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You left out that they lock down anything that isn't those things. I tried developing an app of my own on macOS, not using Swift and their tools, and it's a huge pain. They have deprecated and version locked OpenGL for no other reason than to push their own tools. Trying to just get an external DLL to load was nearly impossible. Anything cross-platform needs to be converted down to their tooling, such as Vulkan to Metal. MacOS is even more of anomaly and special case than all the Linux distributions.

It's crazy how much easier development on Windows is. And Microsoft's is almost all cross-platform. None of those things you mentioned allow you to work in a platform agnostic manner. Whereas Windows supports their own stuff like DirectX but still allows direct running of Vulkan, OpenGL, etc.




This. Apple has been slowly, relentlessly, sneakily squeezing out any open or cross platform dev options.

If you want to develop for Apple's devices, you have to sacrifice your future career options with any other tech stack/vendor by investing your limited time into skills that are only relevant in the Apple ecosystem.

Then you have to hope that it's still financially viable to do software dev in Apple's world for the next few decades - which given their demonstrated behavior of scraping back more and more of the pie for themselves and their shareholders, seems like a risky bet.


"I tried developing on <platform>, actively avoided using their tools and tech, and the experience sucked because nothing I tried was supported."


It wasn't that it was not supported. It is that Apple is openly antagonistic to and actively blocks anything that isn't theirs.

And you also left out key information. I don't have any issues with the same development on Windows or Linux. Apple is the outlier and isn't doing some reasonable thing.

Apple is by far the most troublesome platform to develop for. They literally make you do it their way, and you cannot recover any of that work for other platforms.


I generally agree with you, but on the other side of the coin, if you follow the processes they’re forcing on you… it’s pretty seamless. Sometimes it’s a bit buggy when they release new APIs or versions of tooling, but given the amount of people who do Native development and the money it generates, it gets resolved.


I don't have infinite time and energy. It would be easier to just not support macOS rather than learn an entire stack just for them. Microsoft also has a Windows-only stack, but its perfectly fine to use others.


I’m not sure what you mean by “entire stack” when it comes to mobile development, especially with iOS. If you want to target >85% of all devices, you aim for iOS current version - 1, then Swift and xCode your way into AppStore.

I am obviously over-simplifying it, but my point is it really depends on the market you’re aiming for. Like if you think you’ll make an app for users in North America, not supporting Android makes more sense. On the opposite side, if you want India, LATAM, you can drop iOS and never learn anything about Swift since your ROI will be very little. Again, heavily depends on what your goal is.


This is an overestimation of how much effort it takes to learn another language and stack, especially in a world with Google, Stack Overflow, and LLMs.


I agree with the GP. I feel like you're trying to walk into a steakhouse and ask for pancakes KNOWING it was a steakhouse before you went in. Pancakes are great, but it says steakhouse right on the sign that says "We sell steak and nothing else"


The analogy doesn't work.

It's not like Apple provides their platform and then if you don't want to use it then fine, you're on your own. They are actively hostile towards you doing something else.

If I leap off your analogy, which again doesn't really work, it's as if they throw tomatoes from their steakhouse as you go towards the pancake house.


If you go and develop for android (the pancake house) how can they possibly be hostile toward you? Sure if your want to develop for both then it's not ideal, and I agree it sucks to have to learn two languages, but that's not apples problem.


Are they? They own the OS. And they reserve to themselves the rights to change how it behaves. There’s no standard API, only tooling. So yeah, it’s obvious that you’ll be in great pain if you try to sidestep the tooling. Everything apart from their SDK is and will always be an hack.


Are they what? Actively hostile? Yes, they are.

Of course they can do whatever they want. But it makes everyone slowly hate them.




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