OT: Catalina - the end of ad hoc & in-house development?

Peter Reid preid at reidit.co.uk
Wed Sep 11 01:57:08 EDT 2019


I've been reading the responses to my original posting with interest. My thoughts are as follows:

1. Matthias Rebbe's tutorial and helper stack seem to be excellent and appear to be the best way of complying with Apple's requirements, for now. Let's hope that Matthias can maintain this as Apple move the goalposts over time! If Matthias is unable to sustain these aids I'd hope that the LC mothership would adopt them.

2. A lot of the apps I develop are used by immediate friends and family (and a tiny circle of customers). They are private developments for use in closed communities. Apple have no right to be involved in these and the extended development cycle caused by their involvement is just unnecessary pain.

3. If Apple's measures really did provide bullet-proof protection the pain could be justified given the gain. However we know that this protection process is continuous and it becomes more and more onerous over time whilst still providing partial protection for a limited time.

4. If the Apple measures were a simple switchable setting I could switch them off whilst I check the user experience for a new user. Then I could switch the features back on to see the fully Apple-ised experience. As it is now, using the current Catalina beta on my development Mac, I see no blocking or warnings. So I've no way of testing the user experience on my development Mac. I have to find another Mac to act as my newbie user. Even then if such a Mac has been a previous newbie, how do you neutralise it to relive the newbie experience?

5. The $100 charge each year is inexcusable. Basically Apple are saying "We'll make any app development more tedious unless you pay up $100 every year.". Even the development of the simplest app, to be used as a temporary tool by a couple of friends will be blighted by warnings,  etc. if you don't pay $100 per year and jump through the hoops! Apple are deliberately making life more difficult and charging us $100 a year for the privilege!

6. I wonder how much developer time world-wide is wasted jumping through Apple's hoops, especially those developers without the benefit of LC and Matthias' tools?

7. If a new-to-LC developer wants to do the usual "Hello World" trivial 1st app (making an executable standalone app), they have to understand code-signing, notarising and stapling, DMG/ZIP creation and be signed/paid-up Apple developers.

Thanks to Matthias, you're a life/sanity saver, but I still find the prospects as an app developer rather depressing!

Peter
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Peter Reid
Loughborough, UK





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