Apple developer program

Raised as a usability problem by 34 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 33 threads.

People raised many different problems with Apple developer program, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 34 complaints

Bug reports get no resolution; APIs stay broken and regress across releases2026-08-23
Simple app ID prefix change needed months of tickets and escalation2026-05-20
Bypass button for specific apps was removed, forcing terminal commands to open them2026-05-10
Nine certificate types offered with no guidance on which to pick2026-05-05
Verification email never arrived, blocking account creation for an hour2026-04-09
Authenticating to notarization API is a nightmare; user must hand-craft JWT and can't retrieve logs2025-12-08
Automated system failed to read German ID card, forcing repeated attempts and support calls2025-10-09
Integrating code signing with CI/CD is hard, with strange error messages2025-03-28
Developers waste hours or days searching for answers to problems they hit2022-06-21
Layout and animation bugs are hard to debug because the framework is opaque2021-05-24
Must manually confirm 50+ popups with username and password when signing an iOS app2021-05-01
Apple's macOS APIs are broken, forcing developers into workarounds to make apps usable2021-01-13
Couldn't get answers to porting questions from developer forums or Apple support2020-11-30
Search results hide transcripts, so each result must be opened individually; app offers no way at all2020-11-10
Apps get forced into broken legacy UI and scaling despite working fine2020-09-16
Building macOS products requires a Mac, making automated builds awkward and painful2020-01-16
No easy way to add trusted app signing authorities; requires disabling security or installing extra programs2019-04-08
UIKit touch-style interface elements would make Mac apps harder to use2017-12-21
Hard to query with XPath2016-04-22
Overhauled site breaks tutorials; push certificate setup takes about 20 steps and is hard to debug2016-04-19
Things break after updates with no clear cause, and fixes are guesswork2014-12-21
Told to use Safari to download a simple file, with no clear reason given2014-05-21
Download link bounces through XCode page to App Store, which still shows old version2014-03-10
Forced to answer a questionnaire with no option for not developing Apple products2013-09-04
Forum interface is antiquated, buggy, and slow to use2013-07-30
Information is missing or hidden, and finding anything requires many more clicks2013-07-22
Developers must manually handle provisioning and signing, requiring excessive setup and boilerplate2013-07-22
Hard problems get slow, painful routing through intermediaries instead of direct engineer access2013-04-26
The interface for setting up the feature is poorly designed and hard to navigate2013-03-24
Signing certificates and heavy documentation make device setup take hours2012-05-15
Code signing setup is confusing; author trial-and-errored until it worked2012-05-14
Provisioning is error prone and fragile, forcing developers through many tedious steps2011-10-26
Hard to find gcc on Apple's site, and registration required to download it2011-03-11
The free developer account registration is really hard to find2010-06-18