Trying to answer this poll made us realize... in hindsight, though we didn't see it that way at the time, the creation of the Developer ID program was the exact moment we lost interest in Mac development. https://twitter.com/UINT_MIN/status/1275483813791973377

Prior to Developer ID, we'd been writing Mac code off and on as hobbyists since the 90s. The Mac was the first computer with a GUI that we owned, and we've always been fond of it.

We actually paid the $100 USD for a subscription, and even maintained it for a couple years, but we never used it to distribute anything, paid or free. We didn't have words for why until just now.

Developer ID shifted the community. We could no longer believe that we were participating in a common endeavor of writing software primarily for the sake of sharing it with other people, with money being a nice-to-have afterthought.

Remember the term "Shareware"? Today we'd call that a free demo, but that wasn't what it was about. It was about making software for the joy of people using it. You could tell, because most Shareware authors had written short manifestos about their motivations.

That word didn't make it to this century, but we were able to believe that we, as Mac developers, were part of a community of hobbyists. Until Developer ID. It killed that dream dead and made it clear that the Mac is a platform for people who want money, above all else.

It's been a few years now since we've even owned a Mac. We doubt we'll write a single line of code for the platform ever again, and if we do it will be utilitarian glue of some sort. Apologies to our friends at Apple, but our friends understand.

The Mac is still far and away the best desktop platform in its technical aspects, but it's no longer a platform for community-driven work. Apple has made that very clear, and the years have shown that they mean it and aren't backing down. We mourn for what was.

If you want to develop for, and as part of, a community, FOSS operating systems are your only choice. Everything else is solidly corporate now, and will only get more so.

We write this in the hope that it will inspire more people to spend their efforts improving Linux and the BSDs. Why can't KDE be as good as Cocoa, now that Apple has helpfully modeled good UX and API design principles? It needs more volunteers! Get on that. :)

We really want to end this thread on an up note, but right now, large chunks of KDE are unmaintained, and Gnome isn't really aiming to be a unified design in the same way. We can have awesome stuff that belongs to all of humanity, but we have to put in the work!

Okay. Not much else to say about this that others haven't already written. That's our piece, we hope it inspires somebody.