8 ms·

It's absurd to have to beg the wealthiest software company in the world for what should be considered really basic stuff. Xcode is consistently unstable, slow,

It's absurd to have to beg the wealthiest software company in the world for what should be considered really basic stuff. Xcode is consistently unstable, slow, missing simple essential functionality (like refactoring), and Apple's interface builder is something that most experienced Apple devs know to run for the hills from.

M_Grey 10y ago
That very wealth is what's insulating them from the long-term reality of the choices they're making. It's a trap!
- yourapostasy 10y ago
  Indeed, Apple has the high-tech equivalent of "dragon sickness", in a nod to Tolkien. Google has a long road ahead of it, but it looks like they have the right pieces in place where I see small, incremental improvements each year, so maybe they're the tortoise. Milestones on that long road are like migrate away from Dalvik, fix business model / monetization issues with the Android marketplace, switch to vector-based canvas blitting, rationalize API support for different manufacturer-added features, and so on. What would be interesting is if they steal Apple's developer thunder by capitalizing upon open source and their in-house build system, and out-flank Apple's developer mindshare, by creating a developer-oriented ecosystem. Imagine if you could hook up your own Docker container that Google's build infrastructure then taps to build your Android app...but all the open source your app depends upon are in their build infrastructure, with near-instant feedback on build and CI problems of the open source bits operating at a massive scale. App development shifts to a posture where open source frameworks/modules/libraries that already power a lot of software are orders of magnitude more convenient to develop under this ecosystem, and the agility/efficiency of all those Android developers coalescing around common open source components online in a single build and CI ecosystem far outstrips Apple-based developers stuck with XCode and their own person-oriented toolchains. Apple has nothing in the pipeline remotely like that kind of ecosystem. Google would also get big data-based insight into phone app development trends in real-time that Apple could only dream about. Google's phone app development OODA loop would tighten considerably smaller than Apple's. I also wonder if Google and Microsoft could find benefits to team up to replace Dalvik with CLR, and then Microsoft Visual Studio becomes a first-class citizen on Linux for building CLR-based apps on Android.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    All of that has zero meaning given Google's reluctance to fix Android updates. The majority of the Android users is yet to experience any of those improvements.
    - bpodgursky 10y ago
      Um, Google has actually worked very hard to de-couple parts of Android into separate apps, so that those apps can update without a carrier-managed total OS upgrade. This has arguably negative impacts on Android's utility as a non-Google OS, but there's no question that this strategy was to help push updates to users faster.
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        Making it a legal requirement, as they already do with so many others for OEMs to access Google services and the Play Store, would be the solution. No need for smoke and mirrors games regarding decoupling Android.
        AsyncAwait 10y ago
        I imagine it's not that easy to add something like this now, without huge OEM backslash. If it was there from the start, maybe it would work.
  - Nullabillity 10y ago
    > Imagine if you could hook up your own Docker container that Google's build infrastructure then taps to build your Android app...but all the open source your app depends upon are in their build infrastructure, with near-instant feedback on build and CI problems of the open source bits operating at a massive scale. But... why? Gradle already does a good job eliminating works-on-my-machine-isms, that sounds like cloud-for-the-sake-of-cloud. > I also wonder if Google and Microsoft could find benefits to team up to replace Dalvik with CLR, and then Microsoft Visual Studio becomes a first-class citizen on Linux for building CLR-based apps on Android. But... why?
- coldtea 10y ago
  >That very wealth is what's insulating them from the long-term reality of the choices they're making. It's a trap! What "long term reality"? They have been doing this when they were near bankrupt and continue to this day, 20 years later, and they are now the richest company on the planet. Maybe the long term reality is actually success?
pg_is_a_butt 10y ago
so, you want your source code editor to refactor your code automatically... and you think that is "basic stuff"? you're all idiots.
na85 10y ago
Sooner or later people will wake up to the fact that this is their own fault for leveraging a proprietary ecosystem. You want to play in Apple's walled garden, you take the scraps they give you. They have no financial incentive to make the experience better for you if you're already a captive developer.
- valuearb 10y ago
