Products · Broad category
Apple developer tools
Raised as a usability problem by 40 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 39 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Provisioning profiles and upload need many manual stepsUnreviewed
20092026- Signing, certificate and provisioning profile setup is awful to work through2024-01-05
- Provisioning profiles and app upload require many manual steps, making it hard to get apps running and submitted2011-02-25
- Provisioning profile problems take hours to fix every few weeks2010-12-07
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 40 complaints
- Signing process is inconvenient and complex, requiring workarounds like fastlane match2026-11-03
- Lower-level frameworks are poorly documented and don't work well for developers2026-08-02
- ID scan repeatedly fails with vague blur or technical errors, then account blocked with no explanation2026-06-24
- Solo developers can't practically use the Ads API due to its auth architecture2026-03-13
- Apple's framework names are so similar that they're easy to mix up2026-01-16
- Running apps without signing and notarization is made very hard for ordinary users2025-12-13
- Confusing UI system, poor docs, and tools that crash and are hard to debug2025-05-06
- Poor HCI design and inconsistent data on developer websites2025-03-04
- Too many overlapping audio frameworks make building a player excruciating2024-02-04
- Signing, certificate and provisioning profile setup is awful to work through2024-01-05
- Developer tooling feels convoluted, with many overlapping and inconsistent ways to do the same thing2023-05-22
- Simulator takes about 3 seconds per click, far slower than Android's emulator2023-04-04
- Expiring developer certificate forces last-minute rebuild, reinstall and drive across town2023-02-15
- Hard for newcomers to use; no normal logging, split state, and complex sync requirements2022-09-05
- Slow Apple toolchain updates cause dev annoyances and delays for developers2021-08-06
- Lacks beginner learning docs, so users must rely on third-party blogs2021-06-13
- Incomplete documentation, buggy tools, and harder UI frameworks make development difficult for developers2021-03-30
- Installing packages unknowingly builds x86 variants when terminal runs under emulation2020-11-13
- Codesign's recursive option is unreliable and bundles need manual signing of nearly everything2020-08-20
- Kept getting the same error during enrollment, needing weeks and support to sign up2020-07-14
- Error dialogs and logs hide technical details, so users can't diagnose or fix problems themselves2020-06-29
- Signing apps and automating builds in Xcode is a nightmare for developers2020-01-29
- Hard to reach the actual list that can be read and searched2019-10-12
- Developer tools are painful to use and slow2019-10-10
- Views that should scroll don't, so content stays hidden on iOS2019-05-29
- Tools and documentation are so hard to use correctly that many developers can't figure them out2018-10-15
- Apple event interfaces are poorly documented and implementations are inconsistent across apps2018-06-04
- Developers must endure painful Objective C, XCode, and terrible portals to publish apps2017-12-20
- Developer portals remain terrible and haven't improved for developers2017-12-20
- ARKit is harder to implement than alternatives like Vuforia2017-06-06
- Apple makes building and publishing apps more difficult than necessary2017-01-03
- Login forms block pasting, so password managers cannot be used2016-06-02
- Corporate developer verification via Dun & Bradstreet adds weeks before apps can be reviewed2014-09-01
- Information is buried in a convoluted maze or missing, often leading to irrelevant deprecated pages2013-07-21
- TabBarController is buggy, forcing developers to build workarounds2012-09-21
- Apps replacing old fullscreen behavior removes layered windows power users rely on2012-07-12
- Unclear and burdensome steps to get a developer certificate for personal apps2012-05-15
- Provisioning profiles and app upload require many manual steps, making it hard to get apps running and submitted2011-02-25
- Provisioning profile problems take hours to fix every few weeks2010-12-07
- Ad-hoc builds fail without an undocumented config file and confusing bundle identifier formats2009-07-17