Some people here would rather scoot their bums over a cheese grater, than let a single 'less than glowing' remark about Apple be uttered.
It makes this place unbearable at times.
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Apple Ups DTK Mac Mini Return Credit to $500 After Developer Complaints
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It makes this place unbearable at times.
You mean like the "dangerous" precedent that Steve Jobs set by giving away free iMacs/iSight Cameras way back when the PPC-Intel transition was going on?
Still makes me wonder... Apple just sees their devs as money bags initially :/
Sure they changed course, but this shouldn't of even happened to begin with.
Sure they changed course, but this shouldn't of even happened to begin with.
What do you mean leave the DTK program? Why would I leave a perfectly fair program? I think you misunderstood the issue.
Apple giving away free stuff isn’t a dangerous precedent.
Developers complaining and Apple bending over even when developers are wrong is.
Apple doesn't want a developer revolt. The app store and it's symbiotic relationship with developers is too lucrative.
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It has nothing to do with the giving away of free stuff. It's that Steve Jobs's Apple set a precedent way back when the PPC-Intel transition was going on that they were going to do right by the people who make the Mac what it is - the developers - by treating them with respect and acknowledging that they make the Mac what it is.
Tim Cook's Apple did a complete 180 from this stance by nickle and dimeing the people who make the Mac what it is with an insulting credit after they've forked out $500. Giving them a $500 credit I think would have been more appropriate.
That said, is Apple required to give them anything beyond providing support for the developers? Absolutely not. I think on that point we can agree.
There’s this new os called microsoft windows. Give it a couple years, it might reach double digits on market share.
I didn’t anyone said $10 billion. I said what you're suggesting is *like* that.
Sure there are. Likely more since this was written in 2018. https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/04/a...s-at-100b-in-revenues-500m-visitors-per-week/
Lots of things wrong.
1. Voucher can be used for any Apple Product: "the Apple credit gives you the flexibility to purchase any Apple product to help with your app development work." Considering Apple has no clue if I bought a new M1 from Best Buy, that limitation of "only M1 owners can buy whatever they want" likely doesn't apply.
2. No. Apple's margins sit around 30%. A $700 Mac mini means Apple can discount the mini by up to $210 just to break even on the item. A developer using a $500 voucher to buy a $700 Mac mini means Apple is losing money from that transaction. Apple won't turn a profit off of that device purchase.
Developer community is now much more comfortable in demanding whatever they want, even if they're wrong, and Apple will cave. That's quite dangerous.
Last DTK was only offered to Premier Apple Developer Connect developers. That program cost $499 a year. Not really comparable.
Because it shows Apple is willing to cave when developers are in the wrong. If developers demand something that is harmful for the future of the platform, and Apple caves, the platform will die. It's quite simple.
Agreement said 0 warranty with no guarantees of the product working. There's a reason for that. It's possible that this was a limited batch order sent to their partners in China months ahead. It's likely they shut down their production
line of these devices by the time we received them. How is Apple going to replace the units? Spin up production for 1 order after fixing the hardware design issue? Yeah, that's likely going to result in DTK being much more expensive to enroll in. And developers are already complaining at the $500 price tag for a rental.
How do you know Apple didn't reallocate the budget to fund this $500? What if they axed a small new feature for macOS and pushed it to next year to fund this $500 voucher? What if they initially planned on releasing 11.3 and 11.4 for DTKs but cut support short and said "11.2 is the last update" to fund this? What if they planned on cutting Mac mini prices for everyone in June, but instead are pushing back that plan to 2022 after the vouchers are used? I'm supposed to flush this $500 down and live with the compromise that Apple did because developers were too greedy?
From what I’ve read this was done when Apple moved to Intel many years ago. They gave the developers a new Intel Mac each!
So every investment into a business needs to be something that lasts more than a year? What planet do you live on?
Well according to certain group of people on MR, Apple are not required to provide anything for that promise. It was a promise and nothing else. Dev should have read the contract. Hence Apple should not be returning the $500. And providing $200 in return was already a nice gesture even if you have not received anything.
And may I remind everyone that same group of people suggest Butterfly Keyboard problem was an echo chamber.
Not sure how valuable that information is.
Quick twitter search suggests differently:
Developers didn't have to. Purely opt-in.
