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Leaving the Mac App Store

blog.sketchapp.com

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Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#371

Post by jdminhbg »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #293
janfoeh wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right. I would still agree with the parent in that they feel like a badly done webview wrapper, because the symptoms are so similar. iTunes Store, App Store, MAS, Apple Music — there is definitely a pattern there, at least on the desktop. I find them all similarly clunky, slow, ugly and unpleasant to use. Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious…

The pattern is because they're the exact same app. All of those are just the iTunes Store, which is a web page on every platform. The iTunes Store is a little clunky but it works fine. Apple also have the Apple Store, which is a separate thing that's a website - I believe it's a WebObjects app and the iTunes Store is as well.

> Apple also have the Apple Store, which is a separate thing that's a website - I believe it's a WebObjects app and the iTunes Store is as well.

This might have changed since they rolled the store into the main apple.com site, but as far as I know none of that is public for sure.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#372

Post by s73v3r »

janfoeh wrote: post #284
ethbro wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot. Because when you have a captured userbase, there's no incentive to improve / innovate?

Even if you believe that Apple as a whole doesn't have the drive to make stuff as good as they can (fair, although I believe otherwise), and even if you believe they have a captured audience (how?) — do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Even accepting everything else, that seems like a huge incentive to me not to get complacent.

"do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops?"

If that other 85% is cheap laptops with no margin in them, yes.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#374

Post by s73v3r »

jonknee wrote: post #328
s73v3r wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says they have to be Mac only? It'd probably work out better to be on all major platforms, that way you can sell the feature of buy once, run on all platforms the software runs on. You also could allow single platform things onto your store too, like Sketch.

Because the vast vast vast majority of apps aren't cross platform?

So what? Steam sells plenty of games that are Windows only. Doesn't stop them from being available on other platforms.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#375

Post by s73v3r »

makecheck wrote: post #113
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…

It's funny, too, that Apple feels there is enough development time to do things like implement completely non-standard UI components but not enough time to fix a growing list of real problems. 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. I…

It's not structured as an update, and that's a good thing. This way, the update to 10.10 is treated as separate from the update to 10.11, meaning you can still download both should you need them.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#376

Post by s73v3r »

ThomPete wrote: post #341
shawn-butler wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's like saying I should be able to turn off the lock icon in the browser address bar for HTTPS. Those spinning gears are there to tell the user that stuff is happening, even if they might not be aware that they requested something to happen. If you can turn it off, then every piece of malware is going to tell the user that they can't use the app unless they turn that off. And then they have no protection, which is the exact opposite thing that Apple wanted.

If you let anyone turn it off, then effectively you've let everyone turn it off.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#377

Post by muddi900 »

ethbro wrote: post #269
janfoeh wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're probably right. I would still agree with the parent in that they feel like a badly done webview wrapper, because the symptoms are so similar. iTunes Store, App Store, MAS, Apple Music — there is definitely a pattern there, at least on the desktop. I find them all similarly clunky, slow, ugly and unpleasant to use. Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious…

> Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot. Because when you have a captured userbase, there's no incentive to improve / innovate?

Apple has had the largest market share in mobile revenue, yet iOS keeps improving.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#378

Post by ThomPete »

s73v3r wrote: post #376
ThomPete wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's like saying I should be able to turn off the lock icon in the browser address bar for HTTPS. Those spinning gears are there to tell the user that stuff is happening, even if they might not be aware that they requested something to happen. If you can turn it off, then every piece of malware is going to tell the user that they can't use the app unless they turn that off. And then they have no protection, which i…

No it's not like saying that at all.

Again. The gear is there to tell you something specific is going on but most people don't care about that. So of course it should be possible to turn it off for specific apps that you actually trust.

This is only an issue with Sandboxed apps not apps outside the app store. And it wasn't an issue until Yosemite.

Not sure why you keep insisting on arguing against something that isn't what is being suggested for a solution.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#379

Post by hungri-yeti »

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…

Try switching to the Purchases view, I've found that you can see the download/install progress better there.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#380

Post by kalleboo »

X-Istence wrote: post #30
walterbell wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do apps really contact the App Store to approve each launch? That would be a lot of tracking data that could be collected. How could it work if the endpoint is not connected to a network?

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

> and all apps started working again

Some apps are still broken for me, and I'm not sure how to fix them aside from deleting and reinstalling

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