Apple has no intent of ever supporting such a scenario in a way that would satisfy you. Why not switch to another manufacturer that sells what you want?
There is no other manufacturer that sells what I want. The alternative is worse (Google) or incompatible with the reality of my daily life (my banks app won't work on it).
On the desktop side of things it's getting better, the Framework desktop is interesting, but there's still no REAL alternative yet. Maybe in 5 years.
> There is no other manufacturer that sells what I want.
Not only that, but if there was one it would very likely become very popular. As it is gained market share money and power it that doing all bad things the currently big players are doing (because they tend to increase that money and power) and you're back looking for an alternative again. Regulations, not market forces are the only way to curb these bad behaviors.
Fairphone and a Framework is just fine. What exactly do you do that suggests there is no alternative? I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.
> I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.
Let me check the list.
- High DPI screen with color calibration and automatic white balancing, working 99% of the time. Ensuring your eyes always sees the color it expects without fatigue. Plus, HDR.
- Most decent external screens you plug will also have their correct color profile installed on the OS level, so they'll not show funny colors.
- 15+ hour battery life on an ordinary laptop if you don't abuse it. Even my M1 can handle me for a couple of days with light usage.
- Good quality speakers, decent stereo separation without being too tinny or boomy.
- Great quality cameras and microphones for its size.
- Great, backlight illuminated keyboard, with no flex.
- A realistic 8-10 year usage life without babying it.
- A full metal body, and keeping it light for that amount of metal.
- Built-in biometrics which runs on a proper secure enclave, without any "touch here, write absurdly long pasword you don't know there" shenanigans of Windows.
- A POSIX compliant, BSD descendant OS which can interoperate with Linux way better than Windows.
- A proper backup system which backs up whole OS and system state to an external drive, better than old "Windows 7 backup" and miles better than new "OneDrive only Windows Backup".
- Better radios, backend and port bandwidth than its class-equivalent machines. Essentially a loaded MacBook Pro is equivalent to a Z-Workstation Mobile from HP.
...and these are standard in almost every MacBook. I don't go through hoops to beg local distributors to build the machine I like via their configuration wizard, and wait them to import it if they feel like it, and pay 3x of its sticker price because it's a one off import tucked inside a bigger shipment. Even CTO devices by Apple are shipped in a week and comes to my door in another 1-2. I pay the sticker price for the device I want.
It has some benefits, the battery life (you aren't getting 15 hours from it doing a normal workload), keyboard, cameras, are pretty similar to many other laptops. Linux exists so a pale imitation isn't needed, its not light, and there are plenty of as good if not better back up options.
What about the overall quality of the software and hardware being rather poor? No repair-ability, a limited OS now, low quality glass covering the screens, lack of long term support for many laptops now?
You are 100% getting 15 hours from a normal workload. The keyboard is better than any other laptop keyboard. The camera is better than any other laptop integrated webcam.
The quality of the software is same or better as Linux (because getting all your Linux desktop and command line software running is a brew install away).
The hardware is class leading. The screens are best in class. The laptops will last you 8-10 years and then you can install a Linux on them and keep them going for another 5.
Yes, repairability is poor, but improving.
I get why people make other choices, but the idea that Apple hardware is poor quality and the software is terrible just isn't the way to do it. Argue about purity of freedom, argue about cost (Apple hardware is expensive, because it's superb), argue about crappy dev account policies like the thread is here to support.
But, y'know, don't just make up stuff anybody who uses this stuff daily knows is just made up...
HP have a better webcam (Higher res and better colours), Z Book and Framework have the same keyboard basically, the software is no where near as good (far more locked down), considering M series have been out for 5 and many had very speedy failures I doubt 8-10 years especially for the base models on low ram. Multicore scores (so for any form of simulation or parallel computing) work M series are not even in the conversation in comparison with the latest AMD and Intel. Another key issue is due to architecture change, their reusability once they become unusable in their current form means its Asahi or nothing.
Repairability is non existant, a battery and some ports is not anything to shout about.
I have used Macs since the early 90's when they were repairable, pretty much consistently and I still have to on occassion but they have dropped the ball on every aspect. From the late 90's repairability and innovation have gone downhill. The late 00's to the early 10's brought it back and ever since then bar the odd thing that is pretty but less practical, just look at the touch bar and the removal of ports.
I have had Thinkpads, ZBooks, and other laptops such as Lets Note easily as long as a macbook and yes some of the pretty may be missing but that isn't what I focus on in devices.
"Basically the same keyboard" but the Mac one has light comming only trough letters on keycaps, while my HP zbook is leaking more light around them, even worse when viewed from an angle.
Speedy failures of several tousand units when they are selling millions. + having it repaired is not a dreadful experience as with other PC makers (have horrendous experiences with HP, Asus and LG).
Multiscore? Sure, the laptop that sounds overshadows my robot vacuum can do slightly more work in a short timespan, id rather not have to deal with uncomnfortable temperatures when its just sitting on a desktop, doing who knows what (probably not indexing my files, as the search function just have no idea the file I opened 20x in the last 2 weeks exists). Which bring us to software: is it more closed and do I hate it for it? Sure. Is it worse overall? Not a chance.
Repairability is "bring it to an applestore and possibly come out with a new device right away, or wait a week. Miles ahead than any other brand. Sure, you can change the battery yourself, but you either get shafted for oem battery, or wonder why that cheap battery from shady shop runs just as bad as your old one. What good is repairing 5 year old HP thats breaking apart, overheating at idle, with screen burning out, hinges having a play, with speakers of a joke quality, with so many bad memories, when you can have non-repaired 10 year old macbook and it still feel like new.
For work I have windows machine because I need to use windows apps, but at home I am m1 macbook air (costing less than 1/4 of my zbook workstation), and apart from raw power its better in every. single. way.
Considering that my 17 year old MacBook only needed a new battery in the process, I can say that they're dependable machines (also ~20 Macs around me confirms this little statistic of mine).
On the simulation performance, you came to the right place, because I'll be developing a BEM code for material simulation. I can test it on both M series and on a cluster and see how big the gap is. Intel based Macs were pretty on par with their server siblings. I expect to be able extract similar performance from M based systems with some tight coding.
If you believe that Asahi's changes won't distilled to mainstream Linux, you're mistaken. Marcan might have fought with the kernel devs, but somebody will carry these changes in another form sooner or later. Macs wont't be Asahi or MacOS only systems for long. I think you can understand this better than me, because as far as I understand, we're using these things called computers for a similar amount of time.
BTW, you're citing Thinkpads and Z-Books which are the two machine classes which can claim some parity with MacBooks. They are the same class machines basically, so you have some bias in your views. This is what I cited as "I have to beg the local distributors to...". So getting an equivalent Z-Book or Thinkpad is not 10x harder, but at least 3x more expensive for a similar configuration.
