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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.
The famous example was El Reg.
IMO, The Register hasn't been hurt by much (if at all) from it, truth be told.
They've gained a solid reputation as a site that pulls no punches in the IT industry, meaning that if you want real news, you go there as one of your first sources of information. It's been around for a very long time, and readers still flock to it based on that more than anything else. It's still (IIRC) one of the premiere tech news sites in the UK, in spite of any love lost from Apple. Hell, I'm (admittedly) generally pro-Apple on a technical level (I put 'em 2nd behind Linux), but I still stop there first out of sheer respect for their reporting on tech.
I think many people underestimate the value of a site's reputation. If I want rah-rah Cupertino-flavored cheerleading, I'd go to appleinsider.com. If I want breathless vapid bullshit that's not much more than a regurgitation of $tech_corp PR releases, I'd go read ZDNet, CNET, Gizmodo, or their ilk. That said, I want real news and insight, so I hit up El Reg as one of my first stops**.
I know that I'm not alone... I can usually tell who has an effing clue in tech by the sites they recommend for getting tech news or analysis, and I calibrate my respect for that person's abilities accordingly.
There's another aspect that TFA ignores: big tech corps rely as much on the news sites as the news sites rely on them. If a company is petty and vendetta-happy towards the press, they will quickly find their attitude reciprocated, and then find themselves awash in bad press the moment they stumble.
** ...well, that and to see if they have a new BOFH up. :)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
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.