111–120 of 424 posts
Thank god there are some developers who have the balls to stop with this "Store" app distribution bonanza brought by the mobile phone. Someone should give Microsoft a hint.
The "store" was really great for small/solo developers to release an application. It's really expensive to setup your own server to distribute an application. It's also really annoying to have to patch your apps without a store. What's changed is that there are lots of open source options for distribution and patching, so developers need a "store" less and less.
I haven't found it expensive at all. I've been selling apps outside App Stores for over a decade and never needed more than my $9/mth shared web hosting. Accepting credit cards is even easier & cheaper through someone like Fastspring or Kagi, who only take 8 - 9% instead of Apple's 30%.
> It's also really annoying to have to patch your apps without a store.
On the Mac, Sparkle is your friend for auto-updates, it's been around since 2006 (long before the Mac App Store existed): http://sparkle-project.org
On Windows, there's WinSparkle, though it isn't quite as elegant: http://winsparkle.org
The thing that's craziest about the MAS to me is how bad the actual application is. It's super slow, constantly hangs, and is just such a bad experience from the consumer side that it undermines the (very real) benefits of having a centralized store of applications you've purchased and installed. It'd be one thing (and a fairly standard Apple move) if the customer experience was good and they didn't care about trampl…
To this day, I click on things and assume my click just didn't "take" because nothing seems to be happening. Sometimes that's true, and other times it's because the Mac decided to display progress in the least obvious places.
Ironically the one thing that doesn't update cleanly through the App Store is the OS itself, even though I suspect that was Apple's main reason for creating all this. When El Capitán came out, at first I thought it wasn't even available because it wasn't structured as an "update" to anything (in direct contrast to the way every other upgrade works, including the minor 10.x.x updates!).
I'm glad to see successful apps exiting The Mac App Store, and I hope others will follow. Unlike its iOS counterpart, which is great in many ways (new app discovery not being one of them), the MAS has unfortunately done more harm than good to the once-thriving indy Mac app-development scene. It offers a low cost of entry, but also encourages "pump-and-dump" development, in which developers are actively (though surely…
Someone is going to crack desktop app stores one day and do very well. The cost of entry is high (not necessarily in cash, more in reputation) but there are plenty of players who could do it. There's even scope in the SME market in terms of rolling up licencing and deployment. Hell there's even a use case for families.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For syncing apps and tools have you tried homebrew and cask. Create a brewfile and stick it in your dotfiles.
Brew is not consumer friendly at all. My parents (in their 60's) own a mac that I bought for them. It was a great decision for me as I barely have to support them for technical problems. I only get questions on how to do something. If I was to try and explain brew to them it would be a disaster. Explaining the Mac App Store is far easier.
I really hope it gets better. I'd contribute if I was knowledgeable enough to do so.
I'm glad to see successful apps exiting The Mac App Store, and I hope others will follow. Unlike its iOS counterpart, which is great in many ways (new app discovery not being one of them), the MAS has unfortunately done more harm than good to the once-thriving indy Mac app-development scene. It offers a low cost of entry, but also encourages "pump-and-dump" development, in which developers are actively (though surely…
Which is ridiculous when Steam is there as a shining example of what a store could be. Not having to worry about keys and updates is fantastic for me, plus good discovery and upselling opportunities for developers. Someone is going to crack desktop app stores one day and do very well. The cost of entry is high (not necessarily in cash, more in reputation) but there are plenty of players who could do it. There's even…
It's not that great for me. I've had a bunch of my Steam games put out breaking updates and there's nothing I can do about it but wait for subsequent rollbacks. It's a major flaw in the system that a breaking update can be forced down users' throats.
>App Review continues to take at least a week That must be the most frustrating/annoying thing in the world. > there are technical limitations imposed by the Mac App Store guidelines (sandboxing and so on) that limit some of the features we want to bring to Sketch I'm sure there are good intentions to what Apple is doing there, but it would be nice to know more details. > and upgrade pricing remains unavailable Man,…
>That must be the most frustrating/annoying thing in the world. Yes, and sometimes it gets even more frustrating when you get rejected for some minor issue like "the app name in the help menu is mis-spelled". An issue that takes you 3 minutes to fix and re-upload. And then you need to wait another 7 days. (If you're unlucky they find something else for 7 days more of waiting time).
It's silly of them to reject apps entirely over checks that anyone could do in advance, if only they knew what to look for.
The thing that's craziest about the MAS to me is how bad the actual application is. It's super slow, constantly hangs, and is just such a bad experience from the consumer side that it undermines the (very real) benefits of having a centralized store of applications you've purchased and installed. It'd be one thing (and a fairly standard Apple move) if the customer experience was good and they didn't care about trampl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is ridiculous when Steam is there as a shining example of what a store could be. Not having to worry about keys and updates is fantastic for me, plus good discovery and upselling opportunities for developers. Someone is going to crack desktop app stores one day and do very well. The cost of entry is high (not necessarily in cash, more in reputation) but there are plenty of players who could do it. There's even…
Not having to worry about keys and updates is fantastic for me, plus good discovery and upselling opportunities for developers. It's not that great for me. I've had a bunch of my Steam games put out breaking updates and there's nothing I can do about it but wait for subsequent rollbacks. It's a major flaw in the system that a breaking update can be forced down users' throats.