
Things Apple Isn’t Doing - x0054
http://sdbr.net/5-things-apple-isnt-doing/
======
automathematics
How about properly supporting developers?

I feel like Apple once said "Let's make (force) people to developer for macOS
and iOS using our tools.... awesome!" and in the progress they leveraged a
strong UNIX core and command line.

Then developers from other facets (IT, Web Developers, Android) showed up and
said "Hmm, command line? I can use that!" And we ended up with a pretty sweet
development environment.

But now it's 2019. Where is the package manager? Where are the regular
security patches to stuff like OpenSSL? Where is the "Xcode Lite" to compete
with Atom/VSCode even?

If Apple gave a shit about developers as a whole (and maybe purchases Homebrew
as the official package manager?) they would continue their dominance in
schools and tech. But they don't seem to have much interest in that....
(Remember "New macbook pro without an escape key! Pro's don't need 32gb ram!"
debacle?) it's exactly the right time for someone else to step up with a
programmer focused platform.

(Perhaps
[https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/c...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/docs/+/master/containers_and_vms.md)
?)

(EDIT: Also relevant for my crazy theory:
[https://developer.android.com/topic/arc/studio](https://developer.android.com/topic/arc/studio))

~~~
ken
Apple is losing dominance in schools because Homebrew is maintained by a
third-party? I'm just not seeing it.

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_venkatasg
I don’t know much about servers and cloud, so I’ll just stick to the first
point: gaming. Apple is already in one of the largest gaming markets(if not
the largest) - handheld gaming. The number of people playing candy crush and
fortnite is much, much more than Red Dead Redemption 2, and Apple is more than
happy to take in 30% of all those in app purchases. Yes, it would be nice if
Apple made a PlayStation class console, but I’m pretty sure they won’t. The
people at Apple are interested in serving casual gamers, and it already makes
more money than most AAA gaming, so why invest in making a serious console
when you could make that money from pay-to-win games?

~~~
writepub
Apple doesn't make nearly as much money from gaming as the big-dogs in gaming
(XBox and ilk) make. Apple's 30% cut of app-store revenues for 2018 was about
$12.5B, and I'm sure most of it is not from gaming. While Xbox raked in $10B
for MSFT

~~~
1123581321
50-75% of Apple’s App Store revenue is gaming. That’s a lot. Apple expands the
gaming market with their products, so they don’t need to be as big as
Microsoft and Sony because they aren’t fighting “the console wars.” Besides,
comparing Apple’s software revenue to Microsoft’s hardware plus software
doesn’t make sense. Surely some fraction of iPads, Macs, Apple TVs and
potential new hardware should count as gaming purchases.

~~~
writepub
By that definition, Microsoft also makes a ton from gaming on the PC, as both
a publisher and distributor of games.

One could argue that a large percentage of premium desktops and laptops choose
windows for gaming compatibility and attribute a part of Windows revenues to
gaming too. But that would be gaming numbers!

I think it fair to compare app store gaming revenues to consoles, as NO ONE
buys an iPhone for gaming. They _happen_ to (casual) game on the device they
have on them in bed, or on the train, or everywhere.

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writepub
Apple doesn't offer ANY advantage in servers, cloud, personal home-server,
etc. NO ONE wants Apple to impose their will on servers, like they do on the
app-store, or on their devices by willfully being standards in-compliant for
the sake of revenues (think chronic in-compliance with W3C just to favor their
app-store, BS decisions like 1 USB-C port on MacBook air that can't even
tether to an iPhone without a convertor, etc.)

> While Swift is an open source language, the libraries for it do not have to
> be

MOST server software is open-source for a reason - NO ONE trusts closed-source
with user data on their servers! PaaS providers have just started to earn
trust from customers, but no one will willfully drop in closed-source software
when open alternatives are thriving.

This is more a fan-fiction homage from a fanboy than a collection of realistic
opportunities for Apple.

~~~
closeparen
Counterpoint: the entire business IT community outside Silicon Valley runs
Windows on every machine and proprietary software for every use case, with
only a recent and tentative warming to open source.

~~~
EduardoBautista
With the open source option being dominated by Red Hat.

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PhantomGremlin
I think many readers of HN would be satisfied with much simpler things. E.g.
MagSafe and keyboards that don't suck.

Apple can't even do simple things right any more.

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throwaway32r5y
I would love a personal iCloud solution.

Some Airport/Time Machine solution where I can set my iDevices to only sync
locally to that device.

~~~
ksec
I wanted to have iCloud Airport Time Capsule Server for a long time. All iOS
Backup, super fast along with fast restoring from local. Currently restoring
an iOS devices takes a long time and often get stuck for whatever strange
reason. Local caching of iOS MacOS Update. Along with caching of App Store
update.

I think all the above are already available in macOS Server iCloud Caching
option. Except no one wants to spend $799 for it.

I do think this devices should work along side with iCloud and not on its own
though. It is hard to avoid HDD Failure, File Corruption, Bit Flip etc. Cloud
Still gets you much better Data Safety. ( Someone else taking care of it )

