> That's because such vendors (e.g. Panic, BareBones, Omni, and so on) won't do lowest common denominator apps, they keep up with the platform, they understand it, they hook in to new platform-only capabilities, etc.).
What about thousands of small devs/companies who are not Panic or others having contacts inside Apple and a privileged position? Here on HN there's at least one horror story a month about issues someone had with Apple, from ever changing terms, to review process that takes for ever - while still doesn't manage to catch many real offenders (especially in terms of privacy issues), but slows down legit devs trying to quickly fix bugs and close the security holes in their apps. It has become a layer over a layer of bureaucracy which more and more seems to be it's own purpose. Honestly there are much easier ways to make money as a programmer.
Here on HN there's at least one horror story a month about issues someone had with Apple, from ever changing terms, to review process that takes for ever..
Looking at that pragmatically, if Apple are managing to keep "media worthy" problems down to about 12 cases a year they're doing an amazing job.
>Here on HN there's at least one horror story a month about issues someone had with Apple
With 2 million programmers, a marketplace of 100billion, and millions of apps, "one horror story a month" (i.e. "somebody was annoyed on the internet and posted about it") sounds like a huge success story. And many of these are non-stories, or stories of the kind "Me, one of 1.5000.000 programmers on iOS/macOS stores, had an app rejected for some reason".
We never hear the Linux horror stories of commercial developers trying to sell native apps. If we did it would be more like:
"I tried to make a living with a native desktop app - FOSS or proprietary - for Linux, but nobody seems to care and fewer would pay, plus between GNOME, KDE, XFCE, and 10 popular distros, the landscape is a fragmented mess. Oh, god I wish there was an App Store for all, and $100/year to give me access to customers who will actually pay and a way out of this mess".
>while still doesn't manage to catch many real offenders
Why would one expect it to? No system is perfect, it's enough that it catches most offenders, or more offenders than alternative systems. E.g:
+ There's plenty of commercial software available for Linux
+ Desktop environments aren't the issue, they're just graphical shells. It's the rendering toolkits like Qt or GTK which matter more. And even then, you basically just pick one and move on.
+ Yeah the multiple package managers situation can be annoying for non-free software. But then that's still better than a monopoly like on iOS.
I've seen you've posted multiple comments attempting to defend Apple's ecosystem (ironically some of them contradicting other posts of yours in the same thread) but you're still missing the point that developing software for Apple platforms is a massive headache and a massive drain on the wallet in ways that isn't true for any other platform. I honestly don't think Apple care much for developers outside of their own in house teams because the process is so mindbogglingly shitty for everyone else.
You are right, multiple desktop environments are not an issue -- unless you are toolkit author; the different corner cases in different Wayland compositors can be issue, but only for toolkit authors. We are talking about such a layer in the stack, where Apple or Microsoft won't even let you play. Anyone, who uses the multiple DEs as an excuse is firmly put into doesn't know what he is talking about box.
Multiple package managers are not an issue either. In this day and age, you should be using Flatpak. That would also allow you to target very specific ABIs in a cross-distribution way, thus removing the fragmentation excuse.
> "I tried to make a living with a native desktop app - FOSS or proprietary - for Linux, but nobody seems to care and fewer would pay"
And how is this different for AppStore? More and more abandonware, and more and more cheap/freemium clones and garbage - noise to signal ratio is much lower than on say Linux. From a dev perspective, unlike a decade ago, now there's very little room to make any significant money just by building and selling simple desktop apps as indy dev. Now you need a SaaS, or some freemium upsell scam and a lot more marketing skills, plus Apple takes their share of every possible income channel you have and gives very little in return. That's at least my experience.
What about thousands of small devs/companies who are not Panic or others having contacts inside Apple and a privileged position? Here on HN there's at least one horror story a month about issues someone had with Apple, from ever changing terms, to review process that takes for ever - while still doesn't manage to catch many real offenders (especially in terms of privacy issues), but slows down legit devs trying to quickly fix bugs and close the security holes in their apps. It has become a layer over a layer of bureaucracy which more and more seems to be it's own purpose. Honestly there are much easier ways to make money as a programmer.