jealous and envious of what? i'm part of the DTK program too. i don't think us developers should be getting $500 credit but i would be stupid to not take it.A pinch of jealousy a dash of envy, me senses. I am not part of this DTK developer issue but some restrain and understanding goes a long way.
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Developers Start Receiving $500 Credits for Returning DTK Mac Minis
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Because there was never going to be a credit in the beginning. When Apple initially offered $200 as a "thank you", the bitching and complaining commenced that it wasn't enough. Entitlement society.
Apparently, though, there were some execution issues with the DTK program, so Apple felt the need to compensate developers for that with the initial $200 credit. And others justified a full refund/credit by comparing to other companies that "gift" DTK's or pay developers outright.
My personal feeling is that nobody was entitled to a credit because the DTK program had a lot of value baked into it. It was an optional program, not forced on developers. All it did was speed up the release of some apps for M1. The world would not have stopped turning had those apps taken a bit longer to be released, because Rosetta 2 was already in place.
It wasn't just the hardware and software. It was a full "support program". Why should that be free? It has value. Do you give away your valuable assets for free? You expect Apple to simple because they are rich? That's charity.
What engine seized with the DTK program? Be specific, not metaphorical.
That’s cool, however every developer feels different some may share your view while others not so. You may have had a positive or negative experience while others may have the opposite.
Did you benefit form a few vocal developers making an initial stink about the $200. I would say yes as you are pleased to have that bonus $300 that will come in handy to purchase some Apple products. Have to remember that Apple still walks away with that $500 or more depending on what is the total of the final purchase. Apple gets the DTK early and in return people have to spend the credit with Apple. The contract was to be for a year if my memory serves me correctly.
credit stay with you ?
My most valuable asset is my time and yes I do donate that to charitable causes and at times to help out others that are not part of a charitable organization. Not everything is about money, there is a portion of goodwill and appreciate and some developers did not feel it while the Apple of the past did go a step further.
If a developer who has one of this DTK feels charitable, I would say don’t collect the credit or donate it to a charity by purchasing something of need from Apple and giving it away.
Talk is cheap, walk the walk.
Sure and my opinion is that some developers are too self-entitled and felt that they needed $500 from Apple which is $500 more than what they deserve.
Of course. I already said I would be stupid not to take the $$$. I net gained a few hundred bucks more than I expected.
But who knows how this affects us developers long term. Did Apple scale back next year's Xcode features to reallocate the budget for the $300 bonus for developers? Will Apple ship a lower tiered Apple AR Glasses DTK instead (maybe 8GB of storage instead of originally planned 16GB) to offset some of the cost of giving more credit upon returning the device? Is it possible that Apple was on the fence of introducing a new Mac mini on December of 2021, but now they're going to push it to early 2022 due to many factors where the expiration of developer credits pushed them over the edge to do it?
It's perfectly reasonable to think it's possible Apple took something away from future plans to fund this extra $300. Apple didn't get to where they are today without being smart with their cash, even if it's something so minuscule as a measly $300.
The free stuff that Apple was forced to give away is likely taken from somewhere else other than their bank account to make the numbers work.
Contract defaulted to a year but reserved the right to end the program early.
Has Apple even disclosed the number of participants in the DTK program. If it is a few thousand that addition is peanuts as Apple has already factored that into its budget. Contrary to what people on MacRumors forum believe Apple just does not have a pool of developers working on any one project, it allocates to various teams and departments and has reserve for testing and those can be pulled if needed due to some critical issue (does not happen often). Similarly to hardware being developed and in this case funding for various programs from its quarterly budget.
I suspect Apple allocated $500 USD or more for each DTK (factor in shipping and recycling) and figured its makes financial sense to end the program early as the official Apple Silicon is released and cease support. It may have costed Apple more to support those DTK for the duration of the year vice providing an incentive of $200-500 per device.
Apple also benefits from the DTK as more software is available for AppleSilicon and makes the transition smoother and faster and that is Apples intent. There is always short term expenses when transitioning to new software and/or hardware and Apple being in business for decades knows this, hence I suspect their budget did not get hit and Tim Cook lost no sleep, negative press is worse as it signals to developers that Apple is not accommodating and appreciative and those things matter.