  Yea, but iOS developers make twice as much as Android developers. Lots of customers love the walled garden and those customers spend a lot more on apps than Android customers do (Android installed base is multiples of iOS, yet revenues are double on iOS). And one of the reason the bigger spending customers are with Apple is the benefits of the walled garden. It's more secure, and it's updated far faster (or at all). For developers it's a better environment to develop for, consistent screen sizes and hardware features and I know I can write my latest app for the latest iOS and within months of it's release the vast majority of revenue producing customers will be on it. That's a big reason why better apps are written on iOS first, it's easier.
  - bsder 10y ago
    > Yea, but iOS developers make twice as much as Android developers. 1) 2x mouse nuts is still mouse nuts. 2) Do they really make 2x? Especially after you deduct $100 a year?
    - richardwhiuk 10y ago
      $100 is peanuts to anyone actually earning money, and it's definitely peanuts compared to developer cost.
      - bsder 10y ago
        Except that I seem to remember a statistic like 95% of the iOS apps don't actually make enough to cover that annual fee.
wool_gather 10y ago
The one that's been getting me lately is the split between Xcode 7/Swift 2.2 and 8/3. We have an older project in Swift 2 (yes, it's slated to get changed over, just not yet), and new work on a project in 3. If I try to open one while the other is already open, one of the Xcodes invariably freezes or crashes. I will say, though, that I've always liked IB (though not storyboards). But then there's the wonderful "Oh, you opened a nib, I should move something around in the XML." -> SCM status changes even though I didn't modify the file.
- orbitur 10y ago
  Can you still submit apps with Xcode 7? In response to your problem, having done the Xcode Old/Xcode New dance every year since 2012, I got into the habit of making sure they are never running concurrently. Things get even worse if you run xcodebuild on the command line while a different UI version is running.
  - wool_gather 10y ago
    > Can you still submit apps with Xcode 7? ...yes. You can. 6 is the minimum. > having done the Xcode Old/Xcode New dance every year There didn't used to be this hard division between Xcode versions because of the compiler. If you were willing to do some reconfiguring, you could use newer GCC or "Apple LLVM" with the older Xcode.
    - LeoNatan25 10y ago
      Why are you not using the Swift 2.3 option in Xcode 8? It is going away in Xcode 8.3, but still, you can use more modern and stable dev tools.
      - wahnfrieden 10y ago
        The OP mentioned Swift 2, not Swift 2.2 - even that upgrade can be non-trivial (2->2.2).
toobigtotry 10y ago
I've noticed this effect recently - I call it "too big to try." Once a given institution reaches a certain scale, the apparent limitations on human attention at the top of the hierarchy make it impossible for the organization to contemplate small ventures. Like the parable of Bill Gates finding a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk, it's no longer worth the time to stoop to pick up the small stuff. (Intuitively, this seems related to the absurd inflation in the cost of public works in the US over the last century.)
- wpietri 10y ago
  Definitely. To me, it's a symptom of control-oriented organizations, where too much information processing has to take place at the top. As a contrast, support-oriented organizations work to keep most decisions happening lower down. It's especially frustrating here because the business case here seems pretty simple: go make these developers happy and effective. It's a known audience, they're easy to reach, they're not shy about telling you what they want. I don't think a lot of information needs to get to the top of the hierarchy.
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Ironically, Bill Gates is probably not the best billionaire for this parable: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920227&slug=1478100 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...
concinds 10y ago
I remember a few years ago, at a WWDC session on Xcode, the presenter was talking about version control improvements. He said something to the extent of "Xcode has a robust version control system" and the crowd laughed. And the presenter got offended, said it "wasn't nice" of the audience to laugh considering how hard-working the Xcode team was. My recollection is blurry so it would be nice if someone else remembers this too. But if that's really the attitude within Apple or the Xcode team, don't hold your breath for improvements. Edit: changed my paraphrase of the presenter. since I remember it a little better now.
- crowbahr 10y ago
  Well gee they are working so hard so we shouldn't criticize obviously. Golly all that hard work, so nice that it exempts them from derision for their substandard product.
- j2kun 10y ago
  So... they just don't know it's bad?
  - AsyncAwait 10y ago
    I'd guess it's more like they choose to ignore it.
- zuck9 10y ago
  Can someone link to a video of this session, or the title and the year WWDC was held?
  - wool_gather 10y ago
    I would guess "Source Control Management in Xcode", 411 from 2012: http://asciiwwdc.com/2012/sessions/411 http://asciiwwdc.com/2012/sessions/411
  - SmileyKeith 10y ago
    The videos from many WWDC sessions are altered. So even if you got the right session it may not have this. I've been in sessions where much less interesting this have happened that haven't made it in to the video. Also last WWDC they started pre-recording sessions so they could be up on the web sooner. Many of the video sessions from last year don't have any audience noise and differ significantly from the live session.
