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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.
I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't give a crap about what 99% of developers do or say.
They are worth 700billion dollars. What would you consider a not dead company?
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
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...
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?
Negativity == Troll.
We have an overall climate where disagreeing, dissent, saying negative things, criticism and any other negative feedback is becoming wrong. One is immediately labeled a Troll, flamebait or some other nonsense if one doesn't toe the group think line.
I am not saying that one should take knee-jerk insults as valid criticisms or dissent (ex. Linux Sucks!) but when someone raises something valid but against the groupthink, it gets rejected and the author insulted. People are sensitive to that and when you are on a site that has moderation, going against the norm gets you negative karma. You are thrown out.
And there's the double standard of feedback. A person making an initial claim, even with all the cites and data to back himself up, has to deal with the "you're an idiot" type of feedback with nothing to back it up - that is acceptable many times even here on Slashdot.
I also think social media and the web overall has made it too easy to take things out of context and distort a person's statements. So what happens, something that is perfectly valid in context gets trimmed down into a twitter post to be passed all over the World and the person who made the original statement is forever defending himself over something he never really said. Like criticizing the USA's Mid-East policy turns into "He hates America!" or in regards to Robert Reich and his work on income disparity, "He's a Communist!"
It's just getting to the point that having a rational discussion anywhere is becoming impossible and who really needs it.
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.
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?
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.
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 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?