Yes, I was thinking of joining, but the fact that the site didn't work without turning off my ad blocker was a turnoff. Why do they even need cookies? Terrible first impression.
The amount of blindness I'm seeing from companies on both sides of this fight about how to handle their optics is kind of staggering.
One of Apple's core arguments for why they need this kind of control is privacy. If someone is launching what is essentially a PR campaign against Apple, one of the first things to do is to make sure the website doesn't have any appearance of violating people's privacy.
Make it work without JS, make it work without cookies. Be conscious of the target audience. Requiring cookies is a really tone-deaf decision for them to make.
This. The problem is regardless of it being either side of Hanlon's razor, malice or stupidity, I have built trust with Apple and prefer the centralized Apple (over the decentralized dev-houses of the world) to do its best to ensure neither malice nor stupidity in the product I use most throughout the day.
> I have built trust with Apple and prefer the centralized Apple (over the decentralized dev-houses of the world)
IMO this is a false dichotomy. Epic and Spotify are not the size of Apple, but they're still giants compared to little indie developers.
I trust indie devs way more than any of the BigCos. It's just natural: the fewer customers you have, and the less market power you have, the more you care, the more you have to care, about your individual customers.
I appreciate this sentiment, but I've lived through too many of these transitions to agree. e.g. Blizzard, Google, YouTube, Curse, Sun Microsystems, Zynga, Minecraft, Occulus.
Indie developers / startups either become the size of Epic and Spotify, or get bought by companies the size of Epic, Spotify and Apple.
Find me the indie developers / startups that cannot be "corrupted" (converted?) and I'll invest as soon as they IPO.
Meanwhile, there are some companies that make it their business model to build trust at scale. Apple, Valve, Nintendo, Microsoft (exclusively for enterprise clients) are a few great examples.
For me they are both: Small groups of people passionately working towards a unique vision, typically under-funded to address a niche that is under-represented / under-invested by "the incumbents".
I'd be happy to view them differently. I just haven't been educated on the differences.