IBM 10y ago
Apple is not a big company. Out of the 116k employees they have 60k are in retail [1]. Another 6k are in AppleCare call centers [2]. So about 50k of them are at corporate. Contrast that with Google which has 72k employees [3] and Microsoft which has 120k employees [4]. Apple's organizational culture is meant to be about small teams. Steve Jobs once said "we're the biggest startup on the planet" [5]. This leads to complaints about various neglected features or products and calls for Apple to hire more employees or spin off divisions so it can have dedicated resources. Just like people will always complain about the quality of service at airlines, Apple watchers will always complain about whatever pet issue they feel isn't getting enough attention. That there are complaints doesn't in and of itself mean that Apple needs to change their organizational culture. These complaints always miss the opportunity cost of the changes they suggest: that Apple is Apple because they are resource constrained. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/apple-retail-ahrendts-employees/ http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/apple-retail-ahrendts-employee... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/how-apple-empowers-and-employs-the-american-working-class.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/how-apple-empo... [3] https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20161231_alphabet_10K.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20161231_alphabet_10K.pdf [4] https://news.microsoft.com/facts-about-microsoft/ https://news.microsoft.com/facts-about-microsoft/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg
- kbenson 10y ago
  Did you seriously just try to convince me that a 50k employee (by your logic) company is not a big company?
  - derefr 10y ago
    This (https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-does-Apple-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-does-Apple...) says that Apple employs ~16k software engineers. Let's break that down across everything those 16k software engineers are responsible for: • The OS kernels, drivers, and frameworks of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS • The base-system software on all of those OSes, including rather involved apps like: iBooks, Safari, Mail.app, iTunes, Photos.app • "Apps by Apple" like iWork, GarageBand, Pages/Keynote/Numbers, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro X, iBooks Author, and, yes, Xcode • Server.app (which adds to macOS the kind of enterprise domain-management + provisioning + MDM tooling that Windows gets in its Server releases, but also includes extra stuff like Wiki software, Xcode build-bots, and VPN management) • Firmware + macOS drivers + Windows drivers(!) for Apple hardware (keyboards, mice, touchpads, headphones; I bought one of those MacBook USB-C multiport dongles recently and it did a firmware update, so apparently it has firmware too) • Firmware and operating systems (usually NetBSD-derived) for "appliances" like the Airport/Time Capsule [though at least this has been dropped] • Sponsored work on open-source projects (Webkit and LLVM being the two big ones) and standards (the Swift language; the Bonjour protocol) • iCloud backend services: this includes the "obvious" things like the object store behind iCloud Drive and the per-app iCloud CoreData syncing servers; but also includes: • • Apple's own maps service to back Maps.app • • the iTunes store and App store (both in web and app form) • • the Apple Music / "iTunes in the Cloud" sync servers • • iCloud PIM support (mail, notes, calendars, reminders) • • the FaceTime and Messages.app servers • • Siri and Dictation (and you likely won't believe just how many languages Apple has built well-trained speech models for) • • the Apple website / Apple Store + Apple Support apps • • Xcode "development team provisioning" servers • • webapp versions of iWork and the PIM apps (go look at icloud.com) • • the Game Center servers • • the iAd servers
rhizome 10y ago
Apple should start asking their software engineering candidates to invert red-black trees in interviews. I hear that makes these kinds of issues unlikely.
debt 10y ago
It boils down to budget. The app ecosystem simply isn't a high priority because it makes little to no money relative to Apple's core business. Matter of fact the best thing they did was introduce ads to app search, at least now they're probably making a few more bucks. They invest most of their resources into hardware and critical software. Everything else clearly is secondary. It doesnt take much to form this opinion either, just look at the quality of their software overall. Very inconsistent, trending towards mostly stable. Design improves which is good I guess but not what developers need. They don't make a ton of money from independent developers and it doesn't matter anyway because most of the heavily used apps are created by Apple themselves.
mercer 10y ago
I'm only just getting into Apple development, and the course is using XCode and the interface builder. Could you tell my why I should avoid it and what approach to take instead? Or is it fine or even preferable to use it in the 'learning phase'?

