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Leaving the Mac App Store

blog.sketchapp.com

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Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#211

Post by SneakerXZ »

jkestner wrote: post #193
SneakerXZ wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you would lose your customers. If my operating system limits me from doing things that I can do on other platforms and I want to do them, I will simply not use the system. Are you realizing Mac is used also by creative people that use Adobe tools, tools for 3D and so on and if everything was sandboxed you couldn't do it anymore.

To reply to sibling: Apple has never catered to PC power users, going back to Jobs arguing against slots in the Apple ][ and getting his way in the first Mac. That a Mac user at all is now considered a power user indicates which way the wind is blowing. Apple's pointed in the right direction. Given that the PC is an increasingly obsolete platform for most people, I don't think Apple's going to expend a lot of energy…

Their ecosystem is powered by power users, who do you think is creating apps, games, design, books, videos and so on? If Apple forces to move these users out, they will probably focus on other platforms where they are not so restricted.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#212

Post by vitd »

heartbreak wrote: post #126
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…

Where would you say that Steam currently falls short as a desktop app store? Didn't they roll out general purpose apps for Windows a while back?

1) It's buggy. Literally 50% of the time when I launch it, it says it can't reach the network. Meanwhile my browser and email are chugging along just fine. Another launch of Steam and suddenly it sees the network. No other app I run has any problem reaching the network ever.

2) Steam "updates" itself every time I launch. I see others saying it only happens once a month, but I literally cannot launch it and have it not update. If I quit and immediately relaunch, it says it's updating and starts downloading stuff. WTF?

3) It shows me ads. Note - it's not like the App store which opens to a list of "what's hot/what's new/what's promoted". It launches, I go to click on something and an ad for a game pops up in a separate window blocking the interface.

4) It shows me ads for games that don't work on any system I've ever used Steam on.

5) Support from Valve is non-existent. If you try to get support for a game, they will by default tell you it's the game vendor's fault, even before figuring out what the problem is. If you try to use their support forums, you are required to use a different login and password than the one you use for the store. WTF? Why would they ever do that?

The list goes on. It's just a terrible app. In my opinion the Mac App Store is lightyears ahead of it in just about every dimension I care about. I no longer use Steam when there's any other option available.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#213

Post by jcoby »

OSButler wrote: post #202
relaxatorium wrote: post #81

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…

The one thing that keeps bothering me with MAS updates is that you cannot see the download/install progress. It will show it at first, but then the progress bar indicator simply disappears after a short time. I have to close the App Store window and reopen it, often multiple times, in order to be able to see the download progress again. This is not an issue for smaller updates, but larger Xcode updates are a pain try…

For some reason Xcode updates are shown in Launchpad (both the dock icon and if you can manage to find the app in Launchpad itself) and then sync'd back to the App Store after some delay. The delay seems to be completely random.

I think for some class of updates that includes Xcode and OS the App Store uses a separate tool to download and run the update so it has to use some sort of (very) delayed IPC mechanism. Regular apps update through the App Store itself so it shows progress immediately.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#214

Post by shawn-furyan »

makecheck wrote: post #118
kybernetyk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).

If they're doing that level of scrutiny a million times, they should have released a tool (or even built it into Xcode); something like "Consistency Checker". 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.

Not only would it be nice, but if such an application exists internally at Apple, and they released it with Xcode or something, then perhaps developers could integrate it into their testing infrastructure. If that chain of events happened, then it could bring up the consistency of Apple-centric OS 3rd party software, all the while decreasing time that updates spend in review. This sort of change could be a huge win for Apple, iOS/OSX Developers, and iOS/OSX users.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#215

Post by eveningcoffee »

SneakerXZ wrote: post #205
eveningcoffee wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you realizing Mac is used also by creative people that use Adobe tools, tools for 3D and so on. I.e. not programmers but users of software from big software companies. and if everything was sandboxed you couldn't do it anymore. Yes, you could not run arbitrary programs and Apple may see it as a feature. You seem to be in big denial as it would be horrible thing to happen. I still see this as very likely possibili…

Of course, it is a horrible thing to happen. Just to give you some apps from my dock. Chrome, Spotify, Outlook, HipChat, Viber, Skype, SourceTree, Atom, Sketch, Dropbox. All these would be not be usable because they are not sandboxed. Basically I would have to install Windows on my Macbook and I would virtualize Mac OS X so I can use Xcode and I would use Windows for everything else. It would be suicide for Mac OS X…

SourceTree, Atom are not needed by an Apple usual user.

Others are Apple competitors.

It would be suicide for Mac OS X and if you think Apple is so stupid to do it, okay then...

They dried to get rid of Google Maps on iOS.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#216

Post by kps »

api wrote: post #171
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…

I keep wondering if Apple wants to kill OSX and take everything toward iOS, totally jailed everything, and the cloud. I know if they did they'd lose me as a customer for anything other that (maybe) phones, but maybe they don't care about that market. The only way they wouldn't would be if they grew up iOS into something you can do real work with -- allowed end user app installation, emulators and VMs, containers with…

  > I keep wondering if Apple wants to kill OSX and take everything toward iOS
Tim Cook: “iPad is the clearest expression of our vision of the future of personal computing.” The writing is on the wall, assuming you count U+1F4A9 as writing.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#217

Post by vitd »

to3m wrote: post #183
sosborn wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you know for certain that they know about it? You can file bugs here: http://bugreport.apple.com/.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#218

Post by squeaky-clean »

dreen wrote: post #141
chipperyman573 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you launch a game once through steam you can just run the launcher file.

I'm pretty sure That still launches steam app and updates it before launching the game.

That's up to the game/publisher. With Bastion for example, you can copy the game directory to another PC and it will still work. But most games will require Steam to run first.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#219

Post by jasonbarone »

integraton wrote: post #207
jasonbarone wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brew is not even tech-person friendly. I'm comfortable with the command line and I had a ton of problems getting cask to work. I LOVE the idea and I will use it every time I setup a computer, but there's so many issues to work out. Mainly, some apps not updating correctly, the storage of app versions in cask, settings, licensing. It's a mess. I really hope it gets better. I'd contribute if I was knowledgeable enough…

Be aware that Homebrew Cask [1], which your comment is referring to, is a separate project being built on top of Homebrew ("brew") [2] and it currently has a number of shortcomings that are independent of anything to do with Homebrew itself. 1. https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask/ 2. https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew

Thanks, I did mean Cask. I follow both projects closely and am aware of a bunch of the current discussions. Both are great initiatives.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#220

Post by s73v3r »

dperfect wrote: post #208
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…

Just to play devil's advocate: what specific things about the MAS "[do] more harm than good" or encourage "pump-and-dump" development as you say? I'm not trying to defend the MAS, and I think it definitely needs improvement, but are we really worse off for it? The two things mentioned by the Sketch developers are app review time and sandbox limits. Those same things exist on iOS, but I keep hearing people say the MAS…

I would say the sandbox limits on the MAS are worse, because they go against what a computer is supposed to do. Limits on the phone are considered ok, because first and foremost, the phone has to operate as a phone.
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