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Mac App Store: Open for Business

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Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#71

Post by seiha »

rimantas wrote: post #45
elvirs wrote: post #27

Buy, download, and even redownload. its amazing how apple expected customers to pay for the same digital product over and over.

What are you talking about? I own several programs I bought before Mac App Store launched and store shows them as installed. I am pretty sure, that if you delete an app and then try to "buy" it again, you will get the same as in iOS App Store: a prompt that you already own this app and suggestion to redownload it.

I just deleted CoverSutra which I purchased this morning off the App Store and it went from "Installed" to "Reinstall" or "Not Installed" (I can't really remember which) and I was able to reinstall it with one click and it came flying back into my dock. Pretty darn easy if you ask me. However, I'm not sure if the purchases are stored locally in the app itself/cloud? Say, If I just got a brand new machine, would my app list be stored in the cloud and ready for my viewing if I logged in with my account in the App Store? I'm not quite sure about that part though.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#72

Post by stcredzero »

roadnottaken wrote: post #24
psnj wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vigorously agree. I have no idea why I have such a hard time using iTunes, but I do consistently, even doing really simple and obvious things. It horrifies me.

To be fair, it's a pretty complex program that does very sophisticated things behind the scenes. I used to hate it, and I still mostly do. But I notice that the only people that really hate it are powerusers. There are hundreds of millions of people out there that find it delightful and enabling. It probably says something good about your UX if you're only bothering powerusers.

Powerusers don't want a UI. They think they want a scripting language. Most of them really want a butler, though.

Just make everything directories and let the power users do what they want. Just don't do that in the mainstream app. Keep stuff like that in the power user's special app.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#73

Post by generalk »

Tichy wrote: post #70
ugh wrote: post #50

Arrrg! No way of uninstalling apps in one central location. Why, Apple, why? There is this nice list of installed apps, why doesn’t it have an uninstall button? It doesn’t make any sense. I guess you are expected to drag apps to the trash like before? That sucks.

You can't close apps on the Mac either (you can, but it is only for experts). I guess no uninstalling is just the logical extension of that concept.

I don't follow. Command+Q and AppNameMenu->Quit both disagree with you.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#74

Post by stcredzero »

Tichy wrote: post #70
ugh wrote: post #50

Arrrg! No way of uninstalling apps in one central location. Why, Apple, why? There is this nice list of installed apps, why doesn’t it have an uninstall button? It doesn’t make any sense. I guess you are expected to drag apps to the trash like before? That sucks.

You can't close apps on the Mac either (you can, but it is only for experts). I guess no uninstalling is just the logical extension of that concept.

Actually, that's a pretty clever optimization for caching, IMO. The user tends to leave apps in memory, leading to much snappier performance on machines with sufficient RAM.

EDIT: And if you're savvy, you can always manage memory manually and quit from the top menu or from the Dock.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#75

Post by pilif »

ugh wrote: post #50

Arrrg! No way of uninstalling apps in one central location. Why, Apple, why? There is this nice list of installed apps, why doesn’t it have an uninstall button? It doesn’t make any sense. I guess you are expected to drag apps to the trash like before? That sucks.

What's especially bad is that the apps are installed as root and belong to root. This means that removing them causes a password prompt.

I wonder if the inexperienced user understands that for installing you need to provide the apple store password, but for uninstalling, you need to provide the admin password of your machine.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#76

Post by rlmw »

kleiba wrote: post #18

Is this like synaptic et al.? I mean, do you get updates automatically? That would be great! Also, a central packaging tool helps avoiding multiple installations of the same software, when dependencies can be tracked and resolved. If that is what this is: cool.

They don't do dependency tracking, but will notify you of updates. I don't think Mac developers believe in packaging libraries, since it requires the same version of the library for all programs. The preferred way to do things is statically compile all of your dependencies into your binary. This has the advantage that you can just drag your .app bundle around.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#77

Post by generalk »

cubicle67 wrote: post #63
neovive wrote: post #20

Does anyone else feel that the word "app" is already branded to mean fast and cheap? Perhaps, it's just a perception that will diminish over time. I guess it sounds better than the "Mac Desktop Application Store".

at the risk of telling you what you already know... programmes on the mac have the extension .app; it's roughly equivalent to .exe in Windows (except it's not a binary, more like a .jar). When the iPhone started, I guess 'App' was the natural name for them, and thus App Store came naturally as well. Now it's come to the mac, it's makes even more sense, because it's back where it (Apps) started

Minor historical note: the .app extension for application bundles is a holdover from NeXTSTEP. I don't think that has anything to do with the usage of "app" on the iPhone, and I think the Mac App Store is branded that way for similarity with the iPhone store.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#78

Post by fwdbureau »

Call me old fashioned, but I fail to see how implementing a corporate middleman between developers and users can be a progress... OK, from a developer's stand point, this could be really beneficial (distribution, centralization etc), but as a user, it feels like seeing independent record stores about to be crushed by a shiny new Virgin Megastore. I can't help to hope this will be an immense failure

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#79

Post by larsberg »

pilif wrote: post #75
ugh wrote: post #50

Arrrg! No way of uninstalling apps in one central location. Why, Apple, why? There is this nice list of installed apps, why doesn’t it have an uninstall button? It doesn’t make any sense. I guess you are expected to drag apps to the trash like before? That sucks.

What's especially bad is that the apps are installed as root and belong to root. This means that removing them causes a password prompt. I wonder if the inexperienced user understands that for installing you need to provide the apple store password, but for uninstalling, you need to provide the admin password of your machine.

Inexperienced users will never notice because they only have one password.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#80

Post by roadnottaken »

pilif wrote: post #75
ugh wrote: post #50

Arrrg! No way of uninstalling apps in one central location. Why, Apple, why? There is this nice list of installed apps, why doesn’t it have an uninstall button? It doesn’t make any sense. I guess you are expected to drag apps to the trash like before? That sucks.

What's especially bad is that the apps are installed as root and belong to root. This means that removing them causes a password prompt. I wonder if the inexperienced user understands that for installing you need to provide the apple store password, but for uninstalling, you need to provide the admin password of your machine.

The inexperienced user probably uses the same password for both... so no problem! :)
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