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Leaving the Mac App Store

blog.sketchapp.com

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Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#251

Post by janfoeh »

mrec wrote: post #151
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…

I use and generally like Steam, but I'd never call its discovery "good". Users are drowning in the number of titles, the recommendation engine is pretty poor, and there's no support for filtering . I'll never buy an RTS or a multiplayer-only game, stop showing them to me. I'll never buy an early-access game or a game with 3rd-party DRM, stop showing them to me. I could cull 90% of the stuff in my discovery queues, au…

This is my pet peeve with Steam, too, especially because it seems to be so easy to fix. If only I had the ability to communicate my dislikes to Steam by blacklisting certain tags, the recommendation system would instantly become an order of magnitude more helpful.

Most tags actually seem to be spot-on and quite helpful, so the data is already there.

> I'm also surprised that the desktop client has never implemented an "is this machine actually capable of running this game?" check. Non-trivial to implement, sure, but really useful.

I've wondered that as well. A bit of data munching together with user feedback, in a similar manner to online fashion stores ("I found these size 11 boots a bit on the small side") would be quite helpful.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#252

Post by 0x4a42 »

ThomPete wrote: post #240
xenadu02 wrote: post #204

The worst part about this is all the problems are easily solved if Apple simply put the resources into it. * The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it. * Sandboxing is great, but there will always be things that fall outside the sandbox. Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that s…

I agree with you on almost everything beside the web view part. In my understanding web view is used because it's a very advanced layout engine and way easier and more flexible to deal with than to set all this up using the native layout engine. Edit: For clarity.

Is it supposed to be a joke/sarcasm?

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#253

Post by pkamb »

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…

Many OS X apps are utilities that help you work with other apps. Running all the time in the background, monitoring, looking at keyboard input, observing folders, etc. These types of apps are fundamentally at odds with the Sandbox. But they're used often by many/most OS X users, even the less technically inclined.

Whereas the design and simplicity of iOS has ensured, from the start, that these types of apps cannot exists on that OS.

> Are the sandbox limits really too restrictive for most apps (I guess new APIs/permissions could improve that with time)

The last 5 years have proven that Apple is not interested in granting exemptions to the Sandbox or new entitlements for, say, Accessibility apps.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#254

Post by JoeAltmaier »

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.

Sure; but the reality is they did nothing at all.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#255

Post by ThomPete »

0x4a42 wrote: post #252
ThomPete wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you on almost everything beside the web view part. In my understanding web view is used because it's a very advanced layout engine and way easier and more flexible to deal with than to set all this up using the native layout engine. Edit: For clarity.

Is it supposed to be a joke/sarcasm?

No but perhaps I wasn't being clear what I meant sorry.

What I mean is that using web view make it way easier to layout out networked assets. At least thats my experience having worked with both.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#256

Post by coldtea »

janfoeh wrote: post #236
coldtea wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think there is, yes. For me, finding a person whose reviews I can trust takes a lot of time, so it's useless for answering the question "anything good here I would like to play right now?" I have been reading movie reviews for close to 20 years now; in all that time I have found just two people whose reviews I respect and whose taste mirrors mine so much that I can follow them blindly. With games it's just as compl…

>For me, finding a person whose reviews I can trust takes a lot of time, so it's useless for answering the question "anything good here I would like to play right now?"

Of course. You first need to do some work (find a curator you trust), before you can check a game they suggest.

But what would the alternative be? Either you ALWAYS search for yourself, or you search first for some curators and then follow their suggestions (occassionaly checking out stuff on your own too).

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#257

Post by rimantas »

dangero wrote: post #229
xenadu02 wrote: post #204

The worst part about this is all the problems are easily solved if Apple simply put the resources into it. * The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it. * Sandboxing is great, but there will always be things that fall outside the sandbox. Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that s…

"The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it." Native app is not really a black and white concept when you're talking about an app that mainly just interprets and displays live data it receives. If it's not html, then it's going to be xml/json/some other markup with a custom presentation layer on top. Why would that be bet…

xml/json as uses now is data transfer format, not some UI markup. As for why would it be better — because Cocoa is light years ahead in UI libraries and optimizations compared to web mess.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#258

Post by eveningcoffee »

x0x0 wrote: post #237
eveningcoffee wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think apple tried to get rid of maps. Instead, they allowed their contract with google to end and built their own clone to prevent google from using it to blackmail apple. I disagree that's anything like getting rid of google maps, particularly since my partner still uses it on her iphone all the time.

Well, I remember it differently. Here is one example: http://www.businessinsider.com/ios-6-removes-google-maps-201...

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#259

Post by rimantas »

ThomPete wrote: post #255
0x4a42 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it supposed to be a joke/sarcasm?

No but perhaps I wasn't being clear what I meant sorry. What I mean is that using web view make it way easier to layout out networked assets. At least thats my experience having worked with both.

You had some reaaaaally reallly weird experience then. I don't even understand what you mean by "laying out networked assets". With proper architecture your UI won't even know where assets come from.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#260

Post by jdmichal »

delecti wrote: post #125
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…

I would argue that Steam itself is excellently poised to do so, if they wanted to.

They already are:

http://store.steampowered.com/software/

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