Sigh. Whining.....Considering Apple gave the developers a giant middle finger I'd say they have something to "whine" about
Botched Big Sur beta update bricked a ton of machines after a couple of months and Apple went silent to developers that needed a replacement that weren't a Fortune 500 company.
Considering the program was for a year and many developers got 2 months use out of it, they needed to make it right.
They haven't
Like I already said, Apple didn't get to where they are today without being smart with their cash even on the minuscule stuff.
I've worked at Apple so yes I know what goes on in there. There was only 6 people on the team I worked with including me.
In the Xcode example, it's entirely possible Apple wanted XYZ feature that warranted new members to be added on the Xcode team. $300 x 10,000 DTK program members could mean $3million needs to be reallocated so perhaps Apple decided that XYZ wasn't important and ended up postponing it until next year's budget.
Fact is, we won't know what Apple did to make up the extra $3mil assuming there were 10k members or if they just ate the cost and also we don't know how this affects upcoming DTKs.
Sure, and that's why Apple invested in building DTKs and then destroying them later. Even before $500 credit, I don't think Apple was expecting to break even from that project. The low economics of scale for the production of hardware + software + delivery + recycling is a money losing project.
Extra $300 is unexpected added cost which could be in the millions.
Apple did them a favor by even offering the program. They have NOTHING to complain about.
It is funny how developers think everything should be free for them but they want their customers to pay a subscription to change the color of the text. Every other industry doesn't care if your business profits. You pay for the resources that give you an edge, and you pay a premium for early access to those tools. Considering the retail price of the mini the development kits should have been $1000 for 6 months access.
Rofl. Apple did them a favor. Do tell. This ought to be amusing.
They got their hands on hardware before it launched. I've seen the complaints and it's not coming from developers with apps people care about.
We got access to a Mac mini with an iPad Pro processor frankensteined into it as a prototype for the architecture that had many bugs as expected from a developer kit.
However, our lease was for 1 year and Apple botched an update 2 months after we started receiving the DTKs that bricked them. Apple went radio silent for us that don't work for a Fortune 500 company for getting replacements. So yeah, they owed us something.
Lots of DTKs got bricked with a Big Sur update and were unable to get Apple to replace them before they were simply able to buy a public M1 machine.
except the contract is not full fill and suppose the best is 2 year period development not transistion.You can return the lease car if broken.
lol , if got new hardware mean bugs bugs .. Being beta tester which need to paid is weird. Instead should be reverse , You want me to test your new awesome product. £££.
Yeah, except let's break it down. There's a difference between cost and profit, and that's what we're talking about here.
First off, Apple invested in DTKs because it benefited Apple. They needed apps to work/be available on day one more than devs needed their app to work on M1 macs (a SLIM proportion of macs on the market) on day one. How different would the marketing have been if they said "hey, we'll have native apps in the future!".
Second, in terms of the credit. So you've said Apple is taking a $3m hit - let's break it down. Firstly here, devs paid $500 for the kit. They got a $500 credit. The only thing Apple is out here is the BOM for the DTK itself - which, as I explained above, is miniscule in their marketing budget (which is what it should really be considered).
Now, that $500 credit goes against a mac - the cheapest M1 mac is $699. So devs are still paying full price for a new Mac Mini, they just got to effectively borrow a glued together DTK for a few months for free. Let's look at that $699 mac mini. What's the realistic BOM on that device? Estimates have said that they're saving at least $120 just on the CPU alone. Beyond that, you've got a $30 hunk of aluminium, a $40 SSD (yep, it still ships with 256G), $30 of RAM, maybe a $40 PSU and not much else. The BOM pretty clearly is going to be less than half the retail cost, so in terms of profit, Apple makes no profit, but the developer has effectively covered the raw cost of those 2 systems. And that's before most developers splurge on premium upgrades (e.g. if a dev bumps the ram to 16G on their new one (+$200) - that alone would pretty much cover half the cost of the DTK unit.
I think it’s implied there are bugs by the fact that it is unreleased. Besides, the access was payment as it was assumed developers would use it to expedite optimization.
how to optimize if you only have hardware not blueprint/sdk . It's like i see on developer fired himself because he cannot hack the old code to make with new one ( real life bluetooth mesh ble module).
Conclusion , documentation is more important then testing dumb equipment .