M_Grey 10y ago

That very wealth is what's insulating them from the long-term reality of the choices they're making. It's a trap!

yourapostasy 10y ago
Indeed, Apple has the high-tech equivalent of "dragon sickness", in a nod to Tolkien. Google has a long road ahead of it, but it looks like they have the right pieces in place where I see small, incremental improvements each year, so maybe they're the tortoise. Milestones on that long road are like migrate away from Dalvik, fix business model / monetization issues with the Android marketplace, switch to vector-based canvas blitting, rationalize API support for different manufacturer-added features, and so on. What would be interesting is if they steal Apple's developer thunder by capitalizing upon open source and their in-house build system, and out-flank Apple's developer mindshare, by creating a developer-oriented ecosystem. Imagine if you could hook up your own Docker container that Google's build infrastructure then taps to build your Android app...but all the open source your app depends upon are in their build infrastructure, with near-instant feedback on build and CI problems of the open source bits operating at a massive scale. App development shifts to a posture where open source frameworks/modules/libraries that already power a lot of software are orders of magnitude more convenient to develop under this ecosystem, and the agility/efficiency of all those Android developers coalescing around common open source components online in a single build and CI ecosystem far outstrips Apple-based developers stuck with XCode and their own person-oriented toolchains. Apple has nothing in the pipeline remotely like that kind of ecosystem. Google would also get big data-based insight into phone app development trends in real-time that Apple could only dream about. Google's phone app development OODA loop would tighten considerably smaller than Apple's. I also wonder if Google and Microsoft could find benefits to team up to replace Dalvik with CLR, and then Microsoft Visual Studio becomes a first-class citizen on Linux for building CLR-based apps on Android.
- pjmlp 10y ago
  All of that has zero meaning given Google's reluctance to fix Android updates. The majority of the Android users is yet to experience any of those improvements.
  - bpodgursky 10y ago
    Um, Google has actually worked very hard to de-couple parts of Android into separate apps, so that those apps can update without a carrier-managed total OS upgrade. This has arguably negative impacts on Android's utility as a non-Google OS, but there's no question that this strategy was to help push updates to users faster.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      Making it a legal requirement, as they already do with so many others for OEMs to access Google services and the Play Store, would be the solution. No need for smoke and mirrors games regarding decoupling Android.
      - AsyncAwait 10y ago
        I imagine it's not that easy to add something like this now, without huge OEM backslash. If it was there from the start, maybe it would work.
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  > Imagine if you could hook up your own Docker container that Google's build infrastructure then taps to build your Android app...but all the open source your app depends upon are in their build infrastructure, with near-instant feedback on build and CI problems of the open source bits operating at a massive scale. But... why? Gradle already does a good job eliminating works-on-my-machine-isms, that sounds like cloud-for-the-sake-of-cloud. > I also wonder if Google and Microsoft could find benefits to team up to replace Dalvik with CLR, and then Microsoft Visual Studio becomes a first-class citizen on Linux for building CLR-based apps on Android. But... why?
coldtea 10y ago
>That very wealth is what's insulating them from the long-term reality of the choices they're making. It's a trap! What "long term reality"? They have been doing this when they were near bankrupt and continue to this day, 20 years later, and they are now the richest company on the planet. Maybe the long term reality is actually success?

pg_is_a_butt 10y ago

so, you want your source code editor to refactor your code automatically... and you think that is "basic stuff"? you're all idiots.

na85 10y ago

Sooner or later people will wake up to the fact that this is their own fault for leveraging a proprietary ecosystem. You want to play in Apple's walled garden, you take the scraps they give you. They have no financial incentive to make the experience better for you if you're already a captive developer.

valuearb 10y ago
Yea, but iOS developers make twice as much as Android developers. Lots of customers love the walled garden and those customers spend a lot more on apps than Android customers do (Android installed base is multiples of iOS, yet revenues are double on iOS). And one of the reason the bigger spending customers are with Apple is the benefits of the walled garden. It's more secure, and it's updated far faster (or at all). For developers it's a better environment to develop for, consistent screen sizes and hardware features and I know I can write my latest app for the latest iOS and within months of it's release the vast majority of revenue producing customers will be on it. That's a big reason why better apps are written on iOS first, it's easier.
- bsder 10y ago
  > Yea, but iOS developers make twice as much as Android developers. 1) 2x mouse nuts is still mouse nuts. 2) Do they really make 2x? Especially after you deduct $100 a year?
  - richardwhiuk 10y ago
    $100 is peanuts to anyone actually earning money, and it's definitely peanuts compared to developer cost.
    - bsder 10y ago
      Except that I seem to remember a statistic like 95% of the iOS apps don't actually make enough to cover that annual fee.

