This...makes me happy I'm not an app developer. Being so dependent on one other company for all your work kinda stinks.
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Developers Frustrated at Apple for Just One Day's Notice to Submit Apps Ahead of iOS 14 Release Today
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It’s not an argument there’s are lot of people with the wrong perspective of how to develop software. Two things to keep in mind:
1) if you have weeks of work to do to get an iOS 14 release you obviously weren’t ready to begin with... That’s not Apples fault. iOS 14 beta has been out since June... And no way a single bug should block a competent developer for more than a couple days.
2) If you aren’t able to keep up with what Apples doing that’s again not Apples fault. Apple may have suddenly announced gold iOS 14 but that doesn’t mean developers should be totally unprepared to get a release ready... So what if the app update is not updated right away. Also iOS 14 doesn’t add a ton of significant features that customers would be so pissed they would trash your app for not being ready day 1... People are blowing it out of proportion.
OK I can understand that developers need more time to test these new features in last stable build of OS and Xcode, but have you developers ever thought what the users really want ?
No I don't really want these fancy Widgets or other new features in 3rd party apps on day zero right after installing iOS 14. All I want is all my old apps to run like it used to be, and don't eat up 50% of the battery in just 5 minutes or crash ever 30 seconds (it happened before). And I don't think it will make huge different in June beta build and GM build, in terms of existed APIs and system services supports.
Widgets are additional features, a surprise, and that will not be the main reason when I consider to buy or drop an app, at least not in the first two weeks after iOS 14 release, I'll need more time to test this feature and tweak my own using habits of iOS, and the built-in widgets are the best playgrounds.
Simply put: generic users also need time to find out what are the features lacking in built-in widgets, before they can understand benefits of 3rd party widgets and apps.
Don't forget that only a very small percentage of users have installed beta system on their devices.
And thanks to this thread, now I know not to upgrade and wait for a month, because developers are now rushing to push something that is not in so urgent to their users. And I hate that. I shall wait for all these to get settled down; not Apple, but you developers.
the real bottom line here is that apps showcased on the App Store day one of a rather large point up date are the ones that stand to make a good buck. And when that’s hindered, developers get angry, so much so that Macrumors has an entire post about it with 20+ Pages of comments. Apple gave them no time, and there’s no argument here against any of these (or other) developers.
Okay, but if Apple told people fall, and launches ios14 in summer still, isn’t that a problem? You can say it’s only a matter of days until fall, but those days could make a difference.
This is laughably untrue, and the entire purpose of the SDLC process you mentioned earlier is to alleviate the pain and chaos caused by how laughably untrue this is. You can't measure a bug this simply, especially if it's not yours. Understanding the size of task a bug is about to become is one of the traits that distinguishes someone who is capable and valuable as a senior engineer in this profession and someone who is not, and often breaking down something that presents as a simple bug is in and of itself an entire task.
I've seen "bugs" that can get solved in ten seconds and "bugs" that took a team of developers a year to untangle as their only job. And those are really just the self-inflicted kind. When other people and their software are involved and changing, the surface for potential bugs explodes, and those are the ones that we suddenly were chasing down, with well less than "a couple days" on our hands.
Last night, we experienced a bug that came out of nowhere from the GM, a bug someone at Apple has already told me in passing they noticed too late, and the solution was to stay up all night, so even though we were prepared for this release, we were making hard decisions about which pieces of our update would be going out today and which would be left out, and I was rewriting pieces of the app to work around a basic iOS function that shouldn't have broken in the first place.
The "so what" is "so I make no money." This is why, even as someone who holds down a day job as an iOS dev AND works as an indie, I pulled an all nighter for this update. If I miss an update like this, customers don't even hear about me from the blogs or Apple's own features, and these matter, because I'm in a market that caters to people enthusiastic enough about iOS to care if I'm there day one. It hurts my reputation and breaks my heart to not be able to to bring as many fun new things to those people as I might want.
How do a couple days matter? What business example does this matter? For large IT/Enterprise/complex apps their bottom line doesn’t depend on the latest OS. For small and medium focus app businesses that are “competing” with other apps- they may be operating under wrong assumptions / strategy because competition may solely depend on your apps uniqueness and not customers expecting day one next gen features.
Any angle you look at it, developers knew this was coming and a few days notice would have had little impact on their bottom line.
I am developer and I've seen this happen many times, not necessarily the best practice by any means... When the GM is not available until one day before and then telling everything to submit their apps when they couldn't Is absurd. Apple should have policies in place to at least give developers ample amount of time to look at their apps and get them ready. for launch. Its not as easy as "pushing a button" (Wish it was though.. lol) so testing and regression have to take place.
I feel that their speed launch of iOS 14 was just as bad as the decision to push the 2020 iMac 5700 XTs without extensive field testing.. (that's another can of worms...) Not sure what is happening to Apple but i think they need to just take a break and say "Ok, here we are, here's the lineup, lets get some testing done for ourselves and let the developers know that they can pre-test and get ready for iOS 14. Here's the GM we have.."
I feel that their speed launch of iOS 14 was just as bad as the decision to push the 2020 iMac 5700 XTs without extensive field testing.. (that's another can of worms...) Not sure what is happening to Apple but i think they need to just take a break and say "Ok, here we are, here's the lineup, lets get some testing done for ourselves and let the developers know that they can pre-test and get ready for iOS 14. Here's the GM we have.."
