[amiantos]

if you are an apple ecosystem app developer, apple already has an awful lot of information about you. you've paid them $100 every year, you pay them at least a 15% cut of every sale. they know your personal address one way or another, and your tax information. you most likely use their IDE, their APIs / development kit, which either they provide or you are paying for as part of our $100 developer fee, depending on your perspective. to get an app on any official Apple App Store you have to submit your app to them to notarize and get it reviewed for approval. you probably use an iPhone, essentially must use a Mac, and have a robust billing history in their stores.

so I'm not sure I totally understand the underlying message here, that apple is possibly phoning home to App Store Connect to secretly record every time a developer launches a project? it sounds a bit strangely conspiratorial in the context of a system where apple controls the entire developer supply chain already. anyway, I understand this is just one of those things that some people decide to care a lot about, and in some cases it makes a lot of sense, but not this one.

[chubot]

The blog post notes that it is poorly engineered and slow, which makes me glad I don't have to use Apple dev tools for anything

[Someone]

It may be poorly engineered and slow, but I don’t see this blog post say it’s poorly engineered, and only that it’s slow for this user.

For all we know from this article, that this step takes 50 seconds could be fairly specific for this user’s setup. If so, this would the kind of issue that can easily slip through QA.

[lapcat]

> I don’t see this blog post say it’s poorly engineered

"The build phase is mostly unnecessary."

"For most local builds, on the other hand, the "Gathering provisioning inputs" build phase is unnecessary and can slow down the build considerably."

"Again, though, it's unnecessary to check for updates on every launch"

"It certainly doesn't align with Apple's claim that they believe privacy is a fundamental human right."

"This also appears to be unnecessary, and I experience no problems after denying the connections"

> only that it’s slow for this user.

"I found a thread in the Apple Developer Forums that discusses the problem"

[lapcat]

> they know your personal address

There's a huge difference between having my home address, which a lot of people do, and observing my activity all day while I'm in the privacy of my home.

To turn it around, Apple publishes its own corporate address but is extremely secretive about what goes on inside the building and does not appreciate leaks.

> apple is possibly phoning home to App Store Connect to secretly record every time a developer launches a project? it sounds a bit strangely conspiratorial

It's not a conspiracy. It's just a complete disregard for developer privacy from a company that claims "privacy is a human right". There's a difference between doing something bad on purpose and doing something bad simply because you don't give a crap about the effects.

> I understand this is just one of those things that some people decide to care a lot about, and in some cases it makes a lot of sense, but not this one.

Privacy aside, do you care about slow builds?