Would be nice if it was just a non expiring credit. I’d think most small developers already have purchased M1 macs since the DTK stopped working long ago And may not need another before May anyway.
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Apple Asks Developers to Return DTK Mac Minis in Exchange for $200 Credit Toward M1 Mac
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Can it be retro active if we already bought an M1?
If not, it is an entirely useless gesture as most everyone has already bought a real M1 if they are actually in the business of software development.
If not, it is an entirely useless gesture as most everyone has already bought a real M1 if they are actually in the business of software development.
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Well, no, that's disputable because it's not a fact. Where have you been lately? Aside from that, yeah, it's rather petty on Apple's part, particularly for something that didn't work right.
The M1 only promo code expiration of May 31 2021 is a "squeeze play" because Apple will probably announce new hardware in the WWDCish timeframe. So you're forced to "use it or lose it" on an M1 before seeing their next Apple Silicon (AS) Macs. What makes this more egregious is WWDC is (was) supposed to be about developers, so any new hardware announced in that time frame would be of interest to developers. So you can kiss that $200 discount fantasy on the M2 Mac Pro goodbye
Apple was replacing bad DTKs. That may have had something to do with this stupid move. It would have been better to offer an "upgrade" to an M1 Mini for a "reasonable" cost difference. Regardless of a business size/needs, it's usually not an extremely terrible idea to keep a mini around for miscellaneous reasons - even if it's a generation behind. Besides, you lived with the DTK (mini) for at least a while... Duh?
This just demonstrates how far Apple's attitude toward developers has fallen. It's like they need to manipulate developers into behaving in a certain "boot licking" sycophantic way.
It's like Apple decision makers sat around and thought really hard about what they did NOT want developers to do with the bone thrown to them.
I'm not surprised this is ending badly. But that's just fine with me. The more Apple pisses off developers, the more developers will just walk away.
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Ummm. No. It's like paying for the entire lease term/cost up front, then they demand the car back after 40% of the time you leased/paid for.
Apple is sure screwing up the developer interest in Apple Silicon. This why a tech person should have advised Tim Cook.
A bean counter is incapable of seeing the big picture.
A bean counter is incapable of seeing the big picture.
The way I see this goes like this:
Apple needed devs to transition into M1 fast so it could catch on, so they made DTKs available at $500.
Devs needed to get a hold on DTKs to be able to stay competitive.
I would assume no big shops would complain about a $300 difference in this case. Small shops and individual devs could. Thus... Apple wouldn't have cared less if you chose not to pay $500 back then and couldn't maintain your app until after sometime M1 machines come out. Someone else could build an alternative to your app in your place and could replace you.
It's not Steve Jobs' days anymore. I think it's wrong to compare that era to what we are living in now. There is an abundance of developers and competition is generally high. Because we have lots of devs around the world now, it would be significantly expensive for Apple even to raise this $200 credit towards new M1 Mac to $300. They do have loads of money alright but at the same time they have some responsibilities against their shareholders It's not a charity organization after all. So it cannot be a "Steve Jobs took care of devs" kind of world anymore. How many Mac devs were there back then? How many are there now?
Any dev could have chosen to wait until full M1 machines were out, at the expense of getting pushed out of or fallen significantly behind the competition.
IMHO, a $300 expense at this point is not a significant amount if you care about staying relevant and competitive.
DTKs provided a head start and devs gained maybe not months but weeks of development time in advance. Isn't it really worth that difference of $300?
Apple needed devs to transition into M1 fast so it could catch on, so they made DTKs available at $500.
Devs needed to get a hold on DTKs to be able to stay competitive.
I would assume no big shops would complain about a $300 difference in this case. Small shops and individual devs could. Thus... Apple wouldn't have cared less if you chose not to pay $500 back then and couldn't maintain your app until after sometime M1 machines come out. Someone else could build an alternative to your app in your place and could replace you.
It's not Steve Jobs' days anymore. I think it's wrong to compare that era to what we are living in now. There is an abundance of developers and competition is generally high. Because we have lots of devs around the world now, it would be significantly expensive for Apple even to raise this $200 credit towards new M1 Mac to $300. They do have loads of money alright but at the same time they have some responsibilities against their shareholders
It's not a charity organization after all. So it cannot be a "Steve Jobs took care of devs" kind of world anymore. How many Mac devs were there back then? How many are there now?Any dev could have chosen to wait until full M1 machines were out, at the expense of getting pushed out of or fallen significantly behind the competition.
