Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Leaving the Mac App Store

blog.sketchapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 424 posts

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#181

Post by j2bax »

S_A_P wrote: post #107
j2bax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Logic Pro is a professional DAW as I'm sure you are aware given your years with it. If you can't afford the $199 upgrade, you should probably just use Garageband for free. Personally I prefer this pricing strategy over requiring a monthly subscription. And $199 is far cheaper than the alternatives.

I agree- however, if you follow what other DAW upgrades cost(and I agree, forget this monthly subscription crap) Studio One Upgrade from 2-3(highest version) - 149 Reason 8 upgrade from any version - 129(sometimes 99) Cubase 8 upgrade - 75 Logic is pretty expensive to upgrade for what usually amounts to a free plugin or two and minor functionality increases...

I didn't realize they charge so little for their major upgrades. Sorry to assume you didn't do the math.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#182

Post by gtk40 »

goodplay wrote: post #99
gtk40 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only significant one would be Amazon's app store, which doesn't really offer any improvements over Google's.

I use f-droid over te play store whenever I want to install an app.

Yes, there are others, but I imagine (I would like to be wrong) that Amazon is the only one with any significant marketshare. Maybe something in China.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#183

Post by to3m »

sosborn wrote: post #138
to3m wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dread ever having to run the Mac App Store to get an upgrade. (Luckily, I only have to do it for Xcode and OS X.) It asks for my password literally every 15-20 seconds. Once I tell it to upgrade everything, it selects only one upgrade, and keeps telling me there are upgrades. While the upgrades are going, it keeps asking me for my password. At that point I go off and watch TV. When I come back, it's actually downlo…

> It asks for my password literally every 15-20 seconds. This hasn't been my experience at all. I wonder what's going on because that sounds super annoying.

As far as I can tell, it's not universal, but still somewhat common. (My computer has always done it ever since I bought it new in April.) It is a bit annoying. But since I use the MAS so irregularly, I can get by. I do wonder what the cause is, though. I'm less certain I'd like to know how Apple have so far failed to get to the bottom of it.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#185

Post by rcthompson »

cmdkeen wrote: post #114
VeryVito wrote: post #46

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…

I think games are much easier to sandbox than general desktop applications. Games mostly just need access to input devices, output devices, hardware acceleration, and disk access in their own private folder, all things that are relatively easy to provide in a sandbox.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#186

Post by justinclift »

dreen wrote: post #133
cmdkeen wrote: post #114

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…

Steam is terrible. It requires the whole app to be running and fully up to date before you can launch a game. It has a slow load time. Even on a decent machine, if you haven't played a steam game in a while and you want to run one, you might be looking at a good few minutes before the game even starts to load. In the name of what, stopping piracy? AFAIK most pirated games come from steam anyway. I realise this is sti…

You can launch your games in Offline mode, which stops the need for having to go online/update/contact-the-Steam-servers-before-launch.

It's not totally straight forward though. You need to unplug your network device (or turn off wifi, etc) so the initial startup times out, and gives you the option to use Offline mode.

There might be a command line switch way to do that too, but I've never looked. ;)

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#188

Post by chc »

coldtea wrote: post #176
chc wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people, when they have a problem finding good games, think "I know, I'll find a curator." Now they have two problems.

Besides the chance of a word-play on the famous quote, is there any substance behind this at all? What would be the problem with finding a curator? It's not unlike how music industry has always worked -- from the era of finding a radio producer you like to the era of following a playlist on Spotify on some genre you like.

I have the same trouble finding good curators as I do finding good games. I don't know what curators are good just like I don't know what games are good. I'll look at someone and I'll think, "Is this person really any better than filtering by genre and then randomly buying games?" And I don't feel confident the answer is yes a lot of the time. I feel like I need a meta-curator.

I agree that this is not a particularly novel problem, though.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#189

Post by X-Istence »

thesimon wrote: post #74
X-Istence wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they don't contact the app store to approve each launch. Apple has a root CA that expired, during this "event" apps wouldn't launch because they couldn't verify the code signing certificate. Apple updated their certificate, and all apps started working again. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10560634

But as the top comment says: The actual issue was that some developers used an old version of OpenSSL, which couldn't handle the SHA2 cert. Apple apparently "deprecated" their SHA1 cert and started to use an SHA2 cert. IIRC some apps were still working because they used the right OpenSSL version. I guess Apple didn't communicate enough with the developers that they'll start using SHA2.

SHA-1 deprecation has been on the table for a long time now.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#190

Post by [deleted] »

sosborn wrote: post #146
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been dumbfounded as well. A company that makes scores of billions on products, should be able to spend millions on a decent app store. Yet it continues to be a bottleneck, fail to serve app developers, and strangle innovation. It all seems so futile.

It takes more than money to create quality software.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN