Gorbzel

And in all 3 cases, the Google equivalents are worse. History shows they’ll probably just be replaced with a different product to solve the same problem which will be worse in its own ways.

Subjective, but I use both Android and iOS daily. Interesting byproduct of Android being the favorite of those obsessed with customization is that the stock apps are almost universally bad because everyone just replaces them with different niche alternatives.

Not so much that you’ve missed something or are mistaken, but Reddit is likely promoting those subs because they’re some of the only active high quality (I.e. not bots/astroturfing) ones left.

Not going to go through every example you gave, but the specific sport and team subreddits represent live and ongoing content rather than reposts from a decade ago, with many fans, strong communities, and nowhere else really to go. Consider the decline of traditional, non-steaming live TV networks, where at least here in the US, 98/100 of the top rated events people are still watching the old fashioned way are sports. Same thing.

Shouldn’t your friend be monitoring his kid’s usage? Why is everything always some government/capitalist entity’s responsibility?

You're right, not sure why the doubt in the edit. Different [areas/data points/anecdotes] will no doubt yield different results. The suburbs are very different than the neighborhoods. I used to live the Loop high-rise life, felt the same way you did.

Though Amazon usually is no help in the last mile delivery there. Encountered numerous stories of high rise package rooms that have just been overwhelmed by Amazon/since COVID. If anything, most improvement/success stories I've heard have been from a startup in the space, Luxer.

No doubt there's some of this given the ridiculous photos I get through the "take a picture" feature that Amazon, DoorDash, and others believe substitutes for actually validating delivery happens.

I just don't give these tech companies any benefit of the doubt for the situation. My home is on a major street next to a door that has the street number displayed very prominently. As mentioned above, FedEx and others have 100% success rate. Amazon's delivery drivers just don't care, because Bezos has created a system where they are incentivized not to care.

They have no idea how to disrupt last mile delivery without corruption and theft. They’ve tried. My apartment building’s doorbox has Amazon Key, such that drivers have the ability to let themselves in and drop off packages in a secure area. I’ve confirmed with one of the better Amazon delivery drivers that it works like a charm.

The vast majority of them don’t (think/care to) use it. At this point I’m actually glad, lest they let themselves into the secure area and steal other packages.

The theft problem doesn’t vary at all in Chicago. I’m in a North (west) Side neighborhood and receive about 83% of Amazon packages, with the rest being stolen or just not delivered. Compare this with a 100% success rate for items delivered by UPS, USPS, or FedEx.

I figure at some point I’ll fall below whatever metrics Amazon has internally, they’ll stop resending/refunding packages, and I’ll have to fight the same battle as in the article. If anything, OP unfortunately/correctly teaches that empathy, common sense, and treating level 1 workers as human have no place with Bezos…you have to assume the worst and treat everything as a cost/blame situation.

Google is basically acknowledging they don’t want and or care about portfolio/small utility/first time project apps on their store. This obviously isn’t a great look, especially when both companies nominally support educational and vocational efforts around app development. IMO, onus is on these companies to resolve the inherent contradiction here.

That said, it might be the right move. Despite some FUD in the comments that this will hinder indie devs or prevent the next Flappy Bird, such claims seem a bit exaggerated. Also, overcoming obstacles is part of the challenge of app development so if somehow this relatively low bar is the line too far…good riddance. Anecdotally, I’ve interviewed quite a few mobile developers with clear resume projects who then claim they’ve “published multiple apps to the [Play/App] store”; almost universally these candidates acknowledge without much pressing that said apps are unmaintained bitrot or even delisted due to some other unmet requirement anyhow.

I suppose the best argument is the same mentality that leads to spam on the store could be used to get around the 20 tester limit. Sure, but I’d expect that Google expects at least meaningful improvement even with malevolent actors, as that’s the new normal with such mitigations in any online marketplace these days.

What he’s basically saying here is “I’d rather let my personal opinion prevail than responsibly disclose and get some vulnerabilities fixed.”

Even if, at their worst, Apple is as petty as he’s “heard” (given the FUD surrounding quite a lot of engineer’s), the proper response is responding with less pettiness, not more. It’s reflective of the author’s character no matter how he expressed the tantrum.

It's very strange because like OP, huge fanboy. Early on it felt wrong to also burden Cupertino with being a cultural leader, but somewhere around $1.0T+ market cap, that has evolved.