You're getting 15 when you're listening music all day while doing work. You get an hour or two more if you're working silent. If you want an equal keyboard to a MacBook, you will pay for top of the line systems from the big three (HP/Lenovo/Dell), and they are more expensive than their Apple equivalents for less hardware. I have never seen an equivalent internal webcam in none of any non-Apple notebooks, BTW. You can add a high end Logitech or a mirrorless camera, but that beats the purpose, of course.
Linux exists and improved a ton in the last two decades. It's great and is my primary OS, but macOS is not an imitation of Linux, by any stretch.
Tell me a backup solution which allows you plug your drive to a brand new computer, get a coffee and resume from the point you left, literally incl. open apps, documents, window positions, volume level, and even the playing song. I'm trying to contribute Back in Time in Linux and know Borg exists, but all of them are filling different roles. Windows / LLVM / BTRFS / ZFS snapshots are a thing but, none of them are easy to use by the layman.
"Low quality glass" issue exposed in 2014, and it's not "low quality glass", but "fragile coating" issue, and I believe it's due to harsh handling of the glass. Because, I have an 2008, 2014 and 2020 MacBooks. 2008 has an old fashioned matte screen, and 2014 and 2020 MacBook's screen coatings are almost spotless. They both have a single short line in the middle due to an oily key burned the coating because I didn't clean my keyboard and somehow pressed the machines so the keys made contact.
If you use an alcohol free screen cleaner (which is dirt cheap here) or a camera lens cleaning solution, with a clean cloth (e.g. the one Apple provides inside the box), you can't damage the screen. Of course, Apple can go above and beyond and use fluorine coatings on these screens (which are used in high end camera lenses), which will easily double the price of the whole machine.
I agree on the repairability, but I'll note something else: dependability. None of my Macs needed any service. 2014 one needs a new battery after 10 years, and that's acceptable. One friend managed to fry their MacBook Air by abusing it a bit with AI workloads, but it's fixed under warranty for manufacturing error. I know ~20 people with Macs, and nobody except two (who both emptied a mug coffee on their keyboards) needed a service.
Also, on the iPhone side, if you send your phone in for battery replacement, any damaged part of your phone will be replaced free of charge if there's no external damage on that part. Apple changed my speaker for free on my iPhone, because they found its performance subpar. No info, no questions asked. "We changed your battery and speaker. You only pay for battery. Enjoy your phone, have a nice day". That's good service if you ask me, and the phone returned in a condition that nobody could tell that thing was opened and its battery replaced. The phone was out of warranty for 2 years when that happened.
On the OS side, there's no real limitation except you need to enable external kernel modules via recovery menu, and if we're talking about SIP, praising Nix and immutable systems and loathing macOS SIP is hypocrisy, so there's that.
On the reliability of macOS underpinnings, that laptop is up for 60 days (because of an update induced reboot), and it never crashes and fragments its memory so nothing works. So, I don't know if that this is not reliable, what is.
By long term, you mean 7 years? Heck, you can't even get 7 years of support and spare parts for enterprise hardware unless you pay an arm and a leg (don't ask me how I know), and Apple gives you 7 years of HW/SW support for anything they build. How this is not LTS?
Currently, no, but in the future I might migrate out of support systems to Asahi.
One of the reasons I use macOS is I get to inspect how they do some things. I carry the experience to Linux via the small tools I develop. Apple is one of the last "purveyors of magic" when it comes to user interfaces, and studying them, iterating on them and implementing them is both a good learning experience. Also, it feels nice when something you write (with a GPL license no less) has the same magic feeling of frictionless productivity.
I use my 2014 and 2020 Macs with mesh and old-school multi-ap networks which broadcast same SSID all the time, and I see it as switches APs from the wireless reception bar, without any drop in connectivity. Mesh enabled or not.
Also, macOS's audio stack is unmatched, Windows and Linux are an absolute mess for anything audio-related. It's doable on those OSes but very far from a pleasant experience.
My coworker would disagree with you. Slack and Teams never remember the microphone, frequently fails to initialize the device correctly and have to rejoin the meeting. _Never_ have that problem on Windows or Linux.
Latency for the most part. It's almost non-existent and has effectively no visible load on the system. Also, you can plug any advanced interface via USB or Thunderbolt and carry massive amount of audio data just by selecting that device from a list. It's simple, it's transparent, it's fast and it works.
While I agree that Pipewire works great and pretty transparently for single channel capture and multichannel playback, I don't know what happens when you add a 6 channel audio interface and start recording on all of them at the same time.
Then you should give pipewire a serious go with multiple channels. It's way better than MacOS stack which doesn't really do independent multichannel by default. There's an API for it that some paid apps use that lets you do it. Meanwhile pipewire just lets you connect whatever wherever. I managed with pipewire to get lower latency on Bluetooth headphones than MacOS allows at all.
What happens with 6 channels? You just connect them where you want and it works.
Their app needs Google Play Services. To install it on an Android device I'd want to use over my iPhone, I'd have to jump through a bunch of hoops and it would become a project with permanent upkeep. So I use an iPhone instead.
You completely missed the point of the post. It isn't about what phone they own. It's about what phone all the users own.
which is the same for the EU's Digital Markets Act. It's not the Smartphone Owner's Act. It's a law for letting business reach customers without having Apple in the middle. Apple (nor Google) can be allowed to have control over such a large market of customers betwen them and nearly every business.
Because Apple are one of the gatekeepers now, that's why they're getting regulated everywhere. It's not like how you can move from a Ford to a Honda, a lot of people have their entire digital lives with notes, chats, photos, videos and thousands of dollars of purchases tied to Apple's account, plus the network effect where the whole family has iPhone because of iMessage. Moving to another phone brands, they'd loose all that.
That's Apple's moat and they're fighting to the death for it because they don't have any other cash cow to milk.
If you're logging in from a country that historically has had a lot of fraud coming from it, this might be the reason why.
When travelling in Hungary my AWS account was banned the moment I tried to log in. I got basically no reason. I was able to call support but the guy very polite fobbed me off and I got the idea that they weren't even able to disclose the reason why they banned me.
Don't ever travel, never change anything related to billing except to update your cards before they expire. Don't change your name, email adresses or lose access to your phone number, and as we know now also don't ask support.
Then don't use any uncommon tools, e.g. ones associated with 'hacking', or store any copyrighted files in their cloud.
If there's any issue or error with logins etc., don't retry too quickly or too often or that in itself will be suspicious. Wait a day between requests, and double-check everything before retrying. Do not retry from a different IP or worse a VPN, or that will also be suspicious.
That should just about cover the bases for most providers.
Yes, it's insane and obviously you still need a backup of all your stuff just in case.
Similar situation to me. I got my Amazon account banned because I dared to use different Amazon websites with the same login. So amazon.de, .co.uk, .com ... I live in Norway where we don't have an official Amazon country..
Apparently I got flagged as suspicious, and every time I jump through the hoops to prove who I am, I get rejected.
