find MacBook and OSX to be the most rejuvinating experiance. I can dev for any enterprise platform that is relevant today. This is FUD at its best. Thanks MS... Someday the trolls will realize that you have to compete on your own merits, not by trying to make everyone else fail..
Used to be an avid Mac user back in the 90s. Then was forced to go Linux/Windows. Now I am finally back and its gotten so much worse. All the old good things about the mac are gone and the new features on the mac and iphone are every worse than what we had in the 90s! BTW I developed for Verizon/KDDI/DoCoMo/IBM and many others, so I can this for certainity. Apple is all hype now and no substance. Well I know the H/W people behind apple and they are doing a good job on the chips at least... its the software I am complaining about. But I must say Apple rocks over Nokia, Microsoft and Adobe.... but that's not saying much. And don't get me started.... I am ready to blast others too... I am the complainer about technology un-innovation in the world today. Too many clueless people making the calls as to what we are given in OSes and mobile platforms.
When I was shopping for a new laptop as my development machine last year, I bought an Apple MacBook Pro because it was about the same price as high-end PCs. Then I installed Ubuntu with rEFInd. I rarely use the OSX boot. It's made well, and dang it, everywhere I go all the kool kidz have Macs, but few of them are running Linux. My last two laptops were HPs that fell apart, they looked like they were in a demolition derby.
The new Intel motherboards only have 1 slot for double core, and don't have the slot for 4 cores. At least that's what I read while researching a purchase between mini 12 and mini 15. And heat as well. As was mentioned.
Awe isn't that sweet, now you two can stay locked in to an old OS because you won't be allowed to upgrade. LOL suckers.
Do your homework before building a hackintosh. I've built several over the past five years, and Apple is quietly making them less compatible, at the moment by restricting iMessage and Facetime to machines with legitimate serial numbers.
This. My Hack was fantastic (I built it to be able to have a proper, upgradeable graphics card on a "Mac"), but the fact that imessage no longer worked made it infeasible as a main machine.
Apple isn't the Deep State. It's MO is not to have "senior officials" make breathless claims to the WaPo or the NYTimes to be written down as fact in the Sunday edition. Their MO is to have the "big reveal" at a public event.
So 1) what you're talking about doesn't exist 2) ignores the plethora of clickbait in trolling Apple. See: John Dvorack in the 90's, or for the damn kids out there....just about any story on Slashdot. Like this one.
Because you're a Hateboi. Too bad Apple has placed at or near the top of hardware reliability since the Jurassic age.
If you're a sophist who thinks that a 7 lbs plastic brick is the same thing as a 3 lbs machine aluminum laptop because they have the same processor, sure. Comparable products cost comparable prices.
Your projection is noted. Look, Zombie Jobs isn't holding a gun to your head. If you don't like Apple products....try...not buying them. I have no use for a large-screen phone or one with a curved screen, but you don't see me whining at length about Samsung the company. I just buy what I want that does what I want.
Try it some time.
Foxconnn will build what you pay for. You want a cheap POS? They'll build you one. You want decent components that wont die two years after the warranty? They'll build that too.
Really. Everyone has their anecdotes, but Apple has long been at or near the top of hardware reliability.