Mac App Store: Open for Business • Hacker News Board

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#161

Post by Groxx » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

vokoda wrote: post #38

Anyone else feel like https://chrome.google.com/webstore makes this seem old-fashioned? Seriously who's going to be running software on their local machine a year from now (apart from hackers obviously).

Only if the webstore weren't packed full of apps which are nothing but links to websites.

I run stuff offline pretty frequently. Online more frequently, but losing offline capabilities (especially in the face of links-as-apps) would be absolutely crippling for me.

Not that I doubt good WebStore apps will be capable of running completely offline. But that's certainly not the state of things right now, and the added programming complexity implies to me that it won't change very quickly.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#162

Post by Timothee » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:03 PM UTC

pilif wrote: post #126

larsberg wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That depends. My mom and dad share the apple account (why buy all apps twice) but not their machines. I'm going to have a hard time explaining this to them.

Tells them about Home Sharing. They should be able to share music and apps over multiple accounts.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#163

Post by omouse » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

rudd wrote: post #43

I will say this: Apple is not afraid to leave old technology behind. While website XYZ aims to support multiple versions of every browser, including those released a decade ago (IE6), Apple won't even support Leopard with its new store, which was the version that came with the Mac I got just over a year ago.

It's not brave, it just makes business sense and is a dick move. The OS you're running is just as good as the one you were running before. The applications you were running before are just as good as they are now.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#164

Post by omouse » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:13 PM UTC

toddmorey wrote: post #91

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.

I realized something that I think is even bigger than uninstalling: There's no software trial mechanism in the App Store. That's always been the spirit of shareware (and a lot of hosted services, too). You install it, kick the tires, and then decide on purchasing before the trial is done. But here, even programs available for trial on the actual developer sites seem only to be available for instant purchase. (The equ…

There's no software trial mechanism in the App Store.

If your code isn't proprietary, you don't need that :D

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#165

Post by roadnottaken » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:14 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #148

roadnottaken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's a pretty compelling argument that iTunes has become a monolithic abomination trying to do a thousand things. Split it up into more programs that each do something simple and well.

Yes. I long for the days of Winamp 2. But it's a losing battle...

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#166

Post by mcritz » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:15 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #159

I'm impressed with the Mac App Store so far. Pretty bold of Apple to push it so prominently onto every Mac user's Dock as part of a point update to the operating system. My little landscape generator app, Turtledoveland , is currently at #5 on the Top Paid list for the Graphics & Design category. I'll be sure to let HN know what kind of sales numbers that actually means, once the numbers come in...

I think Turtledoveland is a fun app. Is it possible to sell a screensaver through the Mac App Store?

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#167

Post by Travis » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

axod wrote: post #148

roadnottaken wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think there's a pretty compelling argument that iTunes has become a monolithic abomination trying to do a thousand things. Split it up into more programs that each do something simple and well.

I'm not sure splitting it up is the solution. But I 100% agree, it's become a bloated piece of crap. I've thought this for a long time now. Anyone have any alternatives, that aren't something like MythTV? I just want a lightweight multimedia app for my Mac (VLC doesn't have a great "library" feature, so that's a nogo for me... but something like VLC). VLC is my favorite app ever.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#168

Post by heresy » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

baddox wrote: post #87

rimantas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. Never had any problems with it, be it Windows (long time ago) or Mac (since 2004).

That has to be rare. For the brief period when I had an iPhone and was using it as my primary mp3 player, I had to use iTunes on Windows. This was from August to November of this year, and iTunes was almost completely unusable to play, manage, sync, or even view my music collection.

I use iTunes on Windows and Mac to manage a 300GB music collection. Never lost data, speed fine after first import and sync (to iPod an iPhone) works fine. I have auto sync off though, obviously.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#169

Post by jeromeflipo » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:21 PM UTC

tommi wrote: post #144

powrtoch wrote: post #139

Disappointed to see Twitter among the most popular apps. For mobile devices the native-app-front-end-for-existing-websites was arguably necessary and beneficial, but for desktop clients it really feels like a big step back to start moving back out of the browser.

I highly disagree. Native apps can provide way more better integration to your desktop and therefore improve the user experience. E.g. showing a consistent (growl) popup for tweets is not possible as far as i know from the web version. And that's just a very simplified example.

Browsers could/can show consistent pop-ups too (cf. http://dev.w3.org/2006/webapi/WebNotifications/publish/ & http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/desktop-...), and I hope the Web version of Twitter will support this soon.

Re: Mac App Store: Open for Business

#170

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 06, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

absconditus wrote: post #145

tvon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wish Apple employed a few longtime linux users to point out certain glaring deficiencies (primarily in app/library management, and in how Spaces works).

You mean like Jordan Hubbard, the cofounder of FreeBSD (I know that FreeBSD is not Linux)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Hubbard Longtime UNIX users are not Apple's primary customer base.

[deleted]