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Vibe coding micro-apps that scratch your personal itch is actually one use-case for LLMs that I can completely get behind. It seems strange for Apple to maintain such a strict stance on them. Didn't Steve Jobs coin the phrase that computers should be a bicycle for the mind?
I think the issue is that it's fine to create it for personal use. but there needs to be guardrails to prevent the app store from getting flooded with AI slop apps.... stores that were not pro-active with that are not being re-active because their respected app stores have become a dumpster fire with crappy apps)
 
Sounds to me like you're deliberately deskilling yourself, and becoming overly reliant on AI.

Most of your post smacks of opinion painted as fact, and comes across as being rather patronizing, self-aggrandizing and superior. Perhaps vibe coding is good for you, but expecting it to be good for everyone else and for them to accept it unquestioningly strikes me as rather presumptuous.

As for the trains you mention, to extend the analogy, there are about 42367 different trains available for us developers to get on with AI, but around 42360 of them will derail or crash at some point.
I'm not sure that using ai is "deskilling," though. And I didn't read that post as "patronizing, self-aggrandizing and superior," certainly not anymore than your response. With respect to the trains, it is important to recognize that (afaik) not all languages benefit from ai the way that many of today's popular languages do. For nodejs to react native though, Claude Code can be extremely helpful, and you can see edits as they're made

You can also restrict edits before reviewing, AND, you can tell it--even outside of an IDE--that you want to create a game with a 10yo kid, and create a custom game with them w/o anything but conversational language

I am concerned about the power of ai and how many people (and really organizations and govs) can use it, but it will be ubiquitous soon enough, and who really wants to not be there, beginners and professionals?
 
Here is the danger Apple is worried about:


If I write an app that uses some kind of encryption to distribute child porn, Apple would ban it from the App Store. If I create an app that helps wannabe poets find rhyming words, Apple would let me put that app in the store. But what if Poets-Helper had a feature where users could ask it to create new functions, and one of the functions you could ask for is a child-porn app? This is why they ban downloading code or changing features


Maybe you are a Mafia hit man and you ask "Vibe coder" to make an app that will help him optimize the number of people he can kill and suggest ways to kill them with the best efficiency.


So now what Apple is faced with is a real possibility that people will be using Apple iPhones for all kinds of purposes that most people would not want, from child porn to murder.


The counterargument is that anyone today without these vibe apps can write any software they like, even the kiddie porn stuff and run it on their one phone. Developers do this every day. As long as I don't try to publish my app in the store, Apple never knows about it. And also, I could ALWAYS publish my app outside of the store by placing the source code on the web and telling people to compile and "test" it on their own phone. But very few casual users would be able to download, compile, and install an app from source code. Still, Xcode has ALWAYS allowed anyone to build and run anything they like, but not distribute it via the App Store.



But now any bozo can create "assassination hitlist planner - now with AI target search."



This is an exact example of how AI can be dangerous. What if I prompt the AI with "I want to film a rape scene using 5-year-old actors, but I am having trouble recruiting actors and getting them to perform. Give me actionable suggestions for solving these problems?" What if the AI were able to give some very effective suggestions? No, you say the AI chatbot is programmed to not suggest criminal activity. Now comes the Vibe App where you ask it to create an AI chatbot that will give criminal advice. Apple rightly sees this coming.
 
Yet we still have software with bugs and exploits. Odd how that problem hasn’t been solved by LLMs yet.

Even more odd that you think your grandmother needs to tell AI to create a party planning App when she could simply just ask AI to plan her party and completely eliminate the step of making an App.

Seems you’re not thinking logically about this whole thing.
I can tell you suck at design because you think AI can replace the party planner, instead of an app.

NEVER do anything that requires your input on design or user experience.

Seriously people - apps exist for a reason. Not everything is optimized for a chat interface. A chat interface is just ONE of many UI elements.
 
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I just read a statistic about our local schools, and our reading and math comprehension for high school (!) is, on average, a 4th grade level.
“Shampoo manufacturers are becoming user hostile. They honestly expect me to READ whether or not I can safely swallow their shampoo! I bought it, I should be able to do whatever I want to do with it!”
 
