On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation

Re:On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @11:17AM (#25047630)

I once owned every copy, of every generation of "Inside Macintosh."

I agree about the Android docs.

However, in defense of companies that don't like to have too much documentation around, I can tell you, from personal experience, that writing developer docs is hard, as is doing developer support.

Keeping them up to date is also a challenge.

I call it "concrete galoshes": https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/concrete-galoshes/

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Re:On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation by bsenftner on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @02:21PM (#25050351)

I was a Mac beta tester back in '83, and still have a copy of the pre-release "Inside Macintosh" mimeographed the day after the original programmers wrote their drafts, filled with penciled in corrections and in some places pages of hand corrected notes. Reviewing a formal copy after edition 2 or 3, I was surprised to see a reduction in information quality and some of the key information from the penciled in notes completely missing.

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Re:On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation by ChrisMarshallNY on Tuesday November 10, 2020 @05:00PM (#25052594)

That is a cool story.

I got my first Mac in '86 (a Mac Plus).

My first copy of Inside Macintosh was the hardcover. I think it was two volumes, back then.

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Re:On Apple's Piss-Poor Documentation by bsenftner on Thursday November 12, 2020 @08:09AM (#25069427)

The original Inside Mac was 3 volumes, after their initial printing of the "phone book edition" - all three volumes in one thick soft spine binder. I really need to take the time to scan my copy and put it online. It's got ballpoint pen corrections from the Apple Engineers telling the beta testers various fixes.

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