Why is it on Apple to make sure that their private APIs (as in you SHOULDN'T USE THEM, because they will change without regard to your software) are backward compatible?
It’s not on Apple. They explicitly warn developers not to do this because stuff exactly like this can happen. If it were an issue involving public APIs, then yes, it would be on Apple.
I get it. I’ve used private APIs in some of my Apple apps. But when you do, you take on a certain level of risk and responsibility when you’ve got customers.
The bigger question is why none of these Electron app developers, particularly larger outfits like Slack, didn’t catch this issue in the last 3 months they had access to Apple OS betas.
Do they have a QA process? Perhaps they should start.
Because ultimately Apple is making software for its users. Something that negatively affects their users experience is something they should factor in with new releases no matter whose "fault" it is. Such is the pain of making operating systems.
You're right in the purest sense: use a private API, get burnt. But when it's something this widely used and depended upon you could argue Apple should have made it into a public API by now.
It's on both. Apple should probably have caught this in beta considering how widespread Electron apps are, and have worked with Electron to fix it or they should've worked around it (which Microsoft would probably have done).
If they're not supposed to be used, why can they be used? Hyrum's law strikes again!
With a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody. (https://www.hyrumslaw.com/)
Given enough motivation, access control is irrelevant too. See early Windows "private" API that was used for decades and Microsoft supported despite being "private", because they knew it was being used and they (used to) care about their users.
