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Leaving the Mac App Store

blog.sketchapp.com

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Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#341

Post by ThomPete »

shawn-butler wrote: post #337
ThomPete wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already can. You don't need to go through the MAS to download and install an app on your Mac. What I am talking about is if I am downloading something from the MAS. If I am using an app and it pops up first time with the spinning gear I should be able to hide the spinning gear for that specific app. I find it absurdly ironic that such a powerful system doesn't give me that simple ability.

It's my understanding (albeit limited) that the spinning gear was an indicator to the user that AppleScript was doing something (did I ask the app to do this?!?!) You will always see the gear in the menu bar if you are using Automator. Not having the spinning gear just because app came from MAS implies a whole level of trust that Apple probably isn't ready to afford. But again I have no idea about Apple internal desi…

The issue was literally that the gear would pop-up and start switching around the order of the icons in random order. It wasn't even consistent. Some users had it on Yosemite others didn't.

Surely it should be possible to turn of the spinning gear without having to turn of the security measures.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#342

Post by dperfect »

masukomi wrote: post #226
dperfect wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

there is convenience in finding apps (single place to go instead of the entirety of google results for a word) and in getting updates as a user... there is a greater amount of INconvenience to developers. Also, inconvenience to users when the app needs to gasp interact with other parts of the filesystem as many of the apps do. Inconvenience to users when they need support. Inconvenience to developers when they want t…

Not everyone will agree, but 99% of the apps I use shouldn't need to interact with other parts of the filesystem. I'm not sure how the MAS prevents users from receiving support, or developers from giving support (or conveying information) as you suggest. If anything, it encourages those things; every app listing requires a developer link and a support link if I remember correctly, in addition to all the other customizable information, images, and links - not to mention almost unlimited support/information that can be provided within the app itself. And MAS support does give refunds, albeit at their discretion - but that's how much of the retail world already operates. Many developers would consider that an added convenience.

Again, my contention is not that the MAS is perfect, but to say that we're worse off for having it is hard to fathom. If the inconveniences really outweigh the conveniences, then distribute your app outside the MAS. Problem solved.

I can understand similar complaints about the iOS App Store since there are no alternatives (outside of jailbreaking) for native app distribution, but in this case it's just an option. Is the existence of the MAS really worse than not having it as an option (inferior as it may be, depending on your viewpoint)?

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#344

Post by kybernetyk »

jhbadger wrote: post #283

How do apps like "Clozure Common Lisp" get around the sandboxing? The Mac App Store version isn't crippled in any way I can see -- it can read and write outside its directory -- for example it can use the quicklisp package manager which stores files in my home directory?

It seems not to be sandboxed at all. At least that's what codesign reports for the binary.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#345

Post by simoncion »

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…

> I'm also surprised that the desktop client has never implemented an "is this machine actually capable of running this game?" check.

The problem with that is that dev's stated minimum system requirements are -frequently enough to cause trouble with such a check- either substantially too high, or quite a bit too low. After all, not every studio has enough cash to discover what is actually the lowest-powered machine that one can play the game on.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#346

Post by charlesism »

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…

* There's also the 30% cut, which makes no sense when you're talking about a well-known and well-trusted app like Sketch. Nobody fears installing Sketch outside of the MAS, so BC may as well host it themselves. I imagine the average new Sketch user discovers the app via recommendation, or article on the web, so BC will likely make more money away from the MAS. Especially when you factor in the improvements: faster bugfixes, and new features they can without sand-boxing.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#347

Post by kitsunesoba »

In addition to those mentioned here in the comments already, another problem that publishing through the Mac App Store is how buggy OS X’s sandboxing can be. I don’t know if the problem still exists under 10.11 (I bet it does but I haven’t checked), but one bug that I’ve hit consistently has to do with file open/save dialogs.

Open/save dialogs in sandboxed apps aren’t opened directly. Instead, requests are handled by the privileged powerboxd helper daemon, which then passes back user choices to the sandboxed app. This sounds great in theory, but something that happens somewhat frequently is that some part of powerboxd’s dialog initialization silently fails and doesn’t open a dialog, leaving the user confused as to why his requested open dialog didn’t open. Worse, when it happens, it can happen several times in a row, meaning the user can try several times and not get any kind of feedback whatsoever.

It’s been a known issue since at least 10.7 and last I checked (10.10) it still hadn’t been fixed. This is a showstopping bug for many kinds of apps but it’s simply been ignored.

I’ve been wanting to move off of the MAS but as a one-man shop, writing in serial code support, trial mode, and registration is daunting, not to mention getting old users set up with a new license. I might just delay the move away from MAS until the next major release.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#348

Post by kitsunesoba »

alextgordon wrote: post #290
ThomPete wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is that laying out using xcode isn't as easy as using a web view for the kind of layout that are needed for something like the app store. Not sure why this is such a crazy thing to say that I need to be down voted for it.

100% with you. I love AppKit, but the amount of code required to make a simple custom button is insane. What is 5 seconds of CSS takes a good 30 minutes of wrangling with NSButton/NSButtonCell. The very existence of PaintCode is an indictment. It doesn't make sense to say that WebViews aren't "native". With a little effort they can be made to blend in perfectly. It's the same CoreGraphics.

I think that’s countered a bit by less of a need for custom widgets. In fact I’d argue that one of the big points of appeal for native Mac apps is that they eschew tons of custom widgets in favor of the standard system kit whenever possible.

There’s also a good deal of power that you gain when writing custom Cocoa widgets; drawing is usually done with Core Graphics, which is a blazing fast, extremely capable C API. There’s a lot you can do in custom Cocoa widgets that would be impractical or dog slow with HTML+CSS+JS.

EDIT: Also, one big, big difference between WebView apps and AppKit apps is that while WebView apps might get their appearance reasonably close to native, they almost always miss the mark entirely when it comes to widget behavior.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#349

Post by overgard »

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…

A machine requirements check would be useful, but I can't think of many companies that would implement something that results in less sales. What's the upside? Maybe some good will? I'm not saying valve wants people to buy games they can't run or anything like that, but it would be an expensive ongoing effort to make less money.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#350

Post by simoncion »

robotresearcher wrote: post #200
gknoy wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the things you say are true, and I also agree on the "self-inflicted" delays a sibling poster mentions. All of these mattered very little to me when I went to reinstall a game I hadn't played in two years, after a move and a computer crash. I have games on physical media that I can no longer install, or that I can't find the discs for. Fantastic games like Bioware RPGs, or Borderlands. With Steam, I can open a…

I'm a parent of young kids, and fire up steam maybe once a month. Guess what happens to my precious game time nearly every single time.

So, you can do a couple of things:

* Start Steam when you log in to your computer, but have yourself signed out of Friends so you don't get friend activity notifications.

* If you're concerned about data usage, or don't want all of your games to update when you launch Steam, set your games to only update when you launch them. [0] Sadly, there's no way that I can see to make this the default update strategy, so you have to do this for every game in your library that has annoyingly frequent updates. :( Also note that you can configure Steam to not download updates when a game is running [1] and that Steam makes the update game you're trying to launch the highest-priority download.

* Run Steam in Offline mode (assuming you're not playing multiplayer games ;) ) : https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3160-AGC...

Sadly, I don't see any way to run some sort of "Steam client and game updating" service that runs in the background and just keeps the client and your games updated even while you're not logged in to either Steam or your Windows account.

[0] Right-click on the game->Properties->Updates, change the value of the "Automatic updates" dropdown menu to "Only update this game when I launch it".

[1] IIRC, this is the default setting.

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