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Comment by PedroBatista | Hacker News Reader

The relationship some developers have with Apple should be a case-study with multiple PhD thesis in psychology.

Not even in movies I've seen so many cases of children desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent.

Apple is a trillion dollar company, it's the "parent" who sells you +$40 dongles for everything. "Hobbies" are only good if they make them money AND doesn't increase their risk or any liability.

I've seen this developer-Apple dynamic at least since the late 90s. "Daddy Apple" was more available back then, but it's wasn't like it cater that much to the hobbyist-developer community ( unless we see the past with rose-colored glasses ).

The App Store is a multi-billion dollar business, like a moderately high-end mall, there is no place for hobbies in that world.

I hope for a time when developers understand this and stop feeding Apple execs for free. Ironically that would be the day Apple would be "nicer" to them.

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I agree. The whole article left me feeling a resounding "well, duhhhhhh". The author has simply chosen one of the least hackable compute platforms for his hacking hobby and is then complaining about it (I mean "hacking" in the original sense, not implying anything about illegal activities).

If he were a farmer writing angry blog posts about how VW has made it damned-near impossible to plough a field with a VW beetle, it wouldn't be any more absurd.

The simple truth of the matter is that Linux and other open source OSes are the only compute platforms that can still meaningfully be thought of as providing "general purpose computing". ...maybe the JVM does, too, but that's more like a general purpose computing sandbox within appliances that's under heavy guard and for some reason tolerated by appliance makers.

Why shouldn’t he complain about it though? If nobody complains there’s no chance things will change. Sure people could vote with their feet, but not everyone is willing to do that. They should still be allowed to ask for improvements.

I agree he has the right to complain, I call Apple "bad names" most of the time I log into App Store Connect!

But.. We also need to have some perspective. They will not change unless the incentive is there and even then they fight it with all their strengths ( ex: other payment services used to sell in-app stuff )

And frankly why are "we" so invested in changing Apple? They suck? they don't threat you well? Then fuck them.

But his unwillingness to vote with his feet is the actual message here. He's basically saying: Here are the horrible things that Apple is doing to me and yet I'm still giving them my money and investing myself in their developer ecosystem. That's how much I love them, for some reason that remains unstated in the article.

That's what the parent commenter alluded to: There's some really weird psychology happening here, and that's the piece that's actually interesting.

I don't think that's fair assessment, it's equivalent to saying "You complain about the medical system and yet you still go to the hospital".

It's not much of a choice - and yes - Android exists, but in a duopoly of 2 shitty choices, Android is arguably the shittier one. Yes, you can install arbitrary apps there, but then you lose much more of your privacy, security, and long term support.

Voting with your feet doesn't work when every company in the segment is equally bad or very likely to become equally bad in short order.

I think people here need to stop questioning people's psychology. It's offensive and unnecessary.

You can be critical of Apple's App Store policies and still want to take advantage of the unique features of the platform.

There's no reason that Apple people can't move to Android, it's stubborn resistance. Just like Android people don't want to move to Apple for "reasons". But they love what they have. I use android but I want to figure out how to block Google from spying better.

Of course there are plenty of reasons not to move to android.

If you're used to Apple's ecosystem (laptop, tablet), your family also uses apple devices, etc it is not convenient to move to a platform that doesn't have all of the same conveniences.

Sure you may be able to get the same things done, but it's not convenient. doesn't mean people can't complain and want something better. People are allowed to just plain not like android. You don't give shit to people because they don't like to dress the same way you do.

> There's some really weird psychology happening here

Sunk cost mentality. They have invested time and resources into learning a whole platform, only to find that it is not suitable for use, and they have to start all over again somewhere else.

Meh, bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Literally every bad thing that happens in one's life, triggering a complaint, could be met by the response: 'then just vote with your feet.'

Bad marriage? Find another partner. Bad employer? Find a different job. Crappy friends? Ditch em and try another.

Of course that's an option that should always be on the table. But I hope you agree the first approach is to try to fix things, to try to start a dialogue, to raise awareness and come up with solutions. It adds little to the conversation to just say: 'why don't you just ditch it altogether?' It's lazy and in fact it's often bad advise to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Apple provides tremendous value to its customer base (hence the trillion dollar market value, that isn't just from consumer charity or corporate monopoly, but mostly from real value) and having to pay $8 a month for the 0.1% of Apple users who build Apps but don't distribute and cannot be bothered to renew a weekly certificate, is generally not a good enough reason to exclude yourself from using one of the world's most mainstream personal computing & communications platforms.

It's entirely hackable for free if you don't want to use the Apple SDK, though. His complaint is pretty narrow.

But things are certainly moving in this direction, i.e. all forms of unsigned code, sideloading, and so forth being fully banned and devices flat-out refusing to run programs that didn't come from the store and where developers don't have commercial-grade relationships with Apple, with the commensurate amount of money and power being handed over.

Microsoft has been moving in that direction too, leaving the Microsoft store basically a ghost town. -- Maybe games are an exception to this, but even here, Microsoft is a distant second to Steam, who are putting as much of their weight as they practicably can behind Linux.

That's the power of the developer ecosystem. It wasn't users who did this to Microsoft, it was developers.

But, for some reason, developers seem to be unwilling to do to Apple and Google what they did to Microsoft, and I don't get that.