Vaguely remember a charity used to have a thing where they'd auction off a dinner with Steve, then later Tim. Given time with a leader who has literally revolutionized supply chain in CN and a CEO who made Apple his own following the most notable CEO ever, going after various gotcha points would feel like a wasted opportunity. But think I'd have to ask why a company designed in California of the 1960s and 1970s doesn't have line in the sand policies when dealing with a genocidal government and perpetual backdoors in software and politics, but will take a move like this. Would hope for something more than a canned answer.

Obviously is super valuable, but overreliance on internal promotion can lead to not built here syndrome and rather close minded growth, esp if the co has a strong enough recruiting pipeline + brand to keep people hired fresh out of uni eventually claiming most senior/leadership positions.

it leaves out quite a bit of agency from the employee

Good catch. Of course it does, as the easiest and most lazy trend in software engineering thinkpieces is to blame middle management.

Keep in mind that 90% of the article (itself “fake work” as another commenter pointed out) has nothing to do with managers. The only substantiated mention there is from a gaggle of “strategic” academics at overpriced universities, i.e. those part of what is currently the biggest scam industry of them all.

Nonetheless, the causes here are so glaringly obvious that the article somehow still calls out 1) overhiring endorsed from the very top and 2) infantile responses from engineers who take absolutely no responsibility for their circumstances or trying to make things better.

And yet, there’s absolutely no accountability for either of those groups. C-suite is rewarded by the market, fueled by culture that fetishes misguided views of developers.

Nowhere is this worse than HN, where engineers can do no wrong. Yet speaking of make work, completely pointless arguements and “Show HN”s building a CRUD API client app for the thousandth time predominate. These (lazy/pointless) projects are then evidence that these super talented minds deserve $200k+ jobs where, yet again, managers have to deal with their egos and it’s the manager’s fault when shockingly these “individual contributors” have no idea how to contribute value to a project or in many cases even act like an adult.

I feel like in order to patent a thing, you should need have to have a credible implementation of the thing being patented.

Reduction to practice is absolutely a requirement of patent law in the US.

Eh, I think it’s somewhat of a big deal because (to stick with your analogy), just like football, it can be all consuming if left unchecked. I’d argue it’s because the anti-Apple zealots are much louder, but even if one disagrees, the result is the same: the comment thread for pretty much every HN post even tangentially involving Apple becomes a platform war.

Like you, I prefer Cupertino’s way of doing things and would like to have measured conversations about the same without the BS diatribes from the haters. Impossible to do around here and has been for years.

I’ve worked on both platforms for over a decade. Gruber’s conclusions are spot on.

It functionally is.

Many of those who have not learned from history are so anti-Apple (or possibly subpar webdevs) that they completely ignore the lessons we've previously learned about why browser monoculture is dangerous.

Even more worrisome, these people often ignorantly call Safari "the new IE", meaning they're aware of the history and problems and choose to pursue their own broken interpretation.

If these people will ignore a browser with 50% market share on mobile and 20% overall due to their own shortsightedness, clearly they're going to ignore Firefox or others hanging out in the single digits.

Ugh, this is a classic example of skewed logic going way too far before the underlying truth can catch up.

I am in tech management (also a recovering attorney) who routinely conducts interviews, and it is perfectly acceptable to ask where someone is from in a professional setting.

The unacceptable part, as OP at least hints at, is using the response as a proxy for some other verboten criteria or perhaps to kickoff an overly intrusive line of questioning.

These behaviors are odious on their own and why HR should be explicit in training against antipatterns, not spreading meaningless FUD which miss the point and permit bad habits to foster elsewhere.

It’s really inane that modern software recruiting claims to focus on getting a proper picture of the whole candidate , yet untrained interviewers counterfeit the whole endeavor thinking they’re politically correct because they’re afraid to ask anything but the same broken whiteboard questions.

Yeah, the author is definitely racially problematic: all her references to Indian/Asian students claim their success is due to merit, hard work and the like (“diligence and ambition”) whereas Hispanic and Black students aren’t suited for “rigorous training in Maths and Science” and are doomed to be dropouts.

One only need look at the source publication (a magazine of stories deemed “unheard” by a British oligarch). Skimming Wikipedia, this bit made me laugh: “a magazine publishing people who are generally unheard because people edge away from them at parties." Exactly the case here, except the author felt her oh so privileged voice was silenced because she wasn’t heard at a school boarding meeting…2800 miles away from where she lives. Also, if 70% of the school shares characteristics with you, maybe introducing some diversity isn’t the worst thing in the world.