IMHO, a $300 expense at this point is not a significant amount if you care about staying relevant and competitive.
DTKs provided a head start and devs gained maybe not months but weeks of development time in advance. Isn't it really worth that difference of $300?
I've done work in the past and the net cost to me was always zero, but I'd sink many hours investigating the new technology/reporting issues. Apple should match what they paid.
Okay that's changed as of November last year and only under a specific set of circumstances. Let me amend 30% to "a sizeable percent" and let the nitpicking continue
Right?
What a lot of people forget (or wilfully omit) about the previous DTK is the following. The developer memberships back in the day were completely different than they are now.
Nowadays you can pay $99/y and develop for all Apple devices. Back then this was split up and to be eligible for the old DTK you had to be an ADC member. The cheapest membership for that was $500.
These memberships also came with hardware discount vouchers, the cheap (i.e. $500) option came with one voucher. They worked a bit like how code level technical support incidents work now.
Why this is important will be clear further down.
So, to borrow a DTK you had to have a $500 membership and you had to pay $999 just to borrow the DTK.
So that’s $1500 already.
If you then wanted to trade in your DTK for that shiny new iMac it would cost you nothing. Well, not real money anyways. But you’d had to spend a H/W discount voucher.
How much are those worth you ask? Depends on what you use it for, but here they talk about a $560 discount on a MacBook Pro: https://stackoverflow.com/a/722272
So at least up to $560 if you picked the right device (an iPod would just be ~$40 cheaper IIRC).
That already totals to $2060 for an iMac that retailed for about $1600 if memory serves me right.
Compare that to now:
- $99/y dev membership
- $500 for DTK
- $700 M1 Mac mini
- $200 discount
Total = $1100 for a $700 machine.
The actual cost for early access via DTK + ending up with non-prototype is about the same: ~$400. Not a bad investment for a business.
If in both cases you chose not to exchange for a non-prototype you’d lose $1500 in the old situation and $600 in the new situation with the option to make someone happy with $200 off for a M1 Mini.
So clearly it boils down to irrational feelings instead of money.
Add on top of that that back then people found a way to pirate OS X Tiger off of the DTK and put it on any old Mac before it was even out (and sold, yeah member when OS X used to cost money?) due to a security flaw in the boot rom and Apple was even more motivated to get those DTKs back post haste.
As for issues with the current DTK; are we conveniently forgetting that there were issues with the DTK back then as well? Even if we disregard the terms of the program that clearly warn for these things and disclaim any liability on Apple’s part there’s still common sense that tells you that this is a risk you assumed. It’s a prototype after all!
Then there’s the matter of people saying they wanna/should keep it. This is not an original idea, some people had the same idea back then with the old DTK. To put it simply, their membership was terminated and they received a love letter from Apple legal.
They will come after you and now it’s even easier because S/N is registered to you and they can nicely see when and where the DTK connects to them plus as the devs already found out, there’s a kill switch built in.
So unless you want a nice ornament for on the shelve or you are 100% the buyer you sell it to won’t give you up when threatened with legal action, I’d think twice before you decide to keep it/sell it.
As far as legal cases go, this would be a slam dunk given how the terms of the Quick start program are drafted.
Which reminds me, there seems to be confusion on how long this program was supposed to run and/or if this is a request to voluntarily return the DTK.
It was made clear when signing up and in the legal documentation that the program would run for no longer than a year but with no guarantee it would be a year and that it could be ended at any time.
Here’s the relevant part from the terms, emphasis mine:
Consider the email that they send the earlier request the terms speak of.
This part of the email:
Doesn’t change that. It only applies to fringe benefits like the forum or code level support.
I’m saying all this as an attorney turned app developer.
Does that mean that as a dev I’ve got no qualms? Just a little one. I’ve repeatedly asked dev support about a credit or exchange program and repeatedly they’ve run it up the flag pole only to tell me there would be none.
Based on that I got an M1 Mac mini, so the fact that the $200 is limited to M1 minis is a bit of a bummer, especially since I was planning on upgrading my 16” MBP to an Apple Silicon one if one were to be launched this year.
Having said that, I still got more than I expected and more than I was promised and I’ll find a use for that $200 discount.