Then don't get the DTK. It's not like Apple had the option of releasing the M1 Mac mini earlier in June.
That required a $499/year ADC program fee. There's room in the budget to do that.
Today's program is $99/year.
No I didn’t. You said you were embarrassed to be part of the developer community. So quit.
Why does Apple want the dev kits back at all?
Does anyone else think Apple is going to turn around and sell these as refurbished M1 MacMinis for $550, selling them for more used than they were sold for when they were new?
Does anyone else think Apple is going to turn around and sell these as refurbished M1 MacMinis for $550, selling them for more used than they were sold for when they were new?
So the usual suspects who backed Apple before and slammed devs, kinda look silly now (as always).
I have noticed that are few that feel that Apple doesn't owe us anything and they are right since we clearly knew it stipulated it was on "loan." However, many developers like myself, had to provide a reason for obtaining one and did not actually receive it till August, 2020. Then it took a month to get my DTK up to the latest build of of 'Big Sur' and even longer to for many of the third party dev tools like Unity to work with it. For me it wasn't till October until I had a DTK I could start working with, leaving me only about four months of use before I received the email. Understanding from previous hardware programs from Apple, I thought I would have it for at least a year. Also, the timing of M1 based products which came out in the same time frame we finally had a working DTK, left a bad taste in our mouths, making our $500 investment seem consequential.
In saying all this, I am glad I had the opportunity to work with the DTK because I like many were quite surprised at how well it performed, but also dismayed at the "marketing hype smoke screen" Apple was trying to push on the public with compatibility with Intel Legacy apps, making the role of developers rebuilding their apps as a 'Universal App' even more important. Now that Apple has realized the role Developers played in getting out native apps for the M1 platform, I appreciate seeing the upgrade in credit and time to make a decision. As a developer without vast financial means, this will definitely help me towards buying the M1 version of the Mac Mini, even if it will cost me $559 for the same memory configuration, which will give me six months (or less) before the M2 variant comes out. Besides, what are they going to do with them other than gut them and place an M1 or even M2 production prototype board in them and use them internally. I for one, would have been happy just to get a system board kit with the M1 on it and just swap them out myself. Seems like a less expensive route, and would look better on Apple's balance sheet.
In saying all this, I am glad I had the opportunity to work with the DTK because I like many were quite surprised at how well it performed, but also dismayed at the "marketing hype smoke screen" Apple was trying to push on the public with compatibility with Intel Legacy apps, making the role of developers rebuilding their apps as a 'Universal App' even more important. Now that Apple has realized the role Developers played in getting out native apps for the M1 platform, I appreciate seeing the upgrade in credit and time to make a decision. As a developer without vast financial means, this will definitely help me towards buying the M1 version of the Mac Mini, even if it will cost me $559 for the same memory configuration, which will give me six months (or less) before the M2 variant comes out. Besides, what are they going to do with them other than gut them and place an M1 or even M2 production prototype board in them and use them internally. I for one, would have been happy just to get a system board kit with the M1 on it and just swap them out myself. Seems like a less expensive route, and would look better on Apple's balance sheet.
DTK program and developer community are two different things. You quite literally misunderstood. If you can't tell the difference then there's no point in me talking to you. 👋
I haven't said anything wrong and infact proved az431 wrong with a link. Talk about cult-like.
Literal quote from you "set by giving away free iMacs". It has, at the very least, to do with free stuff.
You just reiterated what you said earlier but removed the "free" quote and is suddenly not making it about free stuff.
Disagreed.
Assume Tim Cook is super greedy. Either
- "Nickle and dimeing" a small group of DTK members would amount to nothing to quarterly revenue. "Nickle and dimeing" isn't going to change the numbers on the next quarterly earnings at all, so why would Tim Cook do that?
or
- DTK members are in the millions and giving each one of them a Mac mini would cause a substantial quarterly decline in Mac revenue. That's not "nickle and dimeing", that's being a CEO being responsible to shareholders
"Nickle and dimeing" isn't the case here as they could have simply not offered anything and kept quiet
Not quite, DTK came with an NDA. So only thing that gave some press for it was when native apps came out using these DTKs. But still the big names still don’t have native apps yet. (Big names, Adobe, Google to name a few)
As people now whine when they don't get enough credit, when it wasn't expected at all, I'm not sure of your point.