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Comment by tarjei | Hacker News Reader

What I find odd is that no analysts are asking Tim about the direction Apple is taking wrt. to build quality and developer support.

To me, Apple seems to have chosen a direction that will push developers over to other platforms. This will not happen overnight, but I suspect that in 2-3 years time the guys who have to develop on Macs will be the ones groaning over their OS - not the Windows people.

The combo of too expensive hardware and low build quality on OSX + bad DX is Apples biggest threat at the moment.

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Success hides all problems. Didn't Apple just end their largest quarter to date? What would analysts be upset about? What would Apple think their problem is when they're making more money than ever.

Perspective is important here. I agree generally with this whole "Macs going downhill" theme, but this isnt new, and the market doesnt really care. I meant the infamous "Apple has lost the functional high ground" article was from beginning of 2015, after months of this sentiment going around last time https://marco.org/2015/01/04/apple-lost-functional-high-grou...

I think the same thing. Abandoning servers as it's not their main product is fine, but what about all those developers who want to build a basic CI system? For Android it's simple - a bunch of cheap Dell servers with Linux or something. But iOS? Most teams are using Mac Minis as servers, but they haven't been updated in years and are dual-core only, so they're not great options.

Past a certain number of OSX instances needed for testing, a lot of shops virtualize. The licensing can be a hassle, though. I suspect a lot of places that do this wouldn't pass an audit.

It will push OSX developers to other platforms. OSX likely serves the purpose (for Apple) of a Mac hardware value-add plus a revenue funnel into iPhones/iOS. At worst, OSX/Macs are basically a glorified iOS device dock. Even if the worst isn't true, though, there's very little incentive for Apple to spend resources on enticing developers onto OSX; they don't make much money/prestige off of it, and I'd be willing to bet that OSX app-store-distributed payware apps' revenue to Apple is a tiny, tiny fraction of what iOS apps get them.

TL;DR they need to attract developers onto iOS, not OSX, and developers are already plenty attracted to iOS because money.

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