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Comment by silvestrov | Hacker News Reader

I think Apple needs to be very careful about not loosing the developers.

Because if Android/Linux someday becomes they best developer platform (however unlikely), Apple will have real trouble. When the good developers loose interest in a platform it becomes very difficult for it to survive.

And good developers results in not just good apps. It's also recommendations to friends, support when something doesn't work or needs to be explained, and it's advertising that's much more powerful than the advertising you can buy.

All the money and ads Microsoft put into MS Phone did nothing because it didn't bring developers. Same with Blackberry and Nokia because those platforms were never developer friendly.

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+lose/losing

I think they've lost many of them already aside from those who need to stay on MacOS because that or iOS is what they're writing for. Hence the tone of so many of these articles.

How long are the rest going to wait on disappointing refreshes that move in the wrong (or no) direction? It's too hard to be enthusiastic about the platform in the way you could around the time of 17" Macbooks.

That's a huge losing strategy Apple has taken for years. Locking people into hardware with proprietary software that doesn't make even basic good-faith attempts at cross-platform compatibility.

The only reasons there's an occasional older-generation video editor working on a mac is because of a. inertia and b. proRes. That video format is finally workable on PC thanks to FFmpeg, but it uses terminal tools (or a couple very terrible GUIs written by the community) and it's going to finally nail that coffin shut.

That and the fact that proRes is technically already obsolete. There are already better options that are cross-platform, but "best practices" is often a code-word for tradition. It will change in time.

The whole purpose of a video codec is to share video across platforms. That's what a codec is. ProRes being locked into mac hardware was a real dick move, and a lot of video people back in the day didn't recognize it and got all smug about how capable their mac was. Yeah, it runs anything except proRes because other developers understand that codecs need to be widely compatible. Apple was the only one who didn't get that memo.

I think Linux has been the best developer platform for a long time.

Not if you want to target the most profitable mobile platform....

Fair point

On the condition that you're a web developer or develop exclusively for unix servers.

Very true

"Because if Android/Linux someday becomes they best developer platform (however unlikely)"

Google should release a Chromebook optimized for best Android development experience.

And best web development experience.

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