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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.
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.
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?
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.
It would rather be the other way around Win X => Mac OS X. MS did some progress thanks to the new CEO Nabilla. Mac OS did not happen to have deep changes with Cook. Mac OS is still the best "everyone" OS though. (and Linux the best kernel, but that's another story)
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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?
I think you missed the overall point: The App Store sucks because it's polluted by shovelware crap apps. But Apple may also muscle out the good apps because they don't conform to opaque requirements. I mean how long has it taken Apple to permit, for example, Swype? I also know a developer who wanted to make something akin to VB for iPhones, but iPhones don't allow the arbitrary execution of code. So he had to hodge-podge something together with XML and JS running in the browser that doesn't work anywhere near as well as a real interpreter or compiler. Apple, being the middleman, shapes the App Store. Sometimes at the exclusion of really good software. You get the worst of both worlds. You get the useless apps that some developer crapped out and you don't get the good apps that may be a better way of doing some native function (e.g. the part of the phone the user is most likely to encounter.)
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...
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.