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Apple Asks Developers to Return DTK Mac Minis in Exchange for $200 Credit Toward M1 Mac
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Sure. If Apple said they're ending the program earlier than expected, it would have specifically said so. But the email says one year after start date and so far that hasn't changed.
The deal they all agreed to was: You pay $500 to get access to one of these machines for a year, and then you return it. Now Apple improved the deal. Developers got these machines so they can make _their_ software available on the AppStore as quickly as possible and make more money.
When ppl bringup the 2003 WWDC or things like that it makes me ask myself , how many developers Apple had during that time vs what they have now , I think the reason for the 500$ lease was to avoid the hobbyist developer from getting a unit (if they were free , there would hundred of thousands of units being asked for) , so when this was done , if they would give a free Mac or the 500$ back , next time there is any developer kit (not just Mac but other platforms from Apple) , I believe the line will be infinite as ppl will know Apple are asking for the lease money but give back either the entire money back or a better value product (new Mac).
Remember these machines are rented and Apples property. If you try to sell them on eBay, apple can legally bid for them and then refuse to pay because you tried to sell their property.
New terms and conditions: If you have Apples property and refuse to return it, your developer account is temporary suspended.
If my company was offered say an iPhone 13 prototype for $500 for one year and then return it, we would see that as excellent value.
At that point you have a problem, because Apple is the owner of the machine. They can get the name of the buyer from eBay, take the Mac away, and the buyer sues you for the money back.
The cost was justified if I can use the DTK for a year. As I said, I hope that is the case, but I'm not that confident.
We'll have to see how it goes.
I expected to use the DTK for a year. Hope that is the case. If not there's nothing anyone can do about it, but failing to meet that expectation is on Apple.
Tim Cook is clearly a scrooge! Bet he makes you pay for 80% of the dinner if you went on a date!
Not only do they end the program early! Despite an intimation of the transition taking 2 years.....Now I discover it is only 1-year program and I only have until May 2021 to use the voucher!
The DTK has been really no use at all since I use Flutter, (android studio emulator didn't work). Docker desktop which works on M1 but not on DTK. FL Studio will work in Q2 2021. The current version crashes a lot on M1 and doesn't' work on DTK.
I am speaking to my bank to get a refund in full and will return the bit of kit and argue it out that way! I only got mine in September and it was pretty useless, had to brick it to upgrade it's OS and went through trying everything to see sho little worked and I couldn't get my apps going.
Had Apple been upfront about the terms of the lease and the exchange offer it would have made a big difference.
I think we have good reason to claim unfair terms of the lease! I look at the receipt and it says "Purchase order".
How can it be a leased item if apple provided me an invoice to say "Purchase"?
Not only do they end the program early! Despite an intimation of the transition taking 2 years.....Now I discover it is only 1-year program and I only have until May 2021 to use the voucher!
The DTK has been really no use at all since I use Flutter, (android studio emulator didn't work). Docker desktop which works on M1 but not on DTK. FL Studio will work in Q2 2021. The current version crashes a lot on M1 and doesn't' work on DTK.
I am speaking to my bank to get a refund in full and will return the bit of kit and argue it out that way! I only got mine in September and it was pretty useless, had to brick it to upgrade it's OS and went through trying everything to see sho little worked and I couldn't get my apps going.
Had Apple been upfront about the terms of the lease and the exchange offer it would have made a big difference.
I think we have good reason to claim unfair terms of the lease! I look at the receipt and it says "Purchase order".
How can it be a leased item if apple provided me an invoice to say "Purchase"?
You’re hard to convince I’ll give you that. But since I can’t sleep anyways, let’s see if we can dissect the situation.
What did we sign up for?
We signed up for the Universal App Quick Start Program (UAQSP).
What does that mean?
Luckily we don’t have to figure that out ourselves. Apple makes it very clear in their terms what the Universal App Quick Start Program is.
They define the UAQSP as follows:
Take note that the DTK is separately defined and that the DTK is part of the program, not the program itself.