I just stopped buying from Amazon.
Lost all my books, movies, tv shows. Everything. No recourse.
There was a time (a few weeks/months, I think?) when I've been getting that "imgur is over capacity, try again later" every time I tried to open an image posted there. First few times I wondered if imgur is really down, but haven't seen anyone in related comment sections complain, eventually I figured out that they are just lying to you with a fake error message if they don't like your IP for whatever reason, and the situation made me really angry (just return a 403 and say that the address is banned, damn it! It helps nobody to give a wrong error message and googling it just shows that many people have the same problem, scrapers will not be fooled by that anyway). After a while, I stopped getting those errors.
Geoblock is kids game. Try birthblock. Western megacorps are asking Ukrainians for the passport data, to prove they are from Ukraine and then block them anyway, if they were born in the currently russian occupied regions. And they don't accept any proof of living outside of those regions. This is the level of sewing a yellow star on your work robe, but no one if talking about it or shaming the corporations.
Looking at service logs at my company show a serious amount of hacking attempts by bots originating from Russian and Chinese IP addresses. Mostly harmless on an updated server not running an ancient Wordpress but attempts nonetheless.
For companies that don't serve customers there it's very common to just block those network ranges. Of course, it's no real solution, but some people are convinced every security layer contributes to 'defense in depth'.
It's not specifically Ukraine related, (spam) botnet harvesting is a much older practice. It was already a problem at my first job at the beginning of the century...
If my windows device fails, I'm not going to Microsoft. I either fix the offending part of my desktop or laptop, or reinstall the OS or move to a different OS. If something is wrong with my android phone, I'm not going to Google since I don't own a Pixel and will go to the manufacturer of the phone. If it's a purely software issue, there are steps I can actually take to flash a different ROM though admittedly it's not an easy process.
Here Apple not only owns the device but also the software it's running as well as distribution of apps for this device except for CLI tools distributed by brew or other package managers. At least with a Mac I can install and run applications over the Internet. With an iPhone that's not at all possible (not sure about the status of side loading with the EU ruling and all)
Not really the case for Android, you skip the google account setup or the amazon account setup if you are using a fire tablet and continue using the device by sideloading whatever APKs you want. Most of the times the APKs that depend on Google Play Services will continue to work fine.
I skipped the amazon account registration and directly sideloaded the Google Play apps on my fire tablet.
Even for Google TVs you can skip the setup and use the TV as is. You can sideload APKs on this as well.
AFAIK, the account setup/login circumvention is not possible on fire tv sticks/google chromecasts.
You can take a very old android device factory reset it and continue using at as an offline only device without the blessings of google or amazon. (Except FRP devices)
But that is not the case with Apple, you need to connect it atleast once to the internet to activate the device.
How many alternative operating systems work well on Apple devices?
Android phones usually have multiple options (Lineage, Calyx, eos, Graphene, depending on your particular phone) and you can always replace Windows with Linux.
Any bank transfers are MFAd via the app, for example. It's the only bank that allows non-citizens in Germany that has English correspondence and wouldn't have taken months in Bureaucracy to open an account when I first moved.
Very well, only the shittiest banking apps don’t work on them. Root is a bit more problematic, but would also be reason enough for me to change banks, as they seem to care more about theater than security.
In Finland, for example, you have to authenticate online through your banking application for any online government service or things like mobile plan. This 2FA is basically mandatory and the alternative is using keys printed on a paper that you have to pay for cause every key is one time use only and I am not sure they will continue that service for long.
It’s probably similar in Sweden and other neighbouring countries
I would not be able to log into _any_ local banking website without the government 2fa app. Not sure what the alternative is. Maybe they can give you an old school hardware device.
Or read the digital letters from government / municipalities.
In general? Slovenian government allows authentication via
- TLS client certificates,
- three different third party identity providers,
- ID card via a card reader
- .. or via NFC through a smartphone, and
- SMS OTP.
People who don't or don't want to use a smartphone shouldn't be barred from online government services or forced into a costly and slow authentication scheme when there's numerous better options.
^This. For me, it's not my phone that's defective, it's the app. My phone runs my other ~10 apps that provide for my digital life perfectly fine, with the level of security I'm comfortable with (root access, firewall to block anything in/out that I don't specifically allow). If this is a problem for your app, your app is broken. I'll use something else.
No detailed reason given. Also no info from the developer on what they might have done to trigger this, so basically, except for “Apple terminated this account”, we don’t know what happened.
All we can complain about is that Apple’s rejection letters never go into detail. I’m afraid that’s what you get when the legal department of a large corp is involved.
They shouldn't be able to set terms of how their services should be used?
I think we can all agree this is a poor response and they should give some idea on what the root problem is and how to address it, but to say they just shouldn't ever have conditions at all is absurd.
Yes. Agreed. But on the other hand Apple has taken conscious action to put themselves in the position where you have to go through them to get an attestation if you have customers who use Mac OS. They chose not to trust any attestation other than their own, you cannot choose to have Microsoft, or Red Hat, or IBM, or any other trusted vendor (e.g. https://www.sigstore.dev/ or something similar) attest and verify your software and your developer identity.
"not [...] interfere with [...] Ad-Hoc distribution, or the Program [...]"
Obviously his email was an interference with the "Program" (Apple Developer Program). It probably had consumed an Apple employee's time, or that of an AI.
Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region. Please remove all tools you use to operate in this region and release the premises for other companies to use them, immediately", without explaining why. Because this is what Apple is doing.
> Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region.
Isn't that literally what the EU is doing with the DMA?
I remember an /r/AskReddit thread years ago about 'What's your favourite free smartphone app?' (or something along those lines) and the comment that most stuck in my mind was from an iPhone user lamenting how many interesting and novel things were only available on Android, because publishing for iOS was simply too hard.
This isn't to say that the Google Play Store is intrinsically better than Apple's App Store; Google is equally guilty of this what's the cheapest thing we can pass off as due diligence? nonsense. However, it is a good reminder that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and is only getting worse.
I think the idea of the smartphone as a general-purpose computing machine is dead, and that instead phones are now the designated Muggle-safe Internet consumption platform. Apart from media streaming, ordinary people aren't using computing machinery for anything they weren't using it for twenty years ago, so I think they won't feel any loss from the stagnation of mobile apps.
The lessons for HN readers are: a) app stores exist within their platform's moat; and b) don't build your business inside someone else's moat.
“You will not, directly or indirectly, commit any act intended to interfere with the Apple Software or Services, the intent of this Agreement, or Apple’s business practices including, but not limited to, taking actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, B2B Program, or the Program.”
Well-known risk of making your livelihood dependent on a company that's consistently demonstrated that, as you would expect, it doesn't care about you or any of your concerns, and will screw you on a whim.
Something is happening right now at Apple, as I have seen another post on reddit about that (could not find it), where people complained about their Dev Accounts were banned as well, when they even did not have any apps, just used dev accounts to notarize apps for themselves.