The truth about being a small app developer is that usually, you aren't competing with other people in your category (in fact, we send people to other apps in our category all the time), you're competing to raise up your category as a whole and get attention that can benefit you. Honestly, this is almost always true. I'm not a huge Peter Thiel fan, but this is the big point his book "Zero to One" is named after — competing with others is a losing game. Instead of competing, you make something truly unique, that nobody else could.
For us, that is often something that involves being on the bleeding edge. It's part of our value to customers — a value that is sorta proven out by this thread, where people so enthusiastic to get a new update that they're defending a trillion dollar company as if it's being viciously attacked.
By the way, I'm not attacking Apple! I'm sad for Apple and don't really blame anyone at Apple. Most of those employees suffered because of this too. Crunch isn't fun in any environment, and they were crunching just like us.
This is clearly an issue that happened as a twist of fate as much as anything else, but it should have been communicated better. We would have hated that we didn't get the GM until last night even if we knew a week in advance we were only going to have a few hours with that code, but at least I would have known to brace myself for that all-night coding session in advance.
Certainly true in many ways. For one you solved your bug- if it took you a year to untangle it it may have a lot more to do with your approach, architecture, design or team... The fact that Apple has given you betas gives you time to resolve nearly all the issues with your app... Given a few days notice GM would release would have had little impact on your bottom line. If you have a decent SDLC you would have a nearly polished app ready and in your experience a few things to change in a relatively short amount of time. Nothing is wrong with what I said or what you are saying either. I think we both agree a sound SDLC mitigates headaches. But other people are saying this was wrong of Apple not to give a heads up. I’m saying people had months to work on scoped iOS 14 changes and they had a sense that Apple usually releases their OS towards September/October. So plenty of time. Then you have a few bugs- ok reasonable. But it didn’t affect your bottom line and it did not prevent you from delivery value to the customer. So the argument that a few days notice would change things for people is just ridiculous. Almost I would reasonably argue that most people would not notice an iOS 14 app update missing from their catalog within a weeks time. A few weeks maybe? Maybe some iOS 14 bugs perhaps? But there’s always iOS X.0 bugs... iOS 13 was a mess.
I thinks it’s admirable that you want to deliver to your enthusiastic customers... But I also think you might overestimate many of your customers. If your customers are that enthusiastic then perhaps they will stick around and not be pissed you aren’t a day one iOS 14 update? Are you in the games market? Is that what you mean by “indie”... Either way I don’t think a few days notice is a big deal. If it really impacts your bottom line or business maybe you have some thinking to do..
Not a good idea to work for a company that would attack you for something like this...
I don’t think you or anyone is really in a position to tell a specific developer what impact this has had on them, or how it might impact their bottom line. Only they know that.
The 2 week notice is IRRELEVANT!! What matters is when APPLE started accepting submissions which was 24 hours before release. Maybe you should ask Siri to read it for you, since you do not seem to understand....
I wouldn’t ascribe to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.
What likely happened is that Apple simply forgot to inform their developers. ie: communication oversight. I don’t think Apple intentionally set out to screw them over, when doing so would compromise the quality of their apps and consequently, the user experience on their platform.
Reading all the responses, I kind of get it now. Developers should have been given more time to test the final release and button up any issues. That's a valid point. Sigh, if only one of us worked at Apple and could pass a word along. Everyone is obviously still so new to the whole iOS/macOS release thing that happens only every year for the past decade. 
...but maybe we need to rehash this one more time. 500 + responses haven't created a circle jerk big enough 😂
...but maybe we need to rehash this one more time. 500 + responses haven't created a circle jerk big enough 😂
As a developer, let me say...Tell that that to Google who pushed out their Chrome update last week with support for the new default browser option.
Google, Apple vs ordinary developer? What a comparison? These corporations run upgrade programs internally with army of developers collaborating with each other regularly with NDA in place. They probably aware of the releases ahead than normal developers.
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Admitting the oversight by the Apple fans itself a great thing. If we read the most of the Stockholders posting here egging developers probably without understanding the nuances involved in the releases, making hilarious complaints on the developers! Not sure if they are paid trolls as well. Thankfully this is a standout post 😀
I followed up on another post. I was wrong, my apologies.
Every September should of been ready, get to work instead of whining and making excuses, and your 70% cut isn’t enough????, it should be 50-50 split
Yikes. 22 pages of comments from people that STILL just don’t get it.
Developers have had access to test with iOS 14 for a while, but if they can’t submit apps until Apple allows (which was less than 24 hours notice, basically the rest of Tuesday), and then the tool they use to submit apps (Xcode) is also buggy, I’m really not sure where anyone’s argument is coming from other than a lack of understanding and knowledge on process. For real, this entire article should have a few posts from people asking why and then a few of the initial explanations on the issue. Done. How has this managed to get to 22 pages of comments?!?
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Developers have had access to test with iOS 14 for a while, but if they can’t submit apps until Apple allows (which was less than 24 hours notice, basically the rest of Tuesday), and then the tool they use to submit apps (Xcode) is also buggy, I’m really not sure where anyone’s argument is coming from other than a lack of understanding and knowledge on process. For real, this entire article should have a few posts from people asking why and then a few of the initial explanations on the issue. Done. How has this managed to get to 22 pages of comments?!?
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