Indeed it does! I just find it very curious that Apple hasn't bothered to migrate .xcspecs to one of the newer plist formats. As far as I know, you lose no capabilities with the newer format. Perhaps the NeXTSTEP format is easier to read with a text editor? XML format isn't terrible, and Xcode itself provides a not-bad GUI editor for all plist varieties.
EDIT: I believe that Xcode will load .xcspecs in any format. The .xcspec ends up getting fed into a TSPropertyListDictionary class which is backed by a plain NSDictionary. I'll test tonight. :)
Plain-text plists are basically a slightly more cleanly formatted JSON with support for comments. Binary plists are just a binary version of the same, but with some additional data types which were never backported to the plain text format. Nobody should “hate” either of them who doesn’t equally hate JSON and e.g. MessagePack. XML plists are a trainwreck and should never have existed.
YAML and JSON and property lists are all terrible formats (inflexible and underpowered, forcing people to add half-baked ad hoc extensions on top to do almost anything). I wish they would all go die in a fire in favor of something with better data structures and support for extension such as e.g. EDN.
I didn't know plain-text plists existed. The only ones I've dealt with have been the XML and binary lists. Apparently json ones do too. I'm wondering how much OS X supports them now.
JSON isn't great--I use YAML for anything where I'm not in Ruby where I can just use a DSL--but they, and even well-thought-out XML, have the advantage of being usable by normal people. I have yet to see EDN that both didn't require a significant amount of work to set up and didn't look downright offensive. (Usually it's both.)
If you're lucky and you reported the bug first you get to find out what happened with the Radar bug. If you weren't the first you get your support request closed and get to hope the original person posted it on Open Radar. If that doesn't pan out you have to actively ask for an update or read release notes.
I like most of Apple's products but I really wish other people didn't so they'd be compelled to fix these long running process failures (and give IT folks a little more love).
Yeah. I stopped filing bugs with Apple years ago, except in extreme circumstances[1][2] where the bug is fucking up my daily work, or a serious bug that is blocking one of my apps in development.
The process is just too rude and disrespectful to the submitter to participate in.
Apple behaves like it is Apple doing developers a favor by allowing them to submit bugs, rather than the other way around.
Apple behaves like it's doing everyone a favor just by existing to be frank. Steve Jobs knew how to get shit done even if he was an asshole about it but that attitude he had permeated the organization. It might not be the right word but the only way I can think to describe the way Apple treats people is "snobbish". You can be awesome and do awesome things without being an asshole about it.
I feel and have first hand knowledge of their frustration. On a pleasant note, I've also had a rdar report where I emailed an Apple dev out-of-band and he told me the bug was already fixed (thanks to my report) days before the rdar was updated.
And for people who work at Apple, they have a Radar client that understands rdar:// URLs, so they can click the link to view the bug. Making it more convenient for them could help it gain internal visibility.
Who blocks deep links into their personal blog? Do think they might need to put up a paywall because they could suddenly become the next New York Times? I am very confused by this.
