[finstell]

Nowadays, I kind of enjoy seeing posts about people abandoning Apple ecosystem. Although it's painful, I myself have been yet another avid fan of pretty much Apple offered, it feels like this is not going to last forever.

When they do the math, iPhone might seem the most lucrative (they seem not to care about anything else) but since they are killing the ecosystem with no Mac Pro, no Mac Mini and with so called pro MacBooks, developers will abandon Apple eventually. Even if iPhone becomes/remains the most technologically advanced smart phone on the market, it would be like a distant paradise island with no airports. Airplanes (developers and subsequently the end users) will be landing on alternative airports on emerging islands, letting them prosper. Consequently, Apple island will be deserted.

[CoolGuySteve]

I had whatever the latest iPhone was for the past 8 years. But at some point I realized a whole Huawei/HTC/LG/whatever Android phone could be purchased for the price of an iPhone screen repair and it's pretty much adequate for what I want to do.

So now I'm using a Nexus 5X. It's okayish, but costs 1/3 the price of the iPhone 7 that would also be relatively ok. Phones are just phones these days.

The awkward part is that if you've ever played audio or video on an iOS device, you've executed some of my code.

[newscracker]

> Phones are just phones these days.

I disagree with this. Most Android phones have a bad track record of getting OS updates (which may not be extremely important with Play Services not being part of the OS) and security updates. Depending on what one buys, it may be a phone with an outdated OS and no security updates or something that gets by for two to three years (on average). Apple provides updates for four years or longer (this has been the minimum for the past several years).

Combine the above with more malware spreading through APKs from random sites and "friends", I'd say Android is still stuck in the DOS era of PCs.

Of course, I realize this is a very harsh comparison that doesn't touch upon the flexibility that some users love, but in my opinion, non-tech-savvy people shouldn't be using anything but the best flagship phones if they choose Android and stay away from getting APKs from different sources. Any cost advantage with respect to an iPhone then disappears.

[TheSpiceIsLife]

I'm tech savvy, but I can have 3 very decent non-flagship Android phones (eg Oppo F1S) for the price of a similar sized iPhone.

That's a massive deal breaker.

[kupiakos]

Non-tech-savvy users still have to disable the option to disable third-party APK's in order to be at risk in that area.

[newscracker]

If they aren't tech savvy, they're dependent on tech savvy people to show them this option and educate them. Even then, they may ignore it. I've seen many people using Android where they just get APK files from somewhere and pass it on tho "friends" (in quotes because this is indeed a large circle of acquaintances and several degrees of separation). It's probably luck that more Android users aren't being hit with malware around the world.

The digital divide between those who can afford an iPhone and those who cannot is glaring on the security front. One of the ways this could get better is for Apple to introduce truly low priced phones (no, the iPhone SE is still quite expensive in developing countries). That's probably as much a pipe dream as getting Android manufacturers to care for their customers.

[slfnflctd]

I had an iPhone for several years as well. On my first attempt to switch to Android, I went swimming with my new phone in my pocket a few weeks after I got it. Very frustrating.

I finally switched permanently last year, and man has it been worth it. I can actually browse my own files on my own phone, and it does virtual reality better than any current Apple product! I grew up with Apple around me and I used to love them, but they have fallen behind and made terrible choices and I won't feel bad for them if they fail.

[MrTonyD]

Funny. I recently got a new position and I couldn't find the terminal on the company mac - and a fellow came by and said "you obviously aren't an Apple person". I didn't tell him that I was a Mach kernel engineer at NeXT and that I'd worked on code that is probably still in the OS - or that I've been in way too many meetings with Steve Jobs. Instead, I just quietly nodded and agreed with him.

[CoolGuySteve]

My beard's not quite as grey but about a month ago I was asked in an interview to "design a garbage collector".

Motherfucker. I BROKE Objective-C 2.0 and its GC in order to meet the soft real-time constraints of video rendering, I made all video related objects reference counted.

Now there's ARC, but back then I took so much flack just to make video work appropriately.

Anyways the guy 10 years my junior didn't know anything other than the Java GC so explaining myself was futile.

Moral of the story: Don't work for Hudson River Trading.

Corollary: Don't be old.

[deeth_starr_v]

Age discrimination is hardcore in tech! Especially programming. I get it, when I was 23 and people told me they were 40 I was like, "damn that's my mom's age. This guy is old." I was really stupid.

[oroup]

Awesome

[carussell]

I'm curious to hear what your setup for the intervening 20 years has looked like. Did it involve moving to GNUstep when NeXTSTEP was no longer viable, or is it something like, you came to NeXT by way of e.g. Sun (or something) and never had any particular affinity for the NeXT environment and so your setup has always been Linux/BSD/Solaris...?

