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A comment on Outdated vs. Complete: In defense of apps that don’t need updates. Parent comment

Re:Outdated vs. Complete: In defense of apps that don’t need... by arcticbull on Monday September 26, 2022 @04:57PM (#32988280)
Hard disagree. Letting your platform stagnate by ossifying bugs and poor API choices is not what I want to see from any platform provider, and I for one am happy Apple is aggressively pruning the old to make room for the new and not allowing themselves to be beholden to past mistakes.

I'm sorry this developer spent a couple hours hitting "build" until their app started working. If they'd done it earlier it would have been far less painful. Their sacrifice improves the community.

I say this as an iOS engineer since like 2012 and a macOS developer since ... 2004?

Carbon [1] should never be allowed to happen again. If you really want an old system, you should be allowed to virtualize it, but the world must move forward.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_(API)

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Re:Outdated vs. Complete: In defense of apps that don’t need... by guhidalg on Monday September 26, 2022 @05:05PM (#32988387)
I don't understand this comment, do YOU actually ship breaking changes to your users and expect them to continue using your code or programs? Just because Apple does it doesn't mean it's actually a good idea.
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Re:Outdated vs. Complete: In defense of apps that don’t need... by arcticbull on Monday September 26, 2022 @05:06PM (#32988421)
I, like anyone with a project sporting a major semver number >1 definitely ship breaking changes to my API customers.
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Re:Outdated vs. Complete: In defense of apps that don’t need... by guhidalg on Monday September 26, 2022 @05:18PM (#32988570)
Can you not? I understand sometimes you absolutely need to change a signature or deprecate a feature, but that should absolutely be the exception and not the norm.

Going back to the original post, I find it ridiculous that Apple regularly ships breaking changes (to their APIs) and developers just put up with it. In my minds, it's like being in an abusive relationship where you think if you try a little harder and stay up to date with the latest API version maybe Apple will treat you better (they won't). Apple can get away with it because they own the whole iOS/macOS tower top-to-bottom, but if you want to build trust with your users breaking changes should be the absolute last choice.

[ Parent | on HN ]