By no means the first time I’ve seen this sentiment:
Still interesting to see people talking passionately about the Open Web and how bad silos are (which is good)
whilst simultaneously linking only to Apple things and app-locked things in general; the web is still here and
it damned sure isn’t exclusive to Apple and your phone.
@simonwoods
The thing is, Android, Linux, & Windows devs don’t step up and produce good apps or attractive web sites, so what else would anyone link to?
I presume most of the non-Microsoft-employed Windows devs are in enterprise, doing something awful with SAP or Excel or Outlook; I’m not really familiar with their universe, but they certainly don’t make a lot of nice end-user software, and they don’t hang out on any obvious nerd sites. Are they ashamed to admit what they do? Do they not have Internet access? That 95% of the desktop computer market has a nearly invisible developer population is weird. There’s some Windows game bros, eating C++ bugs and mostly being dicks to everyone, but they’re not making end-user software (Coming soon: Call of Duty: Mind Mapping Edition!)
Linux devs do sometimes make end-user software, but it’s unspeakably awful, like GIMP. Server-side, sure, there’s plenty of systems, though I think not many people live and develop on it. My bias is admitted: I loathe Linux as though I were Edmond Dantès himself and Linux had imprisoned me (which in effect it did), and I have sworn eternal vengeance. But my impression is that most server software devs work on Macs, or rarely Windows, and use git or Docker uploads to get everything on Linux.
Android software is almost always made after a web or iOS prototype, and generally as an afterthought; nobody makes Android-first apps except basic system utilities like wallpaper-changers.
There is web-first stuff, including now cross-platform web tech, which could in theory be built on Linux or Windows; yet it seems that most end-user web devs making anything nice are, again, Mac users. If you have any aesthetic sense at all, if you want a nice UNIX environment but don’t just work in emacs, it’s the least terrible option.
There’s an old joke,
“Never ask someone if they use a Mac. If they don’t, don’t embarrass them; if they do, they’ll tell you.”
This might be more true than it seems, maybe Mac nerds just talk about it constantly? But why don’t others?
If you make end-user software for other platforms, I’d like to hear how, and why, and why it’s so invisible?