[MrTonyD]

My skills have always centered around OS and Database. I've mostly worked on UNIX then Linux at command line. Lots of vi and compiling over the years. I'll use whatever desktop is around...and, practically speaking, that has usually been Windows at the Fortune 50.

[alsetmusic]

Sounds like you are a NeXT person and not an Apple person, so wasn't he right? No snark intended.

[MrTonyD]

Yeah. I guess I still think of Apple's OS as being essentially NeXTStep. Hard for me not to feel like I'm still looking at the same software - just with some superficial evolution.

[0xC0DECAFE2020]

I've been in situations like this as well. It's crazy to sit across from someone in an interview and think to yourself, "This person has no idea and I'm not going to let them in on it."

[WWLink]

That's awesome lol. Gives a cookie

[stoolpigeon]

I chuckled at this because I have a 5X too and I like it but my wife's Moto G4 Plus is amazing and cost something like half of what I paid for my Nexus, so I feel like I paid more than I needed to for a solid phone.

[voltagex_]

I think the 5X gets security updates until September 2018. Meanwhile, my Moto X Style, which was top of the line not too long ago, got the September 2016 rollup... in January 2017. Nougat was rumoured but I'm not betting on it.

I haven't installed Cyanowhatever it is now - mainly because the IR sensors and gestures are really handy.

[j_koreth]

> Cyanowhatever

Sadly it's too late for Cyanogenmod. http://lifehacker.com/cyanogenmod-is-dead-and-its-successor-...

[spikengineer]

It's now continued as LineageOS with the same core developers. http://lineageos.org/ and the builds are at https://download.lineageos.org/bullhead

[OverThere]

I'm still disappointed by no Cinema Display and Apple leaving the display business.

I'm baffled by this. Touchbar is innovative to some degree, but I usually connect my Macbook Pro to a bigger display and close it—making touchbar useless. So disappointed by Apple lately...

[verisimilidude]

I hear you, but it's been so long since Apple made a decent Cinema Display, and we're so rich with better alternatives, that I don't really miss it. On the cheaper end, the Dell Ultrasharp is a fine replacement at a great price. For more premium needs, you can get something like an Eizo ColorEdge, which leaves the Cinema Display in the dust. And there are all sorts of other options in between.

The Cinema Display is not so much different from the Mac Mini in that sense. You feel bad that you don't have a new one, until you realize just how much better the alternatives have become.

[nkkollaw]

It's useless even with the display open.

I bet most people don't ever use it after the first week.

[OverThere]

hahah this might be true.

For me, constantly looking down at the keyboard somehow doesn't feel natural. I prefer to keep my eyes on the screen.

[tinus_hn]

The touchbar also increases security so it's not useless even if you close the laptop.

[cbsmith]

You mean the way my VPN software needs to have a backdoor in it just so that the touchbar keeps working while I'm connected? ;-)

[slrz]

Can you explain?

[cbsmith]

The tool bar is modeled as a separate computer, that talks to the laptop not over USB, but a network interface.

That actually opens up a huge can of worms, as networking as a host of security issues. One example is with a VPN connection. For obvious security reasons, when a lot of VPNs are active, they force all networking to flow through them. That is problematic, because the remote side has no way to route the toolbar traffic back to it.

So, VPN software is now busily building out exceptions to their routing rules. Don't worry, I'm sure this won't lead to bugs or future security holes...

[donatj]

How's that?

[tinus_hn]

The touchbar is similar to an iOS device so it is a separate computing device that has a small attack surface so it is difficult to hack.

It for instance controls the camera, so without hacking the touchbar it is impossible to use the camera without the light turning on.

It also controls the fingerprint reader in a way that makes it hard to get the secrets that are protected by the fingerprint without actually providing the fingerprint.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

I assume the fingerprint reader?

[mobiletelephone]

I don't buy this argument. Developers will work on platforms that have users with money to spend, even if the development hardware is poor value. In this sense, Apple has us hostage!

[gurkendoktor]

I have no data, but I'd wager that iOS developers who sell directly to end users are rare nowadays. Most of us are paid good money to build apps for bigger companies that make their money outside of the App Store. Often we don't even use our own Mac for that, so as a first step, we might use a Mac at work and Windows/Linux at home.

If we left the ecosystem, the cost of native iOS development would increase, and companies would build portable (and/or crappy) apps instead. macOS indie apps would also lose some customers, and IMHO these apps are what makes the Apple world worthwhile in the first place.

[jclardy]

Paid apps are essentially dead on iOS and Android, thanks to both of their terrible policies. Both search algorithms for each platform place way to much weight on volume (downloads, ratings, reviews) over other attributes which they could track (like user retention.)

