I'd disagree that the article frames that Apple planned this.
But Apple did spend 10+ years pretending that the iPad was the computer of the future, despite all evidence to the contrary.
It also went through a long period where it actively under-invested in the Mac as it thought it could somehow migrate everyone onto iPads, despite protestations from most existing Mac users.
It also took 6 years, from the release of the first Apple silicon Mac, to actually realise that there is no reason that a Mac laptop needs to have a starting price of $999. In this period they had all of the hardware and components that could have easily made a cheaper low-end laptop Mac... as evidenced by the same hardware being sold a lot cheaper when they put it into an iPad.
So at least for the last 5 years, the failure of the iPad and the lack of a cheaper laptop Mac, has all been due to Apple's strategic missteps and biases.
To then release the MacBook Neo without those missteps being acknowledged is fine.
But it's been obvious to anyone with the slightest amount of insight that the iPad is not the future of computing. Apple should have also realised this and corrected course a lot sooner than March 2026.
I agree that it says that people are willing to pay more, more often, for a smartphone than they are willing to pay for laptop and desktop computers.
However, how you can then extend this to:
> The market has spoken and they love the locked down, walled garden approach.
The market hasn't been given the opportunity to choose a more open iPhone or a closed, locked-down iPhone.
When the market is presented with both options, at variable prices, we can then determine what, if any, people are willing to pay for one vs the other.
This is great news and hopefully makes SwiftUI more feasible as a long term cross-platform UI option.
What would be great is if Apple started working with and contributing to this toolset.
What would be even better is if Apple then open-sourced all (or at least some) of their SwiftUI implementations.
What would be amazing is the community can then takeover some of the issues in SwiftUI – especially on macOS – and help to make it more flexible, feature-rich and comparable to UI toolkits like AppKit.
A good, cross-platform, Swift-based UI toolkit would go a long way to ensuring increasing and enduring cross-platform Swift usage.
I was going to defend Xcode and say it's not that bad... but then I read the article and realised that I have just become so accustomed to these problems that I don't consciously realise the daily hellfire that I experience.
Even when you think you're immune to it, Stockholm syndrome is real.
A similar article I wrote on the 'Dark Side' of Apple Development, brings up many additional issues:
Ideally the 'Never Monetise' site would record and have a non-removable list of any site which had a hyperlink through to it, as a ledger of the sites that have made this commitment.
If they do then change their policy in the future, this would be independent, verifiable proof of a prior commitment.
I've recently written about a similar topic, regarding an app's commitment to privacy and the cost of not selling user data:
I would say that currently for mobile, iOS still monetises a lot better than Android.
Once you've developed your brand and own your own distribution channel however, the best strategy seems to be to distribute via the App Store (which in many countries Apple doesn't give you any other choice) but monetise via your own site. Netflix etc do this and seem to not see much downside.
How well it works for smaller or new apps however is debatable.
I use Jekyll for my company website [1] and managed to get a lot of speed optimisations simply by using a post-processing tool on the statically generated output.
For my product website, it reduced the overall size by 590MB or approximately 59% in size, along with changing the HTML/CSS to make the optimisations that this article notes.
Yes it may be entirely based upon AI buzz, but there should be no reason that Apple also couldn't have inflated stock due to AI buzz.
For example, I have questioned why Nvidia has been able to be the unchallenged leader in AI graphics cards.
With Apple's silicon knowledge, access to leading edge TSMC fabs and volume purchasing power (due to selling millions of devices) – Apple could and perhaps should be selling unique processors to AI companies, and also using them themselves – taking a huge amount of revenue and mindshare from Nvidia.
As I noted it took 7 years to actually get any substantial Google traffic – if I was to start again I would potentially change some of what I've written to be more effective or focus on different topics earlier.
However my approach is always to write what will be useful and interesting for humans, if Google search also finds it relevant then that's a bonus. I never write just for machines... as I think that's a long term losing strategy.
The site's primary purpose is as a product site for my app. The content that I have written is for this purpose, with organic Google search traffic being a bonus.
Due to this, Google AI summaries are not a huge consideration.
> You have Apple dragging you by the b-... nose and you say thank you more. That's why everyone dislikes Apple and anyone who uses it.
Perhaps continuing to develop an app on Apple's platforms is asking for more, but a couple of items of consideration for perspective:
1. In my opinion, over the last 10 years, Apple's behaviour has gotten a lot worse as they strive for continual profit growth – with services being their only answer and tightening the screws on developers via the App Store their chosen solution.
2. Having used Apple as my primary computing platforms for almost 40 years (yes I'm old), and developing on it for many of those years, it can be hard to walk away to another ecosystem. For many users & developers, the knowledge etc is a sunk cost that can be hard to overcome.
The article was written both as a way to vent and also to hopefully shine further light on the issues in the hope that it could add to the impetus for change.
What would you think would be a solution in this situation?
Perhaps the age of the content helps, though I haven't done a deep dive into SEO practices myself. In the last year, when search traffic increased, I've increased the output to almost 1 article per month.
Similar approach and story to myself, in that I started a side project for my own use and interest, and then released it to great feedback as a side hustle, went part-time and over the last 2.5 years managed to go full time.
I've yet to reach your $1M ARR though.. but hopefully getting there one day!
Recently wrote up a Year in Review which touches on similar learnings as you've written over the last year:
Have also had a keen interest in FIRE over the years and hadn't heard of your product... personally I've just kept my own spreadsheet which runs through scenarios, progress etc.
If Apple was really serious about combating the use of Electron and other cross-platform frameworks they would seriously support (and possibly even fund) a tool like this.
Despite the issues, if Swift and SwiftUI were available and compelling for Android then it may help to give Apple greater mindshare of developers.
https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/ai-exceptionalism/