wool_gather 10y ago

The one that's been getting me lately is the split between Xcode 7/Swift 2.2 and 8/3. We have an older project in Swift 2 (yes, it's slated to get changed over, just not yet), and new work on a project in 3. If I try to open one while the other is already open, one of the Xcodes invariably freezes or crashes. I will say, though, that I've always liked IB (though not storyboards). But then there's the wonderful "Oh, you opened a nib, I should move something around in the XML." -> SCM status changes even though I didn't modify the file.

orbitur 10y ago
Can you still submit apps with Xcode 7? In response to your problem, having done the Xcode Old/Xcode New dance every year since 2012, I got into the habit of making sure they are never running concurrently. Things get even worse if you run xcodebuild on the command line while a different UI version is running.
- wool_gather 10y ago
  > Can you still submit apps with Xcode 7? ...yes. You can. 6 is the minimum. > having done the Xcode Old/Xcode New dance every year There didn't used to be this hard division between Xcode versions because of the compiler. If you were willing to do some reconfiguring, you could use newer GCC or "Apple LLVM" with the older Xcode.
  - LeoNatan25 10y ago
    Why are you not using the Swift 2.3 option in Xcode 8? It is going away in Xcode 8.3, but still, you can use more modern and stable dev tools.
    - wahnfrieden 10y ago
      The OP mentioned Swift 2, not Swift 2.2 - even that upgrade can be non-trivial (2->2.2).

toobigtotry 10y ago

I've noticed this effect recently - I call it "too big to try." Once a given institution reaches a certain scale, the apparent limitations on human attention at the top of the hierarchy make it impossible for the organization to contemplate small ventures. Like the parable of Bill Gates finding a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk, it's no longer worth the time to stoop to pick up the small stuff. (Intuitively, this seems related to the absurd inflation in the cost of public works in the US over the last century.)

wpietri 10y ago
Definitely. To me, it's a symptom of control-oriented organizations, where too much information processing has to take place at the top. As a contrast, support-oriented organizations work to keep most decisions happening lower down. It's especially frustrating here because the business case here seems pretty simple: go make these developers happy and effective. It's a known audience, they're easy to reach, they're not shy about telling you what they want. I don't think a lot of information needs to get to the top of the hierarchy.
Apocryphon 10y ago
Ironically, Bill Gates is probably not the best billionaire for this parable: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19920227&slug=1478100 http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...

concinds 10y ago

I remember a few years ago, at a WWDC session on Xcode, the presenter was talking about version control improvements. He said something to the extent of "Xcode has a robust version control system" and the crowd laughed. And the presenter got offended, said it "wasn't nice" of the audience to laugh considering how hard-working the Xcode team was. My recollection is blurry so it would be nice if someone else remembers this too. But if that's really the attitude within Apple or the Xcode team, don't hold your breath for improvements. Edit: changed my paraphrase of the presenter. since I remember it a little better now.

crowbahr 10y ago
Well gee they are working so hard so we shouldn't criticize obviously. Golly all that hard work, so nice that it exempts them from derision for their substandard product.
j2kun 10y ago
So... they just don't know it's bad?
- AsyncAwait 10y ago
  I'd guess it's more like they choose to ignore it.
zuck9 10y ago
Can someone link to a video of this session, or the title and the year WWDC was held?
- wool_gather 10y ago
  I would guess "Source Control Management in Xcode", 411 from 2012: http://asciiwwdc.com/2012/sessions/411 http://asciiwwdc.com/2012/sessions/411
- SmileyKeith 10y ago
  The videos from many WWDC sessions are altered. So even if you got the right session it may not have this. I've been in sessions where much less interesting this have happened that haven't made it in to the video. Also last WWDC they started pre-recording sessions so they could be up on the web sooner. Many of the video sessions from last year don't have any audience noise and differ significantly from the live session.

