Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mooibos 2312 days ago
I develop for Apple platforms, and it's absolutely mind-boggling how frequently and regularly they break your code for no tangible benefit.

Hopefully their influence doesn't spread to the web too.

1 comments

There is a tangible benefit. For users.

64-bit only, Project Catalyst, BitCode, HTTPS only connections etc are examples of initiatives which definitely has caused pain to developers but has immensely benefited users as a whole. And if you don't passionately care about users then frankly find another platform to develop on.

64-bit only certainly doesn't benefit me as a user on the balance. There's a lot of software that's useful that has zero need for yearly updates.
How does it benefit the user for half their software to break, or for them to have to pay a vendor (rightfully) for a massive update/overhaul just so the software keeps working?

64-bit Only benefits Apple because they don't have to maintain the 32-bit stack anymore. Any perf-sensitive software that needed to be 64-bit transitioned a long time ago.

>64-bit only

how has that benefitted the user? Directly and measureably, no "it's 0.3% faster now" excuses.

Not having to load both 32-bit and 64-bit libraries into memory is an efficiency (and battery life) improvement on the system as a whole.
That would fall into the "it's 0.3% faster now" category.