What am I looking for?
It’s been over a month since I went on my hiatus from developing for Apple’s platforms, personally. Yet as I see copious amounts of posts about the Vision Pro and all the fun things indie devs are doing for it, I have to ask: what am I looking for?
ℹ️ Opinion Disclaimer
The following written piece is only applicable for my personal projects for iOS and macOS. I will continue to work with my teams and employers on making great iOS apps, frameworks, and tools, no questions asked.
It’s been over a month since I went on my hiatus from developing for Apple’s platforms, personally. Since then, I’ve turned my attention to the Playdate game console and writing a game for it in C. Yet as I see copious amounts of posts about the Vision Pro and all the fun things independent developers such as Simon Støvring and Jonathan Ruiz are doing for the platform, in addition to missing working on Indexing Your Heart (short of the Ghost migration I did recently), I have to ask: what am I looking for?
Most of my software development life has revolved around creating software for Apple’s platforms. My friends, mentors, and colleagues know that Apple has been a core part of my identity for years. I may not always agree with every decision the company makes, but working in Swift and their platform SDKs brings me joy and pleasure that almost no other set of tools and frameworks could replicate1.
As I’ve taken this break from development, I’ve been constantly pondering about this very fact. Loneliness and apprehension have set in as opposing voices scream louder and more angrily. Keeping a level head and looking past aside ideological preferences has only gotten harder. My hiatus has, unfortunately, left more questions than answers for me, and I don’t even know where to begin on answering them.
What am I expecting from Apple to enjoy developing apps for their platforms again? Am I allowed to enjoy doing that work as it is now? Is it okay to prefer developing for closed ecosystems where I know there’s less for me to worry about?
What am I looking for?
ℹ️ Disclaimer
This piece has been written with the intention of expressing and exploring my own personal feelings. I could have this same problem in other scenarios, such as with Panic and the Playdate, Canonical and Ubuntu, or even GNOME and GTK. It just happens to be the case that it’s Apple and their platforms.
Please, take your anti-capitalist rhetoric elsewhere.
- The Playdate and its SDK seem to be the exception to this rule. I’ve very much enjoyed writing games for it with the C APIs. ↩︎
