Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lammy | Hacker News Reader

> Xcode Cloud requires you to push your repository to their servers […] You can't even synchronously wait on a build to finish - you have to set up a web server and listen for a webhook!

It's interesting how the outcomes of Apple's engineering decisions are coincidentally indistinguishable from an attack on general-purpose computing itself. I wonder how many more years it will be until they stop shipping me a compiler entirely (never worry about confusing Xcode updates again!!) and make Xcode Cloud the only way to write software for iOS devices and M1 Macs. LLVM's licensing means I'm not even entitled to the changes necessary to support their custom hardware. https://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

View on HN

> I wonder how many more years it will be until they stop shipping me a compiler entirely.

Probably never, especially with respect to Macs. I am beginning to feel like the cranky contrarian around here for continuing to argue that macOS will never be locked down to the degree iOS is, but I'm going to continue to argue it. You will always be able to develop locally on your Mac, always be able to get to a shell, always be able to install third-party apps without going through the App Store.[1]

But, Xcode Cloud (I nearly typed "Xcloud," hmm) might eventually become what they use as a solution to allow Xcode on the iPad. That would allow them to stick with their "iPads are app consoles" philosophy, even if it might be bending it a little.

[1] With the asterisk that I firmly believe there's a new OS that will replace both iOS and macOS down the road, and I'm not willing to make any strongly-worded predictions about its security model. Yet.

> You will always be able to develop locally on your Mac, always be able to get to a shell, always be able to install third-party apps without going through the App Store.

The infrastructure to grant/deny use of specific applications to individual users has existed in macOS for years if they wanted to use it that way. Their server just currently gives the same answer to all requests for the same signature.

https://eclecticlight.co/2020/11/25/macos-has-checked-app-si...

How about launching those applications totally privately — no network requests at all?

Spoiler: `sudo spctl --master-disable`. Luckily we're still allowed root on ARM Macs for now :)

Yes, I know. My argument is that they don't want to use it that way, not that they can't.

I don't think it's possible to know who wants what or who even contributes to such a decision today, much less who will in the future.

I can't definitively know, sure, but I can make guesses based on what I see, and what I see so far continues to match my model of how Apple thinks about Macs vs. iPads, even as Apple passes by obvious inflection points for changing things up if they wanted to (e.g., the shift to Apple Silicon, the macOS redesign in Big Sur).

In the future, though, we run into the footnote in my original comment that I said I'm not willing to make any strongly-worded predictions about yet. I'm still not. :)

But then why make iPads so insanely, ridiculously powerful?!

To run a simulator on it

That's kind of the unanswered question, yeah. I think the other answer of "to run a simulator" isn't impossible -- the M1 has virtualization capability of some sort on it, IIRC, which might let Apple create a fully sandboxed environment for development in a future release. (I know that goes against App Store policies, but Apple can change those policies at any time, and of course can give themselves an exception at any time.)

The other, and maybe more likely, answer, though is consumer applications that could use it. On HN we tend to think about development tools when we think of "software that needs lots of power," but there's image, video and audio editing, real time effects processing, animation, all of that.

As I understand it, Apple's current answer to not having Xcode on the iPad is that you can now develop full apps in Swift Playgrounds and submit them directly to the app store.

It's an interesting approach - turning an educational/prototyping environment into something that you can theoretically do real work with.

Not sure why we don't have Final Cut and Logic on the iPad though - it's certainly powerful enough.

Does it matter? As long as you can run gcc/Python/node/whatever you can always build software for macOS.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com