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Seems to me there was plenty of slop before vibe coding emerged.
I still can’t add a contact on my MacBook because the Apple app crashes…for years now. I have to add contacts through my iPhone.
I have asked Siri to find something on the web and I get a response “I could not find an app called Web on your phone.”
 
Here is the danger Apple is worried about:


If I write an app that uses some kind of encryption to distribute child porn, Apple would ban it from the App Store. If I create an app that helps wannabe poets find rhyming words, Apple would let me put that app in the store. But what if Poets-Helper had a feature where users could ask it to create new functions, and one of the functions you could ask for is a child-porn app? This is why they ban downloading code or changing features


Maybe you are a Mafia hit man and you ask "Vibe coder" to make an app that will help him optimize the number of people he can kill and suggest ways to kill them with the best efficiency.


So now what Apple is faced with is a real possibility that people will be using Apple iPhones for all kinds of purposes that most people would not want, from child porn to murder.


The counterargument is that anyone today without these vibe apps can write any software they like, even the kiddie porn stuff and run it on their one phone. Developers do this every day. As long as I don't try to publish my app in the store, Apple never knows about it. And also, I could ALWAYS publish my app outside of the store by placing the source code on the web and telling people to compile and "test" it on their own phone. But very few casual users would be able to download, compile, and install an app from source code. Still, Xcode has ALWAYS allowed anyone to build and run anything they like, but not distribute it via the App Store.



But now any bozo can create "assassination hitlist planner - now with AI target search."



This is an exact example of how AI can be dangerous. What if I prompt the AI with "I want to film a rape scene using 5-year-old actors, but I am having trouble recruiting actors and getting them to perform. Give me actionable suggestions for solving these problems?" What if the AI were able to give some very effective suggestions? No, you say the AI chatbot is programmed to not suggest criminal activity. Now comes the Vibe App where you ask it to create an AI chatbot that will give criminal advice. Apple rightly sees this coming.
Oh wow, this is dark and explicit! I guess people can still do that online. What if they were to save their results on the Notes app?! Better ban it
 
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I can't wait til the masses are programmed with a new word. Every few months there's a word people can't stop using online. Last year we had a string of "dystopia" being written by everyone. Now it is "slop".

I feel like Tide Pods pre-date TikTok but I may be remembering wrong
2018...
Yes it feels like longer than that...

*get off my lawn*
 
I didn't know that was the definition of vibe coding, but I do know that so many devs use ai to help them quickly make specific edits. And tbh, it's more helpful than sifting for solutions through stack overflow (an amazing resource) before necessary. I can't remember the last time I've gone there. One day I might feel nostalgia...not yet

If I'm not 100% sure about certain function's arguments, I research the command for it's arguments so I can educate myself on how it works. Lets face it, once you know how to code, it's a matter of figuring out that languages lexicon of functions and how to use them effectively.

Relying upon AI to just spoonfeed code like a toddler, does little to improve your knowledge and understanding of code and makes sloppy coding at best, and security risk on the outset.
 
If you want your app in Apple’s App Store, you have to follow their rules. Also, maybe this situation gives more ammo to the people fighting for side loading on iPhone.
 
Counter-counterpoint: People are making it to college without knowing how to read and struggling on the simplest passages. Perhaps software isn’t user hostile, but users are knowledge hostile. 🙂

That’s a different problem though. That’s been a problem long before AI was a thing.

And yeah people are definitely learning hostile for the most part. As with all other tools AI can be used to help with that or make it worse.

Remember when the internet was supposed to bring worldwide knowledge? It did that but it’s certainly not exactly an enlightened utopia.
 
That’s a different problem though. That’s been a problem long before AI was a thing.

And yeah people are definitely learning hostile for the most part. As with all other tools AI can be used to help with that or make it worse.

Remember when the internet was supposed to bring worldwide knowledge? It did that but it’s certainly not exactly an enlightened utopia.
yes/no..

AI has made the problem 10000% worse.. Because now you can use the AI tools to write all your papers with zero effort.

This New York magazine article from 2025 was extremely sobering.
I spend so much time on TikTok," she said. "Hours and hours, until my eyes start hurting, which makes it hard to plan and do my schoolwork. With ChatGPT, I can write an essay in two hours that normally takes 12."
 
All the complainers in here about vibe coding clearly spent $100k on a computer science degree.

