[Openmcl-devel] Mac App store: will CCL apps fly?

[Andrew Shalit]

On Oct 22, 2010, at 1:58 PM, Ron Garret wrote:

> 
> The simple fact of the matter is that Apple does not care about its developers.  It has never cared about its developers.  It doesn't need to.

The truth of this depends on how you define "care".

If caring means letting developers use whatever tools they want to create whatever software they want, then Apple doesn't care.

If care means keeping developers in the loop about important upcoming changes, or being transparent about how sales channels work, then Apple doesn't care.

On the other hand, if caring means providing a venue where even very small developers can make a living from their work, then Apple cares.

If caring means giving you a shot at getting your software into the hands of hundreds of thousands of people without issuing a press release or doing any advertising, then Apple cares.

So it depends on what kind of software development you do and what your goals are.

I'd say Apple doesn't care much about hackers, either on the development side or the user side.  The concerns of Lisp programmers are similar to the concerns of Unix/Linux users who want to be able to get under the hood of their machine.  Even that phrase --- "get under the hood" --- is instructive.  You can't get under the hood of modern cars the way you could twenty or thirty years ago.  The same thing may be happening to computers, at least consumer-level computers.  Some things are lost by that, certainly, and hopefully those options won't be cut off completely, and we (hackers) should certainly push back.   But this isn't about users versus developers.  It's about the kind of user, and the kind of developer where Apple is making distinctions.