[cosmic_cheese]

Apple’s attitude here is that it’s an inherent risk of using private APIs, because it’s not something they want devs doing. They don’t facilitate it like MS tends to. Don’t touch the stove if you don’t want to get burnt.

[wk_end]

The person who's getting burnt is Random Officer Worker Joe, who just wants to run Slack and Spotify and who doesn't know a thing about Electron or private APIs, but knows that ever since upgrading their version of macOS things are running terribly. Apple's position is technically noble, but that doesn't help their users.

[cosmic_cheese]

The Electron maintainers should've considered that possibility before reaching for a private API. It's on the Electron's team's shoulders and nobody else's.

If I were building a FOSS platform, I wouldn't give a second thought to third parties making use of my platform's private APIs. They're private for a reason, whether that be because they're not yet fully baked or because using them can have unintended consequences, they're not intended for public consumption. I especially wouldn't want somebody else's platform to depend on my private APIs, because I am then effectively locked into keeping that API frozen in time by the numerous others building on this other person's platform.

It's generally poor practice to build upon such brittle things as under-the-hood tinkering anyway.

[Aaargh20318]

> Apple's position is technically noble, but that doesn't help their users.

The alternative doesn’t help either. That’s the approach Microsoft has taken and look what a mess Windows is because of it.

[viraptor]

> what a mess Windows is because of it.

Can you point at any part of windows being a mess specifically because of backwards compatibility?

[jitl]

Control panel / settings

[viraptor]

That one's incomplete migration rather than backwards compatibility. As in, they failed to move everything rather than moving everything but preserving the old way for compatibility with something.

[dpoloncsak]

Sounds like Joe will direct his anger towards Slack and Spotify, and as a paying customer he has every right to be upset when his software doesn't work.

[wk_end]

I doubt he will - they didn’t change, his OS did, they worked before, post hoc ergo propter hoc. Anyway, they’re from different companies, how could they both be at fault? If he even identifies them as related - he probably had them both running at startup and never quits them.

[nozzlegear]

How much cognition are we assigning to Joe in this hypothetical scenario? You make him out to be barely more capable than a lab chimpanzee dully poking at a screen to get some fruit. Give Joe a little credit, people aren't as dumb as you think.

[mrheosuper]

non-tech people will think exactly like that

Software A an B works fine before update, after update, both breaks => whatever changed is the problem(in this case, the OS).

[nozzlegear]

I think there's a propensity for cynical tech-oriented people to look at non-tech people as if they're dullards. I'm not convinced, I take a more optimistic view of people.