IBM 10y ago

Apple is not a big company. Out of the 116k employees they have 60k are in retail [1]. Another 6k are in AppleCare call centers [2]. So about 50k of them are at corporate. Contrast that with Google which has 72k employees [3] and Microsoft which has 120k employees [4]. Apple's organizational culture is meant to be about small teams. Steve Jobs once said "we're the biggest startup on the planet" [5]. This leads to complaints about various neglected features or products and calls for Apple to hire more employees or spin off divisions so it can have dedicated resources. Just like people will always complain about the quality of service at airlines, Apple watchers will always complain about whatever pet issue they feel isn't getting enough attention. That there are complaints doesn't in and of itself mean that Apple needs to change their organizational culture. These complaints always miss the opportunity cost of the changes they suggest: that Apple is Apple because they are resource constrained. [1] http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/apple-retail-ahrendts-employees/ http://fortune.com/2016/01/28/apple-retail-ahrendts-employee... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/how-apple-empowers-and-employs-the-american-working-class.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/technology/how-apple-empo... [3] https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20161231_alphabet_10K.pdf https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20161231_alphabet_10K.pdf [4] https://news.microsoft.com/facts-about-microsoft/ https://news.microsoft.com/facts-about-microsoft/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60dheI4ARg

kbenson 10y ago
Did you seriously just try to convince me that a 50k employee (by your logic) company is not a big company?
- derefr 10y ago
  This (https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-does-Apple-have https://www.quora.com/How-many-software-engineers-does-Apple...) says that Apple employs ~16k software engineers. Let's break that down across everything those 16k software engineers are responsible for: • The OS kernels, drivers, and frameworks of macOS, iOS, watchOS, and tvOS • The base-system software on all of those OSes, including rather involved apps like: iBooks, Safari, Mail.app, iTunes, Photos.app • "Apps by Apple" like iWork, GarageBand, Pages/Keynote/Numbers, Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro X, iBooks Author, and, yes, Xcode • Server.app (which adds to macOS the kind of enterprise domain-management + provisioning + MDM tooling that Windows gets in its Server releases, but also includes extra stuff like Wiki software, Xcode build-bots, and VPN management) • Firmware + macOS drivers + Windows drivers(!) for Apple hardware (keyboards, mice, touchpads, headphones; I bought one of those MacBook USB-C multiport dongles recently and it did a firmware update, so apparently it has firmware too) • Firmware and operating systems (usually NetBSD-derived) for "appliances" like the Airport/Time Capsule [though at least this has been dropped] • Sponsored work on open-source projects (Webkit and LLVM being the two big ones) and standards (the Swift language; the Bonjour protocol) • iCloud backend services: this includes the "obvious" things like the object store behind iCloud Drive and the per-app iCloud CoreData syncing servers; but also includes: • • Apple's own maps service to back Maps.app • • the iTunes store and App store (both in web and app form) • • the Apple Music / "iTunes in the Cloud" sync servers • • iCloud PIM support (mail, notes, calendars, reminders) • • the FaceTime and Messages.app servers • • Siri and Dictation (and you likely won't believe just how many languages Apple has built well-trained speech models for) • • the Apple website / Apple Store + Apple Support apps • • Xcode "development team provisioning" servers • • webapp versions of iWork and the PIM apps (go look at icloud.com) • • the Game Center servers • • the iAd servers

rhizome 10y ago

Apple should start asking their software engineering candidates to invert red-black trees in interviews. I hear that makes these kinds of issues unlikely.

debt 10y ago

It boils down to budget. The app ecosystem simply isn't a high priority because it makes little to no money relative to Apple's core business. Matter of fact the best thing they did was introduce ads to app search, at least now they're probably making a few more bucks. They invest most of their resources into hardware and critical software. Everything else clearly is secondary. It doesnt take much to form this opinion either, just look at the quality of their software overall. Very inconsistent, trending towards mostly stable. Design improves which is good I guess but not what developers need. They don't make a ton of money from independent developers and it doesn't matter anyway because most of the heavily used apps are created by Apple themselves.

mercer 10y ago

I'm only just getting into Apple development, and the course is using XCode and the interface builder. Could you tell my why I should avoid it and what approach to take instead? Or is it fine or even preferable to use it in the 'learning phase'?