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Comment by yreg

2 days ago

When Apple uses private APIs that are forbidden to developers on the App Store to compete with them it's not exactly fair.

So I wouldn't say it's a failure that they don't do that even more often.

5 comments

yreg

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ascertain_john  2 days ago

APIs are hard to get right the first time. I could see why they wouldn't want to release one until they've dogfooded and refined it.

That said, I'd love to see them take an approach unstable API release that requires the app to show a warning like "This app relies on unfinished features that may change or stop working entirely in the future, requiring the seller to release an apo update." and require them to launch it as a free preview, make it refundable during this period, etc.

  • jorvi  2 days ago

    Apple Maps has been able to display full-size navigation on the lockscreen since iOS 7 or 8 (?). Apple Maps also has access to a special style of notification that no other navigation app has.

    iOS 7 was released in 2013. 13 years ago, aeons in tech land.

    So "APIs are hard to get right the first time. I could see why they wouldn't want to release one until they've dogfooded and refined it." is crap. They're hoarding private API access purely for competitive advantage in services.

  • redserk  2 days ago

    1) Apple has had a lot of functionality gated for many years. I’d buy the “they need to refine it” if they had a track record of actually opening things up without the hammer of regulation forcing them to.

    2) This is a solved problem. You throw a “this is an experimental API, it’s interface may change”

  • gumby271  2 days ago

    I feel like we could expect a bit more from the billion dollar company to support new apis. They have a solid mechanism to deprecate apis and force developers to rebuild their apps already, just shorten that window for the cutting edge apis released in preview.