CheeseFreeze

How to use Stolen Device Protection

January 2024

Just curious, but wouldn’t a thief be able to turn off the phone and reinstall it from a connected computer?

It’s probably different with AirPods; someone stole mine and simply turned it off on the highway and it never popped up on the radar again.

Apple Vision Pro will ship to customers on February 2

CheeseFreeze

January 2024

lmasanti said:

quote: ”Lenses cost $99 for "readers" and $149 for prescription Zeiss Optical inserts.”

I do not live in the US. Can anybody tell me how much a Zeiss —not a cheap plastic one— reader/prescirption lenses cost?

And on the cost of the device…
The new 57" gaming monitor shown at CES cost like… $2,500-
HoloLens used to cost $3,500.

And also remember: the original iPhone cost $699- —exorbitant!— and now cost… $1,200-

On the other hand… it is best to begin from the top… and then easily go down… than begin from the bottom and then try build upon a clunky design. See Quest. (Tesla copied this business model!)

Meta is going for a different market with a different product positioning. I own the Quest 3 and the design is not clunky, it is exactly the right product for the price point and they have a great content offering. The controllers open up a category Apple won’t be able to serve with just hand tracking.

Different strategies for different goals. There’s no singular ‘correct’ strategy.

Here we go again - Apple rejects Hey Calendar app from App Store

CheeseFreeze

January 2024

chasm said:

CheeseFreeze said:

As a developer who has released over 30 apps: “procedurally moving their concerns up the chain” is not a thing with Apple. They. Do. Not. Care.
When it’s your business that’s on the line, you’ll do everything to save it.
Stop defending Apple, it’s juvenile. Hundreds of frustrated developers out there, and you don’t have the slightest clue what it is to be in the trenches.

I’m not defending Apple. I have no idea whose fault this is. I’m just pointing out that running to the press isn’t going to solve the problem either.

If it’s as bad as you claim, why on earth are you still doing this? Life’s short. Don’t waste your time on things that do not bring you joy.

And just for the record I was, in fact, a developer at one time (the 90s). Apple was great to us, but that’s too long ago to matter in this case.

That is a good question.

Mouths to feed… it’s not easy to stop a moving train. You don’t want to go bankrupt. But I was lucky and successful regardless; I sold my company to a larger tech company and am now part of that company (which in return is about to be bought). But many struggle. I would never go back to do what I did for 14 years, although it was an amazing creative endeavor which I miss.

The app industry is brutal. People complain about paying less than a beer for a game that costs hundreds of thousands to develop. You get maybe exposure for a week and then you’re buried in the next 500 releases. You lose out to Apple’s ad system where the top-25 devs buy up exposure and devs are able to spend sometimes millions per day on user acquisition. The top-25 barely moves because of it: they pay to keep taking that spot.

Apple and Google, but Apple first, have caused a lot of issues by kickstarting this race to the bottom. At one point in time it was unheard of to offer an app for free. Now the perception of value is completely skewed and a developer has no power to try to monetize outside the App Store rules. I cannot express how rotten the mobile App Store ecosystem is to devs…

Another example: I have lost crucial deadlines for games that were about to be released alongside major theatrical releases because Apple didn’t bother to review them in time or declined the submission, being in complete error. We lose hundreds of thousands missing the opportunity to make money, and after weeks they suddenly accept a new submission with a build that was exactly the same binary as the one before.

No way to reach a representative, and when filing feedback you have to wait for days to receive a bot-like response.

Another one was Apple actively forcing us to bundle a game with other games (“make one game that links to smaller ones in a single SKU and go for a subscription model”) because we were using a Disney property and Apple had ties with Disney - apparently an Apple exec who was buddies with a Disney exec.

We didn’t want that for marketing and monetization reasons. They forced us nevertheless. The result? We didn’t make any money with these particular games because of ten pushing us to do something we didn’t want, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on an IP purchase with a minimum guarantee to Disney.

And there is obviously no way we could have sued a trillion dollar company for this. No way to release it through another store or by side-loading.

As you said - the 90s were definitely different. Special. A time when development was special, where devs were pioneering and Apple was still small enough to have… personality.

Here we go again - Apple rejects Hey Calendar app from App Store

CheeseFreeze

January 2024

chasm said:

Wow, did this go off-track in the comments!

Here’s a suggestion for Hey: Apple really hates it when obscure developers run to the press with their complaints instead of procedurally moving their concerns up the chain.

To me it does sound like some kind of misunderstanding, or maybe I don’t know how Hey’s pricing model works because I have zero interest in Hey’s products (or indeed, all third-party email and calendar products).

Try going through developer relations and maybe the matter will get resolved faster.

As a developer who has released over 30 apps: “procedurally moving their concerns up the chain” is not a thing with Apple. They. Do. Not. Care.

When it’s your business that’s on the line, you’ll do everything to save it.

Stop defending Apple, it’s juvenile. Hundreds of frustrated developers out there, and you don’t have the slightest clue what it is to be in the trenches.