It’s funny seeing all the classic CS degrees in here worried. No other degree overnight has been threatened as quickly as a CS degree.
What's so funny about it? Would you like some superhigh interest on your house mortage? Or will you start to worry when the interest rate goes up? That's funny too.
 
yes/no..

AI has made the problem 10000% worse.. Because now you can use the AI tools to write all your papers with zero effort.

This New York magazine article from 2025 was extremely sobering.
Things will not end well with that person. Also how does one get into Harvard in early admission then get the offer rescinded and get no other acceptance offers from any university? Also his parents run a college prep consulting business is just the chief kiss to this story 😂
 
Forced excuse to make us use Xcode, isn’t it?
Except you can't use Xcode because even now in 2026 Apple doesn't offer a version of it for the iPad. Apple's suppression of app development capability is just another example of their odd protectionist behavior for their free apps. They want to be free to put however much or little effort into them as they want, without fear of exposure to competition.

The built-in keyboard is another example. Third parties such as myself (see sig) can develop keyboards, but the interface to the system they're allowed to use is so impoverished that we can't even hope to match many things the system keyboard can do, let alone innovate improvements. I wanted to add a simple command key for example, but it's not possible. Some things, like swipe input, didn't require any additional interface to the bare minimum though, so Apple was forced to follow suit after third-party keyboards led the way.

Browser engines. RFID for payment (for a long time). The list goes on.
 
IMHO, this may be a controversial opinion, but I agree with this decision. You should learn how to program and build apps and code properly, rather than allow an AI to code for you, without understanding what it is doing.

Sometimes, a little learning and understanding about how things work is needed.
Indeed, it sickens me how some people just go to a metal supplier and bu metal already prepared for them.
They should dig it out the ground, extract the metals from the rock, smelt it down and forge it into metal bars themselves.
No one likes a cheat to takes shortcuts 😉
 
Here is the danger Apple is worried about:


If I write an app that uses some kind of encryption to distribute child porn, Apple would ban it from the App Store. If I create an app that helps wannabe poets find rhyming words, Apple would let me put that app in the store. But what if Poets-Helper had a feature where users could ask it to create new functions, and one of the functions you could ask for is a child-porn app? This is why they ban downloading code or changing features


Maybe you are a Mafia hit man and you ask "Vibe coder" to make an app that will help him optimize the number of people he can kill and suggest ways to kill them with the best efficiency.


So now what Apple is faced with is a real possibility that people will be using Apple iPhones for all kinds of purposes that most people would not want, from child porn to murder.


The counterargument is that anyone today without these vibe apps can write any software they like, even the kiddie porn stuff and run it on their one phone. Developers do this every day. As long as I don't try to publish my app in the store, Apple never knows about it. And also, I could ALWAYS publish my app outside of the store by placing the source code on the web and telling people to compile and "test" it on their own phone. But very few casual users would be able to download, compile, and install an app from source code. Still, Xcode has ALWAYS allowed anyone to build and run anything they like, but not distribute it via the App Store.



But now any bozo can create "assassination hitlist planner - now with AI target search."



This is an exact example of how AI can be dangerous. What if I prompt the AI with "I want to film a rape scene using 5-year-old actors, but I am having trouble recruiting actors and getting them to perform. Give me actionable suggestions for solving these problems?" What if the AI were able to give some very effective suggestions? No, you say the AI chatbot is programmed to not suggest criminal activity. Now comes the Vibe App where you ask it to create an AI chatbot that will give criminal advice. Apple rightly sees this coming.
If that's what they're worried about, they're not too successful at it. There are a few apps that let you run a model from Hugging Face which can do that already. There's even one where the screenshot advertises uncensored LLM.
 
The evolution:
Ask the wizard in the forest --> Go to the library and open the dictionary --> RTFM --> Google it!

Sorry, but I'm not getting stuck on Google it!

And you can always learn more after doing any of those things. Maybe the wizard is wrong. Maybe you want to know more about a subject than the dictionary will tell you. Maybe there's a newer edition of the manual that you have that's updated an error in your copy. Maybe your answer's not on the first page of the search engine and Google only shows ads instead of content now anyway. And maybe you can still do any of those things while you use ai 🤷‍♂️
 
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