[mherrmann]

> Premium Hardware, Struggling Software

This sums it up well. The hardware is great, the software isn't.

I recently programmed the same app for iOS and Android. iOS took twice as long, simply because Apple's APIs suck. Case in point: The background task APIs (plural, yes, unfortunately) are so bad that Apple felt compelled to publish a video "Background execution demystified" [1]. If a dev creates an API and then has to publish docs "[my API] demystified", then the API sucks. Period.

I value stability and the freedom to configure the OS to my liking. macOS is stable but forces countless things on me that I do not want. Windows offers freedom but comes with many glitches. Linux is extremely stable and puts me first by letting me configure it. I love it.

[1]: https://wwdcnotes.com/documentation/wwdcnotes/wwdc20-10063-b...

[HPsquared]

Slightly unrelated, but that reminds me of all the thousands of "Git demystified" videos out there. There's a lot of confusing software out there!

[alberth]

> Apple felt compelled to publish a video

Context is important.

This was a WWDC session and Apple records & publishes all WWDC sessions.

[hu3]

If the API didn't suck, there wouldn't be such video there.

Also WWDC videos are infamously used as reference because often documentation suck. And it shows.

[paldepind2]

Absolutely. I did a little bit of iOS development at some point and was genuinely shocked by how bad the documentation was and by how often WWDC videos was the best documentation available.

To give a concrete example: At WWDC20 Apple showed off a new Core Data feature called "derived attributes" [1]. Only many months later did they add the bare minimum of written documentation covering a fraction of what was shown off at WWDC [2].

1: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/230/ 2: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/120159

[seec]

But you know, Apple is a struggling company that doesn't have enough money to pay devs for documentation. /s obviously.

Microsoft may produce some half-assed software but at least their documentation is generally pretty solid (and easy to find).

[mherrmann]

I don't really see how that makes a difference. A talk with the title "my API demystified" is an equally bad sign.

[alberth]

> A talk with the title “my API demystified”

But that’s not the title of the session.

The title of the session was “Background execution demystified”

Background execution is a computer science topic that many don’t understand well. Much like font antialiasing or other computer science topics that people don’t have to deal with daily.

Note: I’m not saying Apple APIs are great. I was just originally pointing out the context of your post.

[mherrmann]

I spent an afternoon watching and re-watching this video just to figure out how the otherwise-undocumented behaviors of the API work. It was exclusively about Apple's implementation, and not in any way about the general CS topic.

[mizzao]

It's too bad that Linux doesn't come with Apple Silicon. And while 20s me would have loved configuring things, once I had a family and a lot less time, I just want it to work.

[guappa]

You can get a thinkpad and it will in fact just work :D

[xdavidliu]

the point is thinkpad hardware is not nearly as good as Apple Silicon hardware