While notarization as method of increasing security is a pain, I guess we need more details. For all we know, it is just as likely that some bad actor was prevented from distributing notarized apps. Perhaps even the developer was unaware that their machine has been compromised.
And yet, I’m still waiting for them to approve my developer account, It’s been two months now. they seriously need to be broken up and allow other app stores and ways to developer for their hardware.
Apple really are the poster child for "Stallman was right". When things are broken with their software you just have to hope that an update or relogging will magically fix things. You aren't even allowed to write your own software for the hardware you own without their permission. Terrible
I wonder if they have a problem with the core functionality of the program. Maybe they do not want any Windows Recall clones popping up before they can offer their own solution, so they've decided to stamp down on this (screen recording timelapse software) because it is vaguely in the same category.
It's pretty crap that Apple won't explain the reasons. I can understand with something like a free facebook account where there isn't any money to pay for people to explain things but being an Apple dev generally involves paying hundreds of dollars to Apple and in return they should at least be prepared to talk to you.
That repo is a valuable collection of documented App Store rejections with resolution paths - helpful for developers to navigate similar situations or preemptively avoid common pitfalls.
I bought a used MacBook air from my colleague to give to my girlfriend. It's the first apple device I've owned for more than a decade.
I was expecting smooth sailing. From afar it's supposed to be so well integrated and smooth.
What we experienced was the opposite. Even just the experience in macOS feels extremely janky. Lots of different UI paradigms, lack of feedback when logging into your apple account when it doesn't work in some cases.
Anyway, we updated everything and my gf even purchased something almost immediately - a nearly 100 dollar license for software from the app store.
She puts the laptop away for a couple of days and then we want to use it in the kitchen.. and we are told there's an issue with the account. We end up logging in online where we are finally told that its been blocked and we need to verify it. Whatever, I thought, it's probably just some filter. We verify with phone number and are told we'll need to wait a couple of days.
The result is that her apple id is just banned, and there is no recourse. No one can tell us anything at all except that we broke the terms of service. They can't even refund our purchase because they literally can't find our account in their system. We're literally instructed to do a charge back.
So we end up using another apple id that my girlfriend had, which she had forgotten about since it was only used for Apple tv... And it doesn't work. We are unable to login with it, and when we go online, we enter some sort of verification flow.. which just breaks. The final step is a website with a button which literally doesn't do anything when you press it. Except it does - it sends a request and I can see it return a 500.
We end up having to talk to support on the phone and they tell us this is all intentional, and he just needs to flip a switch in his system and we're good to go.
Literally the most asinine experience I've ever had with any tech company. Also the last time I'm buying anything Apple.
I hope it won't take more than 10 years for the EU to actually force them to let us publish our own stuff without paying them first.
Apple has no intent of ever supporting such a scenario in a way that would satisfy you. Why not switch to another manufacturer that sells what you want?
There is no other manufacturer that sells what I want. The alternative is worse (Google) or incompatible with the reality of my daily life (my banks app won't work on it). On the desktop side of things it's getting better, the Framework desktop is interesting, but there's still no REAL alternative yet. Maybe in 5 years.
> There is no other manufacturer that sells what I want.
Not only that, but if there was one it would very likely become very popular. As it is gained market share money and power it that doing all bad things the currently big players are doing (because they tend to increase that money and power) and you're back looking for an alternative again. Regulations, not market forces are the only way to curb these bad behaviors.
Fairphone and a Framework is just fine. What exactly do you do that suggests there is no alternative? I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.
> I can see absolutely nothing Apple does that no other laptop can.
Let me check the list.
- High DPI screen with color calibration and automatic white balancing, working 99% of the time. Ensuring your eyes always sees the color it expects without fatigue. Plus, HDR.
- Most decent external screens you plug will also have their correct color profile installed on the OS level, so they'll not show funny colors.
- 15+ hour battery life on an ordinary laptop if you don't abuse it. Even my M1 can handle me for a couple of days with light usage.
- Good quality speakers, decent stereo separation without being too tinny or boomy.
- Great quality cameras and microphones for its size.
- Great, backlight illuminated keyboard, with no flex.
- A realistic 8-10 year usage life without babying it.
- A full metal body, and keeping it light for that amount of metal.
- Built-in biometrics which runs on a proper secure enclave, without any "touch here, write absurdly long pasword you don't know there" shenanigans of Windows.
- A POSIX compliant, BSD descendant OS which can interoperate with Linux way better than Windows.
- A proper backup system which backs up whole OS and system state to an external drive, better than old "Windows 7 backup" and miles better than new "OneDrive only Windows Backup".
- Better radios, backend and port bandwidth than its class-equivalent machines. Essentially a loaded MacBook Pro is equivalent to a Z-Workstation Mobile from HP.
...and these are standard in almost every MacBook. I don't go through hoops to beg local distributors to build the machine I like via their configuration wizard, and wait them to import it if they feel like it, and pay 3x of its sticker price because it's a one off import tucked inside a bigger shipment. Even CTO devices by Apple are shipped in a week and comes to my door in another 1-2. I pay the sticker price for the device I want.
Do you need more?
Sent from my Linux desktop system.
It has some benefits, the battery life (you aren't getting 15 hours from it doing a normal workload), keyboard, cameras, are pretty similar to many other laptops. Linux exists so a pale imitation isn't needed, its not light, and there are plenty of as good if not better back up options.
What about the overall quality of the software and hardware being rather poor? No repair-ability, a limited OS now, low quality glass covering the screens, lack of long term support for many laptops now?
You are 100% getting 15 hours from a normal workload. The keyboard is better than any other laptop keyboard. The camera is better than any other laptop integrated webcam.
The quality of the software is same or better as Linux (because getting all your Linux desktop and command line software running is a brew install away).
The hardware is class leading. The screens are best in class. The laptops will last you 8-10 years and then you can install a Linux on them and keep them going for another 5.
Yes, repairability is poor, but improving.
I get why people make other choices, but the idea that Apple hardware is poor quality and the software is terrible just isn't the way to do it. Argue about purity of freedom, argue about cost (Apple hardware is expensive, because it's superb), argue about crappy dev account policies like the thread is here to support.
But, y'know, don't just make up stuff anybody who uses this stuff daily knows is just made up...
HP have a better webcam (Higher res and better colours), Z Book and Framework have the same keyboard basically, the software is no where near as good (far more locked down), considering M series have been out for 5 and many had very speedy failures I doubt 8-10 years especially for the base models on low ram. Multicore scores (so for any form of simulation or parallel computing) work M series are not even in the conversation in comparison with the latest AMD and Intel. Another key issue is due to architecture change, their reusability once they become unusable in their current form means its Asahi or nothing.
Repairability is non existant, a battery and some ports is not anything to shout about.
