MacsWithPenguins

I myself have used SMS since 1999, and RCS for a few months. I’ve learned to never rely on proprietary standards, despite the advantages. I say this after having used ICQ in the glory days of the late 1990s. Then, I tried hard as a Linux full-time desktop user to stay away from MSN Messenger when it was mega popular and a de-facto standard, but had to find a third-party client on Linux called aMSN because it was very tricky to communicate with people online without it.

That situation was a nightmare because it pushed Linux users to Windows, just like SMS and RCS on Android (Linux-based) vs iMessage now. I’m not going to allow myself to go through that dilemma again, personally. I’m an avid Apple fan and hobby Swift programmer who enjoys his Android phone with a Snapdragon 888. Being a grown man has its advantages in that I can just say no to things like Facebook. People can look as surprised as they want to, I’m not joining them in a Facebook group, WhatsApp, Instagram or whatever that I don’t want to join. I love new technology and research in general, open to new tech ideas, and I was an avid Windows Phone 8 user, too, because I enjoyed it, despite what other people thought of it. 

Teenagers will always find a way to create exclusive clubs and decide who’s in and who’s out. Think back to when you were younger: maybe there was an actual club the popular people went to, or an expensive bike with a particular brand you should use ”if you want to be cool”. In my case, it was getting a Nintendo 8-bit and later the SNES (except I was team SEGA and fortunately my friends liked it).

This is different, but not by much. Let’s say Apple made iMessage an open system, even introduce their mocked up app in a finished state on Google Play Store. What would happen next is, iMessage is uncool and some new Snapchat-like app would take over the crown. It would be invite-only based and anyone not able to register would be left out.

I have never had a Facebook account in my whole life and will never sign up. For me it’s about not comparing my own life and achievements with others. Twitter works out for me, because I can follow strangers announcing trivial things on a daily or weekly basis, which for me is all about reading and discussing the latest trends in tech. If friends want to reach out, it’s not going to be on social media, but rather via private conversations or real-world meetings (except Covid complicated this).

rezwits said:

Definitely a stepping stone, but Xcode is a BEAST.

One day we might see a STRIPPED down SwiftUI? or just Swift Xcode...

Yes. I know Apple has rewritten the code base multiple times already, perhaps the biggest one being Xcode 4.0 (btw, those Xcode 4 betas were crazy unstable). But despite that, just look at the number of files it unzips when you install it from a direct download: I've seen it report an install of more than 500k (!) files). This is pretty interesting, though, because, likewise, Microsoft Visual Studio Professional apparently installs more than 700k (seven hundred thousand) registry entries. Yes, registry entries. That is mindblowing to me, but I think both VS Pro and Xcode contains a lot of baggage, a lot of backwards compatibility.

I'm starting to think the task of trimming Xcode is too unwieldy at this point. Maybe some day in the future (maybe?) they will start fresh with a new app development tool written from scratch. It will be completely designed for Swift 5.0 and upwards with SwiftUI only, dropping all of Objective-C and every Swift version prior to Swift 5.0, calling the app something else (sort of like how they slightly renamed iMovie HD to iMovie and the Final Cut Pro 7 sequel became Final Cut Pro X and then just Pro), while still maintaining Xcode as the stable, feature-rich version developed in parallel with the new development tool. In a way, some people might say this is what Playgrounds is. However, Playgrounds is targeted towards learning development – not professionals.

Now that Airtags lost a big important group of customers, I’m sure competing products will happily pop up to offer the same feature.