On the page for the UAQSP they also explain what is part of the program:
So we can conclude:
- The UAQSP is one thing
- The DTK is another thing, specifically one of the elements in that program
- The UAQSP is not the same as the DTK
What does it say about the end of the program and sending back the DTK?
It says that the UAQSP starts when you accept the terms and automatically ends in one of the following cases:
- one year after accepting
- if you’ve been naughty and broke the terms of the UAQSP or the terms of the developer program
- if Apple suspends or terminates your developer account
- whenever you or Apple feel like
So when are you supposed to return the DTK?
Either:
- after the end of the term for the UAQSP
- or when Apple requests you return it earlier than the end of the term (they offer two examples of how such a request can be made, email or dev page)
Has Apple requested the return of the DTK or only spoken about an early option to return it?
Well, let’s take a look. Did we receive a request? Yes we received an email, exactly describes as one of the examples.But did the language in the email reflect a request or a voluntary option to return it sooner than you must?
Let’s see, the email subject is:
Does that reflect a voluntary option? No.
Does it reflect a request? Yes. Better yet, it is a command. It doesn’t say “consider to get ready” or “please get ready” it simply says to get ready.
Let’s read further.
“It’ll” means “it will”. Not “it might”, not “please consider if it is time to”. “It will”. An inevitability. You have no choice, this is not a request, this is an announcement. Nonnegotiable.
Also take note of the hint that the DTK is only part of the program: “that was sent to you as part of the program”. So it is not the program itself, nor is it the whole program, it is just a part of it.
Lastly, another hint at the lack of a voluntarily choice: “We’ll email you […] with instructions”. You have no choice in this matter, we will tell you how to return the DTK, not “if it pleases you we can tell you how to return it”.
Let’s look for more hints:
What’s the program? The UAQSP is the program, not the possession and usage of the DTK, that’s just part of the program.
“You’ll have continued access to other program benefits”
Imperative here is the word “other”. As in, benefits of the program other than the DTK.
The DTK is not the program. The DTK is part of the program and you will lose access to the benefit of using the DTK while remaining access to the other benefits like code level support via technical support incidents and the private section on the dev forum as well as the other benefits mentioned above that are not the DTK.
This doesn’t mean that your membership of the program is terminated or that you have less than a year access to the program.
After all, if it was terminated you wouldn’t have access to the other benefits. In fact it specifically says that your membership keeps going until a year after it started. You just lost one of the benefits of the program, the DTK.
But again, feel free to hear it from the horses mouth by calling dev support tomorrow and ask it themselves.
TL;DR: The good news is that the program isn’t terminated and will go on for a year, the bad news is you still have to return the DTK when Apple sends you instructions in a few weeks because the DTK is not the program.
They don’t. The DTK is only a part of the program and one of the benefits. You still have access to most of the other benefits under the program.
Good luck, they’ll probably suspend your developer account if not outright close it.
They have been. Not only in the extremely short 5 page terms you agreed to, but also in “regular communications”.
It wasn’t a lease. You purchased a one year membership for the Universal Quick Start Program of which a license (i.e. permission) to temporarily use the DTK was one of the benefits. No different than how you purchased a one year membership for the Developer Program that gives you a license to use a developer beta version of iOS. You never leased the DTK, nor did you purchase it.
Yes I'm fully aware the Universal App Quick Start Program is a superset of the the DTK terms.
There's a lot of fluff in your comments. I never said "Get ready to return the DTK" is voluntary. Getting ready is happening either way. Same with "we'll email you with instructions". Who said that's optional? I only said the May deadline is optional for the voucher. Not everyone is required to return by May. Why you spent so much time on that is beyond me.
"It'll soon be time to return" is subjective and for all we know, the email going out in late February means the first receivers of the DTK have about 4 months left on their 1 year agreement before it's time to ship it back which Apple thinks is "soon".
If you return the Mac mini early for the voucher, Apple is simply explaining that you still have the benefits of the program due to this incentive.
You're not explaining anywhere in the mail where it specifically mentions that they're requesting the device earlier than what was agreed upon to.
