Apple Core Rot: PDF Support

2017-01-03 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: Apple, Apple Core Rot

Is this incompetence, disdain, or all-out contempt for developers and users? MPG tends to favor the “incompetence and mismanagement” theory, but those generally require some degree of the other two, that is, to allow it to be approved and ship to customers.

Apple Insider: Apple's changes to macOS PDF handling stymie third-party developers, cause data loss

Apple's changes to how it handles PDFs in macOS Sierra are causing problems with third-party utilities, with the most profound issue potentially causing the removal of an optical character recognition layer from user's files.

Adam Engst from long-time Mac journal TidBITS noted that while problems were widely publicized at Sierra's launch with ScanSnap scanner software, other issues have persisted after two updates, and in some cases gotten worse.
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According to reports collated by Engst, and confirmed by AppleInsider, Apple has re-written the PDFKit framework in macOS 10.12 Sierra, and implemented a common core with iOS and macOS. However, this has caused some serious issues with software that relies on Apple's PDFKit.
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MPG: data loss supports the “disdain and contempt” theory, but does not rule out sheer incompetence.

Note the “common core” thing—a very dangerous trend for future APIs in terms of reliability, compatibility and data integrity particularly since Apple seems to have no idea what unit testing is.

Whose data of any kind is safe when Apple has no qualms about rewriting APIs that damage user files? Such actions show a profound disrespect for users, although leaving RAID users hung out to dry is arguably far worse.

On the Apple Core Rot topic, see one more view in Apple’s 2016 in review.