This means a well polished, but expensive app can be easily ousted out of a top search result spot by a rushed clone at a lower price point, even if people end up deleting the crappy one after a day or two anyways. Basically both modern app stores place a ton of value on "new" things but don't care about software built to last. So as a dev you are incentivized to abandon your old projects and just stick out new ones every few months. And on iOS it gets even worse with paid search ads which can be targeted at competitor app names.

Couple that with a 30% revenue cut, no access to your users (So you have no ability to refund them or discount future purchases), and the stores having the ability to oust you at any time and it becomes obvious that the only sustainable business is continuous crap-ware or SaaS with your main business outside the App Store. Just look at the Top Grossing chart, there isn't a single paid app till around 80 and even then the app is Minecraft.

[pjmlp]

App stores are just a digital version of any physical store.

Honestly when I go any store, I sometimes wonder how all those companies with products on the shelves, manage to sell enough goods to keep the engines running.

[_ph_]

Yes, as long as iOS stays a solid market, iOS developers are going to own one Mac at least. But when the Mac platform itself stops being attractive to developers and they are only using it because they "have to", it is going to have an impact onto iOS as well. Innovations go, where the developers like to be.

[fauigerzigerk]

I wouldn't be so sure. Old platforms suffer from diminishing returns and developers get bored easily. If a platform is no longer exciting and dominant players are lame or annoying, then developers and entrepreneurs will look for alternatives in completely different directions deliberately avoiding the old incumbants.

Amazon.com wasn't a Windows desktop app even though most customers would have used Windows to buy from Amazon. You could say that shifts like the Web are inevitable and nothing Apple could do will change that. That's probably right, but the way in which it happens and the role old incumbants play in the new world does depend on whether or not they are hated and actively avoided by the new elites.

I believe that Apple is making the upcoming decline steeper and deeper right now.

[FussyZeus]

The problem is our small shop, revenues are something like 600% iOS/Android. We make hardly anything on the Play Store because (and you can call this classist if you want, but it's what my data tells me) Android users don't spend money. Now that could be because they don't have it, because they don't see value in software, whatever but the point is if you're an app developer and you want to make money, you go to Apple. And because of their ecosystem, you must develop on a Mac.

Now, as they make the Mac worse and worse to have, who knows, maybe people will finally be motivated enough to build an Xcode that runs on Windows or Unix. But you'd still have to have at least one Mac to do your publishing.

[fauigerzigerk]

Nothing wrong with that. I'm sure there are many other companies like yours. I doubt that many profitable companies will abandon iOS development just because Mac hardware is a bit dusted or a bit overpriced at this point.

But where is the excitement? Where are the growth opportunities? Where's the space for experimentation? Where are things moving?

Once all the wealthy people on this planet have their iPhones and their six favorite apps in their six home screen rows, all extremely vetted by Apple, the market is saturated and stagnant.

You can't skate where the puck is going to be because the puck has come to a complete stop and all players are sitting on top of it.

I'm a Mac, iPhone and iPad user. But would I ever build a _new_ company on that platform. No. Definitely not.

[FussyZeus]

I mean, depends on the company. I get what you're saying but for a smaller company looking for exposure to a wide audience with spending money, the data tells us iOS is pretty much the best balance of relatively low introductory cost versus return on that investment. Android has a lower cost still but also a much lower return as I said, even though we have more users, our revenue stream is 6-7 fold on iOS.

Maybe iOS isn't the new platform, but it's certainly a good place to start. Still miles ahead of the next few options.

[WayneBro]

I build iOS apps but I avoid giving Apple any money wherever I can.

I buy all of my Apple hardware used from third parties. I don't buy any apps, music or books from Apple. I only use free apps.

The only time Apple gets a cent from me is when I pay for my developer license.

[voltagex_]

At a guess, developing for their platform is the most valuable thing for Apple.

[WayneBro]

Certainly not. I build private/enterprise apps for Android and iOS using Ionic/Cordova. I don't use Apple's app store at all.

When I show my customers what a giant PITA it is to work with Apple and iOS, many of them start planning a switch to Android or Windows.

I've been single-handedly responsible for moving entire companies away from iOS in one way or another.

[lowbloodsugar]

Developers will target platforms that have users with money to spend. I can have a team developing on a non apple platform, and then share one mac mini for final builds.

[cronjobber]

I could by an argument it may cause the Apple ecosystem to have mostly "ports" and few original/exclusive apps.

Would that turn into a downward spiral? Don't know.

[sh_tinh_hair]

OsX has always been the alt-users paradise. As a sysadmin and developer I've disliked it from the start. Windows I could use for gaming and when I had to. Linux and FreeBSD are fine for every conceivable use I have d2d.

[mahyarm]

Just like the PS4 & Xbox?