Now that's not to say that the email coming later this month could say they want the device earlier. It could say "please return before March 1" or it could say "please return by 30 days after the end of your program date". Fact is, we don't know based off the current email if the DTK needs to be returned earlier than 1 year. Therefore, the 1 year term remains intact.
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I'm not a developer, so I'm not eligible to judge devs on their reaction of this, because I'm not aware of their daily struggles and issues using the DTK. This applies for everyone, who has no knowledge what devs are experiencing with DTK.
Some can say Apple is generous, but it seems from what I read from devs comments on here, that it's more like: Apple - "Come, test and go.", Devs: "If only you made the DTK actually workable".
Apple made their cash on AppStore and now is a lot more careless on how devs are accommodated. This never would have happen 5 years ago, when AppStore was still very dependent on the same devs. At least that's my impression of it.
Some can say Apple is generous, but it seems from what I read from devs comments on here, that it's more like: Apple - "Come, test and go.", Devs: "If only you made the DTK actually workable".
Apple made their cash on AppStore and now is a lot more careless on how devs are accommodated. This never would have happen 5 years ago, when AppStore was still very dependent on the same devs. At least that's my impression of it.
I honestly don’t understand this. Surely I’m not the only one who knew before signing up that it wasn’t guaranteed for a year?
It was made clear in both plain communication and in the terms (which btw are very short and simple) that the DTK had to be returned upon Apple’s request and that the request would be made once the M1 machines would launch but whatever the case, it wouldn’t be longer than a year (not a guarantee of a year).
Ever since the M1 machines came out, the indie dev community on Twitter had been expressing that they expected this email to drop and now more and more devs come out of the woodworks saying that they were of the belief that they got to use it for a full year.
What a joke, I used this thing for a couple of weeks. Because of bugs/crashes, I went for M1 macbook air as soon as I could.
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There is no May deadline. The only mention of the month May is to indicate that the discount code will come to expire in May. That’s not a deadline.
Sure “soon” is subjective, “few weeks” however, is not. In colloquial terms that is to be understood as less than a month from now.
There is no such thing as “return early”. There’s simply returning the DTK. You make all these assumptions about Apple planning on telling people when to return the DTK based on when they joined the QSUAP. There’s no indication of this, everyone got the same email.
This is not “earlier than what was agreed upon”.
What was agreed upon, as I’ve shown, was for you to return the DTK either at the end of the duration of the program or when Apple requests it sooner than that.
This is the “sooner than that” scenario and you’ve agreed to that so there’s no such need to explain where in the email they deviate from what was agreed upon, the email itself is the execution of what was agreed upon.
I don't get why Apple did not just say keep them. They surely have no use for them, and developers have already handed over $500 to Apple to use one to help Apple have a successful launch of the M1 Mac. This is more about the ethics of Apple.
Wrong. If a user wants to take advantage of the May voucher, then sometime in May is quite literally a deadline for them to ship back the device. You can't receive the voucher unless the DTK is received by Apple. Optional of course.
Few weeks is regarding when the email goes out. That email can say "please ship out the DTK by the date listed in your terms". You have no idea what the email is going to say.
Which I stated late February as a suggested date.
Wrong again. If the email says return the device with a deadline of March 31, and I returned it on March 15, that quite literally is "returning early". If I'm scheduled to arrive at 9AM and but I arrived at 8:59AM, that would mean I arrived 1 minute early. This isn't something you can dispute.
Speak for yourself. You're assuming Apple is asking for the DTK earlier which in the email makes no specific mention of it.
Please state a specific sentence from the email of where the action of "or as otherwise earlier requested" is being carried out. Where in the email has Apple requested "earlier" of the return of the DTK device?
Apple has not carried out the clause "or as otherwise earlier requested". Not yet anyways. 1 year Term remains intact.
Yeah that's the kind of short sided thinking that occurred post-Jobs I... didn't turn out so well.
My point stands... MBAs and fellow pin-heads should be ashamed.
An unexpected surprise, thought the machines would just be money down a hole. Now we can return them early (which is good as the M1 mini's promptly replaced them), and get some credit for it. Assuming the early return isn't just for the USA.