I have used Macs since the early 90's when they were repairable, pretty much consistently and I still have to on occassion but they have dropped the ball on every aspect. From the late 90's repairability and innovation have gone downhill. The late 00's to the early 10's brought it back and ever since then bar the odd thing that is pretty but less practical, just look at the touch bar and the removal of ports.
I have had Thinkpads, ZBooks, and other laptops such as Lets Note easily as long as a macbook and yes some of the pretty may be missing but that isn't what I focus on in devices.
"Basically the same keyboard" but the Mac one has light comming only trough letters on keycaps, while my HP zbook is leaking more light around them, even worse when viewed from an angle.
Speedy failures of several tousand units when they are selling millions. + having it repaired is not a dreadful experience as with other PC makers (have horrendous experiences with HP, Asus and LG).
Multiscore? Sure, the laptop that sounds overshadows my robot vacuum can do slightly more work in a short timespan, id rather not have to deal with uncomnfortable temperatures when its just sitting on a desktop, doing who knows what (probably not indexing my files, as the search function just have no idea the file I opened 20x in the last 2 weeks exists). Which bring us to software: is it more closed and do I hate it for it? Sure. Is it worse overall? Not a chance.
Repairability is "bring it to an applestore and possibly come out with a new device right away, or wait a week. Miles ahead than any other brand. Sure, you can change the battery yourself, but you either get shafted for oem battery, or wonder why that cheap battery from shady shop runs just as bad as your old one. What good is repairing 5 year old HP thats breaking apart, overheating at idle, with screen burning out, hinges having a play, with speakers of a joke quality, with so many bad memories, when you can have non-repaired 10 year old macbook and it still feel like new.
For work I have windows machine because I need to use windows apps, but at home I am m1 macbook air (costing less than 1/4 of my zbook workstation), and apart from raw power its better in every. single. way.
Considering that my 17 year old MacBook only needed a new battery in the process, I can say that they're dependable machines (also ~20 Macs around me confirms this little statistic of mine).
On the simulation performance, you came to the right place, because I'll be developing a BEM code for material simulation. I can test it on both M series and on a cluster and see how big the gap is. Intel based Macs were pretty on par with their server siblings. I expect to be able extract similar performance from M based systems with some tight coding.
If you believe that Asahi's changes won't distilled to mainstream Linux, you're mistaken. Marcan might have fought with the kernel devs, but somebody will carry these changes in another form sooner or later. Macs wont't be Asahi or MacOS only systems for long. I think you can understand this better than me, because as far as I understand, we're using these things called computers for a similar amount of time.
BTW, you're citing Thinkpads and Z-Books which are the two machine classes which can claim some parity with MacBooks. They are the same class machines basically, so you have some bias in your views. This is what I cited as "I have to beg the local distributors to...". So getting an equivalent Z-Book or Thinkpad is not 10x harder, but at least 3x more expensive for a similar configuration.
You're getting 15 when you're listening music all day while doing work. You get an hour or two more if you're working silent. If you want an equal keyboard to a MacBook, you will pay for top of the line systems from the big three (HP/Lenovo/Dell), and they are more expensive than their Apple equivalents for less hardware. I have never seen an equivalent internal webcam in none of any non-Apple notebooks, BTW. You can add a high end Logitech or a mirrorless camera, but that beats the purpose, of course.
Linux exists and improved a ton in the last two decades. It's great and is my primary OS, but macOS is not an imitation of Linux, by any stretch.
Tell me a backup solution which allows you plug your drive to a brand new computer, get a coffee and resume from the point you left, literally incl. open apps, documents, window positions, volume level, and even the playing song. I'm trying to contribute Back in Time in Linux and know Borg exists, but all of them are filling different roles. Windows / LLVM / BTRFS / ZFS snapshots are a thing but, none of them are easy to use by the layman.
"Low quality glass" issue exposed in 2014, and it's not "low quality glass", but "fragile coating" issue, and I believe it's due to harsh handling of the glass. Because, I have an 2008, 2014 and 2020 MacBooks. 2008 has an old fashioned matte screen, and 2014 and 2020 MacBook's screen coatings are almost spotless. They both have a single short line in the middle due to an oily key burned the coating because I didn't clean my keyboard and somehow pressed the machines so the keys made contact.
If you use an alcohol free screen cleaner (which is dirt cheap here) or a camera lens cleaning solution, with a clean cloth (e.g. the one Apple provides inside the box), you can't damage the screen. Of course, Apple can go above and beyond and use fluorine coatings on these screens (which are used in high end camera lenses), which will easily double the price of the whole machine.
I agree on the repairability, but I'll note something else: dependability. None of my Macs needed any service. 2014 one needs a new battery after 10 years, and that's acceptable. One friend managed to fry their MacBook Air by abusing it a bit with AI workloads, but it's fixed under warranty for manufacturing error. I know ~20 people with Macs, and nobody except two (who both emptied a mug coffee on their keyboards) needed a service.
Also, on the iPhone side, if you send your phone in for battery replacement, any damaged part of your phone will be replaced free of charge if there's no external damage on that part. Apple changed my speaker for free on my iPhone, because they found its performance subpar. No info, no questions asked. "We changed your battery and speaker. You only pay for battery. Enjoy your phone, have a nice day". That's good service if you ask me, and the phone returned in a condition that nobody could tell that thing was opened and its battery replaced. The phone was out of warranty for 2 years when that happened.
On the OS side, there's no real limitation except you need to enable external kernel modules via recovery menu, and if we're talking about SIP, praising Nix and immutable systems and loathing macOS SIP is hypocrisy, so there's that.
On the reliability of macOS underpinnings, that laptop is up for 60 days (because of an update induced reboot), and it never crashes and fragments its memory so nothing works. So, I don't know if that this is not reliable, what is.
By long term, you mean 7 years? Heck, you can't even get 7 years of support and spare parts for enterprise hardware unless you pay an arm and a leg (don't ask me how I know), and Apple gives you 7 years of HW/SW support for anything they build. How this is not LTS?
I wish accessibility was a part of the list. I love MacOS, but accessibility issues turn m away real quick.
https://www.applevis.com/comment/188371#comment-188371
Accessibility is a really hard topic, and it's very hard to appreciate and sounds/feels backwards if you don't depend on them.
Wish more people worked on them, and OS were designed to accommodate accessibility technologies better.
Sounds like you want Asahi Linux so you can stay on apple hardware ( . ᴗ . )
Currently, no, but in the future I might migrate out of support systems to Asahi.
One of the reasons I use macOS is I get to inspect how they do some things. I carry the experience to Linux via the small tools I develop. Apple is one of the last "purveyors of magic" when it comes to user interfaces, and studying them, iterating on them and implementing them is both a good learning experience. Also, it feels nice when something you write (with a GPL license no less) has the same magic feeling of frictionless productivity.
I am keeping a close eye on it for sure. The last time I tried it wasn't quite there yet and still had too many rough edges for my taste.
