Love and hate relationship between Apple and iOS developers

The 1.9 million ecosystem, gate keepers, tech bully

Last Update on May 11th, 2017

Apple, You Sexy Bully

I have been using Apple products for 4 years since I received an iPhone 4 as a birthday gift from my dad. I fell in love with its seamless design and software quality unmatchable to any other toys at that time. Soon after, I found myself buying every nugget out there including an iPad and MacBook Pro.

Sounds familiar to you?

We all know that Apple spends tremendous effort perfecting user experience and design, including the interior — even though no human can physically replace the battery with fingers alone. On top of that, Apple products epitomize the sheer power and synergy when hardware and software harmonize. However, Apple always has been its own league and own way.

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” — Steve Jobs

In late 2016, Apple removed the good old rectangular USB ports, the circular headphone jack, and the entire row of the Apple keyboard. I am not here to complain — Indeed, I like innovations, and there will be always oppositions no matter what — but to emphasize Apple is a bad ass or a bully in the tech industry. It rips apart the past and constructs the future with innovations. Not to mention industries including, PC, music, tablet, publishing, education, the wearable, TV, and smartphones.

Apple is like the dude in the club getting all the attention from chicks without even trying. He’s got fancy clothes and drives a nice car. He can do pretty whatever he wants. At the end of the night, he still gets laid.

Apple’s Slaves

Apple tries to control everything ranging from submitting an app to the App Store and public excitement through “leaked” photos and rumors. Here are my top four reasons why we are under control.

1. Apple has gatekeepers. When you submit an app, you need to wait for 3–4 days to get approved and meanwhile, you pray that your app doesn’t get rejected by valid reasons according to Apple.
2. Apple forces developers to pay $99 per year to put your app on the App Store. Oh, not to mention my beta testing app got rejected — Who the fuck rejects an app that is being tested. 🙃
3. Apple never licenses its OS. Unlike Windows, Mac OS only runs on hardware manufactured by Apple. In other words, you have to buy Mac something. That’s not all, you have to register your device and profile to run your apps on your phone.
4. You can only build apps using Xcode which is only available on Mac OS. Apple controls us, oh wait — the industry, the world.

Apple tells us what to do and what to fix. We have no choice but to follow Apple’s way. You have no other alternative especially once you fall in love with its product and get trapped into the ecosystem. Once you go Apple, you never go Banana. No other platforms will satisfy you — the design and the feeling, it’s just not there.

Apple’s closeness is a double edged sword. We, developers, have no idea what new features will be introduced in iOS. The whole situation reminds me a seven-year old kid excitedly waiting for his Christmas gift but it just happens to be in September. I am aware Swift has been open sourced recently, but the majority of its infrastructure and frameworks are hidden under the hood.

In middle school, Apple is the cool kid, whom everyone wants to hang out with. At fist, he challenges you and tests what you are made up of. He might even reject you. Still, you desperately want his approval. You like his group and by fitting in, it makes you look cool as well.

We Love You, Apple

But, we can’t neglect what Apple has done for us, the unboxing experience, updating to a newer version of iOS, looking through an eye-popping rendered images of iPhone 9, and the WWDC. There are certain things we undeniably love about Apple.

The content has been migrated to personal blog. You can find the rest about my feeling here.