Anecdotally, as a former internship director, I’ve taught many of the students from high schools named in these articles. Ultimately, every student is unique and needs to be considered on a case by case basis. But many of the students who struggle are those with helicopter parents like the author. Through early hard work and ambition they have book smarts or can study, but have never encountered any real setbacks and expect everything to just go their way, which obviously doesn’t happen in the real world. It’s those students who have to struggle, the one the author otherizes in her article and doesn’t want to see in the same school as her kids, that go the farthest.

while no one is allowed to compete with Apple for iOS customers.

This is basically the core question in Epic vs Apple, wherein the court has ruled that "iOS Customers" is not the relevant market to consider.

I wonder if that would run into net neutrality-type issues

It absolutely would. Who is Apple or anyone on HN to tell one developer that their app is more important/costly/uses higher priority SDKs than another?

And I can tell an unprofessional web script kiddie based on whether they advocate browser monoculture.

The main reason flash was killed by Apple was also spite toward Adobe

Prior to and subsequent to Flash (a Macromedia product, fwiw) Apple & Adobe have had extensive relationships and interaction that are in no way indicative of spite.

The main reason Flash died is because performance & power consumption on mobile never got past garbage, despite the platform wars going borderline nuclear on the topic.

they made valid excuses sure,

Perhaps it's my becoming an ol' fogey, but it's crazy to see the Apple haters of yesteryear also move toward historical revisionism.

While the best approach is to just ignore such FUD like "valid excuses, sure", it's also important the record not be owned by zealots and those who preach spite.

Just curious, but why wouldn’t one expect reliably repeat customers to be treated with increased consideration in these circumstances?

Seems to me this is true in pretty much every industry, yet for some reason with flights, certain folks (likely not the FFers) get very upset to realize their price sensitivity/lack of airline stickiness moved them to the back of the line.

Guess what? No one does or should care about your opinion of Apple’s software restrictions or corporate philosophy here.

As per the article, those visiting the comments were primarily interested in discussion about JIT performance, comparisons between ARM and x64 instruction sets, GameCube/Wii emulation, etc.

Instead, every single post on HN even tangentially involving Apple is taken over by these self-important haters and their mindless takes, which are often full of false assertions anyhow.

You are a platform war spammer and nothing more. It’s a shame the admins won’t put a stop to this, as it’s turning Hacker News into a vehement cesspool for discussion.

No no no, stick to your vision!!

½ of these comments asking for AirPlay, the other ½ asking for Android TV or wtf Google is calling it these days. Next someone will want Roku, while someone else wants Amazon, and we’re right back to where we started.

The purity of your idea is in the dumb TV. Don’t put a Raspberry Pi on the back, don’t build a mini-ATX PC in.

5 HDMI ports. Power. That’s it. People can bring their own set top boxes and everyone will be happy.

No legitimate charity would keep funds donated by criminals in order to justify their means.

As great as the endless possibilities software offers are, it really obscures the amount of effort necessary to bring real world products to life. The jump in hubris from “Great, I can code!” to “Well, I could build a tool to do that, so no one deserves to make a living/profit/native app/business doing it” is waaaay too prevalent around here.

Of course none of the people who say such things could actually do so. Instead, they continue to post the aforementioned type of comment along with the following:

- Ask HN: Where are all the profitable ideas? - Show HN: I built some half-assed idea that no one will ever use to learn the latest technology fad. - Who’s Hiring: I hate my job at some random SaaS firm because I hypocritically don’t assign worth to building software.

Anyhow, where is this mythical weather widget getting its data? How reliable are its forecasts? What makes it better than the tools Apple/Google build into their OSes after spending millions acquiring formerly indie weather tools?

Huh. Lots of different perspectives out there...

- Is it weird that there's barely any training of practical software engineering in a university setting as it is, and now this question posits that one of the great durable examples of such a course is somehow against the norm?

- Is it weird that a community would train someone in methods and concepts using the technologies invented up the street?

- Is it weird to think that after decades of deeply-rooted institutional ties between Apple and Stanford that they wouldn't have a genuinely beneficial relationship and respect for one another?

Completely unfounded speculation on your part does not make other’s beliefs baffling.

Simply put, none of the things you’ve said are better are actually better.

Launcher apps are garbage, but you just move right past that to one single game that can be downloaded directly out of hundreds that can’t.