> Better radios,
Other things are good, but radios are wired. Even the latest mbps still can't switch the AP transparently - no mesh support at all it seems.
I use my 2014 and 2020 Macs with mesh and old-school multi-ap networks which broadcast same SSID all the time, and I see it as switches APs from the wireless reception bar, without any drop in connectivity. Mesh enabled or not.
Interesting.
2020 is ambiguous - there's both Intel and M1 MBP from that year. I can tell you that M2 can't handle TP-link meshes.
Nope, mine is an M1 MBA, and the mesh I have is a TP Link. Both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands are meshed with OneMesh.
Are you running the latest firmware on the TP-Links? I remember their meshes being wonky regardless of the connecting client in the early days.
That's the price of freedom. Freedom is worth giving up all of those things
The thing is, my Macs work as front ends to my Linux systems. So, there's nothing non-interoperable, or non-removable from these systems.
There are some applications with no Linux equivalent, but it's not a MacOS problem, it's a development effort problem.
Also, macOS's audio stack is unmatched, Windows and Linux are an absolute mess for anything audio-related. It's doable on those OSes but very far from a pleasant experience.
My coworker would disagree with you. Slack and Teams never remember the microphone, frequently fails to initialize the device correctly and have to rejoin the meeting. _Never_ have that problem on Windows or Linux.
Asking as a Linux user for whom PipeWire works fine (for recording, live-streaming, as well as playback), what does macOS do better?
Latency for the most part. It's almost non-existent and has effectively no visible load on the system. Also, you can plug any advanced interface via USB or Thunderbolt and carry massive amount of audio data just by selecting that device from a list. It's simple, it's transparent, it's fast and it works.
While I agree that Pipewire works great and pretty transparently for single channel capture and multichannel playback, I don't know what happens when you add a 6 channel audio interface and start recording on all of them at the same time.
Then you should give pipewire a serious go with multiple channels. It's way better than MacOS stack which doesn't really do independent multichannel by default. There's an API for it that some paid apps use that lets you do it. Meanwhile pipewire just lets you connect whatever wherever. I managed with pipewire to get lower latency on Bluetooth headphones than MacOS allows at all.
What happens with 6 channels? You just connect them where you want and it works.
I'd happily do that, and give it a whirr. I have no qualms against that.
Unfortunately I no longer have my primary desktop (Linux) system, and no external audio interface to play with at the office.
If I can borrow something from my friends, I'd love try to give Pipewire another go.
Sounds like I need to borrow my friend's Rodecaster for a bit. :)
Oh, yes, that's very true. I forgot that since I'm not recording for quite some time now.
How it is possible that your bank don't have an Android app if they have an iPhone app?
Their app needs Google Play Services. To install it on an Android device I'd want to use over my iPhone, I'd have to jump through a bunch of hoops and it would become a project with permanent upkeep. So I use an iPhone instead.
> The alternative is worse (Google)
For many developers of mobile apps there is no switching and there is no choice. Many apps are only viable if they are available on both platforms.
Thank heavens that we run our world based on laws and not company's intents.
You completely missed the point of the post. It isn't about what phone they own. It's about what phone all the users own.
which is the same for the EU's Digital Markets Act. It's not the Smartphone Owner's Act. It's a law for letting business reach customers without having Apple in the middle. Apple (nor Google) can be allowed to have control over such a large market of customers betwen them and nearly every business.
I can't make my customers switch phone.
This attitude is why there's very little useful software for the iPhone compared to something like Linux.
Instead all you have is spamy garbage full of ads and addictive social media cybernetics.
Because Apple are one of the gatekeepers now, that's why they're getting regulated everywhere. It's not like how you can move from a Ford to a Honda, a lot of people have their entire digital lives with notes, chats, photos, videos and thousands of dollars of purchases tied to Apple's account, plus the network effect where the whole family has iPhone because of iMessage. Moving to another phone brands, they'd loose all that.
That's Apple's moat and they're fighting to the death for it because they don't have any other cash cow to milk.
Non Apple user btw.
If you're logging in from a country that historically has had a lot of fraud coming from it, this might be the reason why.
When travelling in Hungary my AWS account was banned the moment I tried to log in. I got basically no reason. I was able to call support but the guy very polite fobbed me off and I got the idea that they weren't even able to disclose the reason why they banned me.
Don't ever travel, never change anything related to billing except to update your cards before they expire. Don't change your name, email adresses or lose access to your phone number, and as we know now also don't ask support.
Then don't use any uncommon tools, e.g. ones associated with 'hacking', or store any copyrighted files in their cloud.
If there's any issue or error with logins etc., don't retry too quickly or too often or that in itself will be suspicious. Wait a day between requests, and double-check everything before retrying. Do not retry from a different IP or worse a VPN, or that will also be suspicious.
That should just about cover the bases for most providers.
Yes, it's insane and obviously you still need a backup of all your stuff just in case.
> Don't change your name, email adresses or lose access to your phone number, and as we know now also don't ask support.
This reads like some list of instructions from the Brazil film.
That’s the only movie to have truly disturbed me. It made me feel awful. And the feeling lingered a long time.
Similar situation to me. I got my Amazon account banned because I dared to use different Amazon websites with the same login. So amazon.de, .co.uk, .com ... I live in Norway where we don't have an official Amazon country..
Apparently I got flagged as suspicious, and every time I jump through the hoops to prove who I am, I get rejected.
I just stopped buying from Amazon.
Lost all my books, movies, tv shows. Everything. No recourse.
> Lost all my books, movies, tv shows. Everything. No recourse.
This is why I never "buy" anything I cannot keep my own copy of. Yes, I sometimes miss out, but fuck those guys.
One upshot of this is that I tend to buy more indy books where the author sells directly and DRM-free. Put the money right in their pockets.
imgur also banned logins and uploads from Ukraine, Vietnam etc. with no reason given, just a dirty 502 return code.
https://old.reddit.com/r/imguralternatives/comments/1kr11nw/...
while flaunting "Stand with Ukraine!" and all that virtue signaling.
There was a time (a few weeks/months, I think?) when I've been getting that "imgur is over capacity, try again later" every time I tried to open an image posted there. First few times I wondered if imgur is really down, but haven't seen anyone in related comment sections complain, eventually I figured out that they are just lying to you with a fake error message if they don't like your IP for whatever reason, and the situation made me really angry (just return a 403 and say that the address is banned, damn it! It helps nobody to give a wrong error message and googling it just shows that many people have the same problem, scrapers will not be fooled by that anyway). After a while, I stopped getting those errors.
It's complicated. Lots of sites want to geoblock Russia for good reasons, but it's not always clear if an IP address is Russian or Ukrainian. https://www.kentik.com/blog/the-russification-of-ukrainian-i...
Geoblock is kids game. Try birthblock. Western megacorps are asking Ukrainians for the passport data, to prove they are from Ukraine and then block them anyway, if they were born in the currently russian occupied regions. And they don't accept any proof of living outside of those regions. This is the level of sewing a yellow star on your work robe, but no one if talking about it or shaming the corporations.
