[toyg]

> why developers criticize OS vendors use of "private APIs"

The point is not that these APIs exist; the problem is when vendors actively block others from using them, with hacks and/or policy bans. That's extremely hypocritical and anti-competitive. I can see why unofficial APIs must be discouraged (because let's be honest, developers will bitch and moan when they change -- Microsoft in particular was strong-armed into legacy support for decades by the likes of Adobe and Symantec), but it should never be an excuse to ostracize or tilt the playing field.

[oneplane]

It's not about marketing, economics or other MBA-feuled non-technical ideas. It's about a software vendor saying: this is our platform, here are API's for you to use, don't go outside it.

It is perfectly reasonable, and so far, any other interpretation seems to be a skewed view to facilitate some sort of non-compliant piece of software.

[scarface74]

And the minute scores of applications break that depend on a third party library that uses an undocumented method, the OS vendor gets blamed for releasing a "buggy OS" or they have to keep buggy work arounds in their code forever like MS does.