It isn’t, though. People love to SAY this, but I see no evidence that it’s actually true. To make the case that this is an “Apple” thing, you conflate the two very different platforms.

iOS is and always has been a walled garden. That’s fine. You either like that (I do) or you don’t (you probably don’t).

MacOS isn’t. It never has been, and there is no evidence that it’s going to become one.

Yes, the default setting is to require signed code. This is a good default! Most people who buy computers should probably leave that option turned on — but turning it off is very, very simple. It’s just a system preference. This is not evidence of Apple wanting to lock down the Mac. It’s evidence of an increasingly complex world of code, and the rise of malware.

> The simple truth of the matter is that Linux and other open source OSes...

...have zero presence on mobile

...don't spend a cent on marketing to developers, so the awareness isn't there

It’s not just Apple. The same dynamic plays out with most other hyped technologies. Apple’s fans may demonstrate this behavior most clearly, but cults of sycophants exist for many different companies: Microsoft, Tesla, Google, … this list never ends.

Agree, Apple is the poster child, Tesla a close second because it targets most of the same people and markets.

I still remember when Satya Nadella went "all-in" with Linux and Open Source, the whole "running Linux on Windows", etc. Many people went nuts and in a matter of months Microsoft was the hot new "hip" company. Which anyone looking into Microsoft's business for 5min would laugh at all that non-sense. Just an example: MS makes around 2 billion dollars every year in software patents/royalties, and the list of Microsoft being Microsoft goes on.

My point is: This behavior is something more to do with the people than the companies themselves, they mostly cater and exploit it.

There are some pretty good reasons for wanting big parts of the status quo to remain. I bet if you took a few minutes, you could think of a few of them and that might give you a better understanding of why some of your tech friends are worried about Apple being forced to change.

> Apple’s fans may demonstrate this behavior most clearly

I think that changed years ago. The iPhone made Apple very mainstream, which dilutes the fanboy effect considerably.

Tesla fans are much, much worse at this point. I say that as a two-time (and current) Tesla owner who is decidedly not a Tesla fanboy (and in fact going the opposite direction a little more every day).

> this list never ends

The list is different for everyone. Everyone thinks their own choices are the only rational ones.

> cults of sycophants

I think people like yourself should be more thoughtful more about why these products are so popular.

Instead of reducing these people who may simply like their products to being cult members who can't make educated, independent choices.

Do you realize how smug and condescending this comment is? As if everyone who happens to disagree with you is psychology broken and utterly stupid?

Let me give you another perspective as an apple user - I don't think about Apple at all.

I have a glass brick that sends 20 - 30 text message a day and a couple times I'll use GPS to go to a new restaurant. Sometimes I'll do crossword puzzles. This brick happens to do it best.

I don't think about Apple.

I agree, but... in my experience Android and Android devices suck in comparison to iOS and iPhones. Why can't anyone else create a true competitor to iOS and iPhone that is as open as Android? Is it because of Apple patents? Is it because they assume that if a company as large as Google couldn't do it then nobody can do it? Is it just developers are such a small part of the general populace that there is no money in creating something that will most appeal to them? That is, apple devices already have the mindshare of people who have no interest in creating their own apps and Android already has the rest of the populace, who can't afford apple products, tied up? So, creating a phone that is open while being as nice as iOS/iPhone just isn't a profitable endeavor?

> in my experience Android and Android devices suck in comparison to iOS and iPhones.

I wonder how much of this is "the thing I'm used to is the best thing?" every time I hear this sort of comparison (regardless of which type of machine the commenter thinks is "best".)

The thing that makes me wonder is because my experience is the opposite of yours -- I think Android is much superior to iOS. But I suspect much of my opinion is because I'm much more used to Android than iOS.

It’s because needs and preferences differ. There is not 1 objective evaluation that makes it the “best”.

Consider a minivan and a sports convertible on which car is the best car - many people will say my car is better and are optimizing for their own personal interests

> Why can't anyone else create a true competitor to iOS and iPhone that is as open as Android?

Nokia tried in 2009/10 with the N900 running a Linux-based OS. It flopped, partially because Nokia was about to jettison their entire software stack to shack up with Windows Phone OS. But also partially because it came way too early, at a time when Apple and Google were spending millions to tell consumers that smartphones without app stores were useless and dangerous.

> Why can't anyone else create a true competitor to iOS and iPhone that is as open as Android?

What is it about Android and Android devices that sucks? Does this apply to all Android devices? For example Samsung and Pixel phones get regular updates but the others don't.

> desperately chasing their emotionally unavailable parent

God, could you be any more snide? Please keep your personal vendetta against <whatever MacOS user harmed you> off of HN.

I'll keep writing it until we get it: HN desperately needs blocklists.

Yes, Great analogy. Remember the 2017 "Apple Commits to Pro Users" exercise? They flew reporters out for a boondoggle, gave them a tour of 'secret labs. With fresh competitive hardware coming 'real soon now'. Just spin.

https://daringfireball.net/2017/04/the_mac_pro_lives https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-sa...

It would be easier for me to leave Apple if only their hardware wasn't so damn nice. I am so spoiled by these M1 (and now M2) Airs, they are the best machine I've ever bought and I've had quite a few! They do make incredible hardware, even if the dongles can be expensive, unfortunately.

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