This is absolutely insane but also completely unsurprising
can you explain what is the good reason here? Im constantly meet this problem and interested why
Looking at service logs at my company show a serious amount of hacking attempts by bots originating from Russian and Chinese IP addresses. Mostly harmless on an updated server not running an ancient Wordpress but attempts nonetheless.
For companies that don't serve customers there it's very common to just block those network ranges. Of course, it's no real solution, but some people are convinced every security layer contributes to 'defense in depth'.
wow, did these attacks start after the beginning of military actions in Ukraine in 2022? Or they were a long time before.
Thanks for clarification
It's not specifically Ukraine related, (spam) botnet harvesting is a much older practice. It was already a problem at my first job at the beginning of the century...
I don’t think that’s true anymore. This person for example is uploading from Ukraine: https://imgur.com/user/SytchArt
India too is on this list. Often I get an error claiming capacity overload, and it doesn’t work unless you switch to a vpn.
I guess that why they block IPv6 address when forced.
It's a privilege to even have your Apple device working. If Apple decides it won't work, you're at their mercy.
Same goes for Windows or Android really.
If my windows device fails, I'm not going to Microsoft. I either fix the offending part of my desktop or laptop, or reinstall the OS or move to a different OS. If something is wrong with my android phone, I'm not going to Google since I don't own a Pixel and will go to the manufacturer of the phone. If it's a purely software issue, there are steps I can actually take to flash a different ROM though admittedly it's not an easy process.
Here Apple not only owns the device but also the software it's running as well as distribution of apps for this device except for CLI tools distributed by brew or other package managers. At least with a Mac I can install and run applications over the Internet. With an iPhone that's not at all possible (not sure about the status of side loading with the EU ruling and all)
Not really the case for Android, you skip the google account setup or the amazon account setup if you are using a fire tablet and continue using the device by sideloading whatever APKs you want. Most of the times the APKs that depend on Google Play Services will continue to work fine.
I skipped the amazon account registration and directly sideloaded the Google Play apps on my fire tablet.
Even for Google TVs you can skip the setup and use the TV as is. You can sideload APKs on this as well.
AFAIK, the account setup/login circumvention is not possible on fire tv sticks/google chromecasts.
You can take a very old android device factory reset it and continue using at as an offline only device without the blessings of google or amazon. (Except FRP devices)
But that is not the case with Apple, you need to connect it atleast once to the internet to activate the device.
> Not really the case for Android, you skip the google account setup
Is this possible even if the account is locked to the device (FRP), which is often the case?
(from unfortunate experience) no. You have to have freed your android phone from the shackles before your account ceases to work
How many alternative operating systems work well on Apple devices?
Android phones usually have multiple options (Lineage, Calyx, eos, Graphene, depending on your particular phone) and you can always replace Windows with Linux.
How well do those alternatives play with your banking app?
Pretty well https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
Also, having your banking app on your phone isn't the most desirable thing in reality, if you're security-minded.
> having your banking app on your phone isn't the most desirable thing in reality, if you're security-minded.
Honest question: Why not?
I download less random program / files on my phone, then I do on my computer.
Think how your banking app might contain different data to other apps
That really doesn't answer the question. It contains similar things to your bank website's browser cache. What exactly are you trying to say here?
I don't understand what you mean.
He meant that the apps on the phone are less dangerous to a banking app.
My bank requires it, for better or for worse.
Any bank transfers are MFAd via the app, for example. It's the only bank that allows non-citizens in Germany that has English correspondence and wouldn't have taken months in Bureaucracy to open an account when I first moved.
So you chose an app-only 'bank' such as Revolut?
What did people do before such apps?
HSBC in the UK now blocks access to your accounts unless you use one of the allowed whitelisted keyboards.
Nobody is claiming every single app works perfectly on alternative Android OSes, so pointing out exceptions isn't really advancing the discussion
Can I ask what bank that is? I'm looking at getting a German bank account, and I'm still much more comfortable with English.
N26 bank
Very well for my banking apps. With root and developers options enabled on my phone as well. If your banking apps does not work complain to your bank.
Very well, only the shittiest banking apps don’t work on them. Root is a bit more problematic, but would also be reason enough for me to change banks, as they seem to care more about theater than security.
I've used CalyxOS and GrapheneOS and I haven't had any issues with the Swedish banks.
Why would you want a banking app? If your bank won't work over browser and insists on installing some crap on your device, shop for another bank.
In Finland, for example, you have to authenticate online through your banking application for any online government service or things like mobile plan. This 2FA is basically mandatory and the alternative is using keys printed on a paper that you have to pay for cause every key is one time use only and I am not sure they will continue that service for long.
It’s probably similar in Sweden and other neighbouring countries
I would not be able to log into _any_ local banking website without the government 2fa app. Not sure what the alternative is. Maybe they can give you an old school hardware device.
Or read the digital letters from government / municipalities.
Also I like my banking app.
> Not sure what the alternative is.
In your country? I'm not sure either.
In general? Slovenian government allows authentication via
- TLS client certificates,
- three different third party identity providers,
- ID card via a card reader
- .. or via NFC through a smartphone, and
- SMS OTP.
People who don't or don't want to use a smartphone shouldn't be barred from online government services or forced into a costly and slow authentication scheme when there's numerous better options.
^This. For me, it's not my phone that's defective, it's the app. My phone runs my other ~10 apps that provide for my digital life perfectly fine, with the level of security I'm comfortable with (root access, firewall to block anything in/out that I don't specifically allow). If this is a problem for your app, your app is broken. I'll use something else.
No detailed reason given. Also no info from the developer on what they might have done to trigger this, so basically, except for “Apple terminated this account”, we don’t know what happened.
All we can complain about is that Apple’s rejection letters never go into detail. I’m afraid that’s what you get when the legal department of a large corp is involved.
There is no valid reason not to disclose that information to the user inside the rejection letter.
It's not as much a failure of Apple's legal department as it's a failure of the legal system where this is a-ok.
Doesn't matter what the app is - maybe user tried to publish an illegal app, but that should be clearly communicated. It's the civilized way.
Irrelvant. Apple shouldn't have that kind of control.
They shouldn't be able to set terms of how their services should be used?
I think we can all agree this is a poor response and they should give some idea on what the root problem is and how to address it, but to say they just shouldn't ever have conditions at all is absurd.
Yes. Agreed. But on the other hand Apple has taken conscious action to put themselves in the position where you have to go through them to get an attestation if you have customers who use Mac OS. They chose not to trust any attestation other than their own, you cannot choose to have Microsoft, or Red Hat, or IBM, or any other trusted vendor (e.g. https://www.sigstore.dev/ or something similar) attest and verify your software and your developer identity.
Youtube can say you can't use them for political content, anything to do with cars, whatever they want.