Other than that it’s a bit of a bummer I signed up so late and as a result got my DTK towards the end (primarily iOS dev, decided to make the plunge to macOS). That wasn’t the best business decision on my part, but that’s on me and I still got some use out of it, just not enough to justify the cost for my dev business.
Anyways, that’s it. That’s the comment.
Look who's stepping in to defend an asinine Apple decision right on cue. Are you incapable of admitting when Apple has done something wrong?
Since it’s a rental, you will be charged for them rental, which is 499 per year.
When you buy something, and it breaks because of a manufacturer defect that the manufacturer can't or doesn't fix, don't you usually get a full refund? Esp. within a year? These are among the least generous policies.
Imagine leasing something that you're using that expands the ecosystem of the company, and it fails so early into the lease. Even a partial refund seems ridiculous.
edit: that expands
Imagine leasing something that you're using that expands the ecosystem of the company, and it fails so early into the lease. Even a partial refund seems ridiculous.
edit: that expands
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$200 is for early returns. They will release more products in WWDC, and the $200 must be used before May 30.
This is no ordinary lease nor is it a purchase.
This an agreement to enter into the Quickstart Program and the program comes with some perks, one of which is a license (i.e. permission) to use the DTK, made available by Apple.
It is clear that this is a prototype, and thus the expectations must match that, namely that it could possibly be faulty. But just in case that wasn’t clear Apple explicitly mentions this in their terms:
Just in case that wasn’t enough the terms then continue by limiting Apple’s liability.
TL;DR: It’s a prototype and as such malfunctions are to be expected and in case you don’t expect malfunctions Apple made sure to warn you of it in their 5 page terms.
From a strictly legal perspective you are correct. But let me translate:
"You agree to grab you ankles for anything Apple decides. If you don't like it you can piss off"
This is the real Apple:
Bricktop throws you a bone
We're all just FARKING FRINGE to them.
Other program benefits include code level support so if you need help trying to get your code running on silicon macs, you get 3x incidents. Doesn't make sense that if you send your Mac early, you lose those incidents so they clarified that yeah you keep them, despite early return.
And before your quote, it says "Until your program membership expires one year after your membership start date", the agreement specifically says you have 30 days after expiration to return the device. It's a confirmation that the term end date is one year after you started the program.
Apple could have simply not provided any promo code and just ask for the Macs back. That would have likely been a better PR move as people asking for "how come we didn't get anything free out of this" would be nothing to write about.
I don't get it, so you're saying the $500 was justified. You spent $500 to protect your customers from day 1 issues. Increased cost of business was well spent.
No. The email said "Until your program membership expires one year after your membership start date". Nothing in the email says the term is ending earlier than "one year after your membership start date".
The agreement also says you have 30 days after your term ends to return the device. So the deadline is literally 30 days after "one year after your membership start date".
Nothing has changed from the original agreement. People who got the device in November 2020 have until December 2021 to return it back.
TLDR
I’ve been an Apple developer for a long time. This was the worst experience yet as a developer with Apple. Apple in the past has generally been helpful and respected developers. This program sounded the same at the beginning. But Apple did not deliver.
DTK was not well supported. Not enough was working to make it useful in many cases. Promised support never materialized. They released the M1 macs early with no path for developers to get to supported hardware.
Months later to offer a minor incentive to buy a machine right before new models are announced is insulting.
Any developer that wanted an M1 bought one when first announced or is waiting for new models. Apple is offering little of value and didn’t value its developers.
I’ve been an Apple developer for a long time. This was the worst experience yet as a developer with Apple. Apple in the past has generally been helpful and respected developers. This program sounded the same at the beginning. But Apple did not deliver.
DTK was not well supported. Not enough was working to make it useful in many cases. Promised support never materialized. They released the M1 macs early with no path for developers to get to supported hardware.
Months later to offer a minor incentive to buy a machine right before new models are announced is insulting.
Any developer that wanted an M1 bought one when first announced or is waiting for new models. Apple is offering little of value and didn’t value its developers.
Yup, I know I did. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost money though, just means you don’t pay taxes over the amount you spend.
No idea. I do know that these are the kind of things that will attract a lawsuit that’ll easily cost you $50k should you decide not to return it.
Oh ok, so now we’re pretending that this was totally not a 100% voluntary program to join in in which nothing was promised in return?
It also continues with:
In the end it’s up to you what you choose to believe, but I’d make arrangements if I were you and you depend on the DTK. The email also provides a contact option where you can verify if your understanding is correct.