You also have choices beyond using Youtube.
USPS is the only carrier for many situations. They MUST allow you to mail firearms, baby chickens and weird vials of stuff. They don't get to opt out.
Either the market is full of choices or the sole provider has to do business with everyone for everything and no longer gets opinions.
Irrelvant. Apple shouldn't have that kind of control.
I read that in a dalek's voice.
"not [...] interfere with [...] Ad-Hoc distribution, or the Program [...]"
Obviously his email was an interference with the "Program" (Apple Developer Program). It probably had consumed an Apple employee's time, or that of an AI.
Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region. Please remove all tools you use to operate in this region and release the premises for other companies to use them, immediately", without explaining why. Because this is what Apple is doing.
> Imagine the EU or any government being in the position of saying to Apple: "You did not adhere to our terms xyz, therefore we terminate our granted permission for you to operate in this region.
Isn't that literally what the EU is doing with the DMA?
Yes, but you cut off the critical words "without explaining why". And such decisions are subject to court review.
Really what people want is "judicial review for TOS bans", which I can see huge benefits to but it's also very expensive.
No, the EU have given them warnings with detailed explanation about what needs to change, and substantial timeframes to get the changes done.
Certainly not.
I remember an /r/AskReddit thread years ago about 'What's your favourite free smartphone app?' (or something along those lines) and the comment that most stuck in my mind was from an iPhone user lamenting how many interesting and novel things were only available on Android, because publishing for iOS was simply too hard.
This isn't to say that the Google Play Store is intrinsically better than Apple's App Store; Google is equally guilty of this what's the cheapest thing we can pass off as due diligence? nonsense. However, it is a good reminder that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, and is only getting worse.
I think the idea of the smartphone as a general-purpose computing machine is dead, and that instead phones are now the designated Muggle-safe Internet consumption platform. Apart from media streaming, ordinary people aren't using computing machinery for anything they weren't using it for twenty years ago, so I think they won't feel any loss from the stagnation of mobile apps.
The lessons for HN readers are: a) app stores exist within their platform's moat; and b) don't build your business inside someone else's moat.
Two days ago there were two redditors who had the same happen to them - banned for allegedly breaching 3.2(f). One from Australia the other from NZ.
https://old.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/s/oUVIuVWeJe
Hearing tales like these makes me super nervous. I don't think there's anything I can do to protect my app/account.
Parent link looks incorrect, this one seems to work: https://old.reddit.com/r/iOSProgramming/comments/1m14px0/jus...
This is not a new thing though, apple has been doing this for years, here is a similar report from 8 years ago: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44105523/apple-rejected-...
Also, according to that link, section 3.2f is:
“You will not, directly or indirectly, commit any act intended to interfere with the Apple Software or Services, the intent of this Agreement, or Apple’s business practices including, but not limited to, taking actions that may hinder the performance or intended use of the App Store, B2B Program, or the Program.”
Well-known risk of making your livelihood dependent on a company that's consistently demonstrated that, as you would expect, it doesn't care about you or any of your concerns, and will screw you on a whim.
Something is happening right now at Apple, as I have seen another post on reddit about that (could not find it), where people complained about their Dev Accounts were banned as well, when they even did not have any apps, just used dev accounts to notarize apps for themselves.
It does suck, A LOT
While notarization as method of increasing security is a pain, I guess we need more details. For all we know, it is just as likely that some bad actor was prevented from distributing notarized apps. Perhaps even the developer was unaware that their machine has been compromised.
The joys of being at a platform's mercy.
You live by the Apple, you die by the Apple...
You get rich by the Apple, you get poor by the Apple...
You pay for the dev account, you beg to keep the dev account…
Trillion dollar companies outsourcing their developer support line to hacker news.
And yet, I’m still waiting for them to approve my developer account, It’s been two months now. they seriously need to be broken up and allow other app stores and ways to developer for their hardware.
I assume you had to pay up-front 2 months ago?
Apple really are the poster child for "Stallman was right". When things are broken with their software you just have to hope that an update or relogging will magically fix things. You aren't even allowed to write your own software for the hardware you own without their permission. Terrible
The letter says that you violated section 3.2(f) of the ADP agreement. [corrected the section no.]
3.2f.
“You will not, directly or indirectly, commit any act intended to interfere with any of the Apple Software or Services“
Contacting support obviously interfered with Apple services. Duh.
I wonder if they have a problem with the core functionality of the program. Maybe they do not want any Windows Recall clones popping up before they can offer their own solution, so they've decided to stamp down on this (screen recording timelapse software) because it is vaguely in the same category.
Then ban the app. Not the account.
How incredibly and criminally maliciously vague is such a legal paragraph for an app written for their own OS.
2.3 vs 3.2?
It's pretty crap that Apple won't explain the reasons. I can understand with something like a free facebook account where there isn't any money to pay for people to explain things but being an Apple dev generally involves paying hundreds of dollars to Apple and in return they should at least be prepared to talk to you.
That's frustrating. Apple should provide clear reasons when taking such serious actions.
Malicious or not, feels appropriate for https://github.com/andrewmcwattersandco/app-store-rejections
It sounds like the developer is just trying to notarize their macOS app, so it's not even an App Store rejection.
That repo is a valuable collection of documented App Store rejections with resolution paths - helpful for developers to navigate similar situations or preemptively avoid common pitfalls.
Another reason to not support MacOS targets. Dealing with Apple is just too much of a hassle.
Tangentially related:
I bought a used MacBook air from my colleague to give to my girlfriend. It's the first apple device I've owned for more than a decade.
I was expecting smooth sailing. From afar it's supposed to be so well integrated and smooth.
What we experienced was the opposite. Even just the experience in macOS feels extremely janky. Lots of different UI paradigms, lack of feedback when logging into your apple account when it doesn't work in some cases.
Anyway, we updated everything and my gf even purchased something almost immediately - a nearly 100 dollar license for software from the app store.
She puts the laptop away for a couple of days and then we want to use it in the kitchen.. and we are told there's an issue with the account. We end up logging in online where we are finally told that its been blocked and we need to verify it. Whatever, I thought, it's probably just some filter. We verify with phone number and are told we'll need to wait a couple of days.
The result is that her apple id is just banned, and there is no recourse. No one can tell us anything at all except that we broke the terms of service. They can't even refund our purchase because they literally can't find our account in their system. We're literally instructed to do a charge back.
So we end up using another apple id that my girlfriend had, which she had forgotten about since it was only used for Apple tv... And it doesn't work. We are unable to login with it, and when we go online, we enter some sort of verification flow.. which just breaks. The final step is a website with a button which literally doesn't do anything when you press it. Except it does - it sends a request and I can see it return a 500.
We end up having to talk to support on the phone and they tell us this is all intentional, and he just needs to flip a switch in his system and we're good to go.
Literally the most asinine experience I've ever had with any tech company. Also the last time I'm buying anything Apple.
[dead]