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The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

marco.org

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Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#71

Post by adambyrtek »

crazygringo wrote: post #25

All these problems could be solved if there were a way for companies to transfer your existing non-App-store licenses to the App Store, allow for paid upgrades on the App Store, and allow App Store licenses to be associated with real serial numbers (or something else) that could be used to "take" your license with you, in the event the App Store suddenly becomes too restrictive. Basically make it seamless, monetarily…

Who would pay the Apple tax in case of license transfers? I can't imagine Apple simply letting go of their cut.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#72

Post by dchest »

Garwor wrote: post #43

The neckbeards will buy from the developer. The ordinary customers Apple has been relentlessly targeting for a decade will buy from the Mac App Store. Which group is bigger?

How will they buy software from the Mac App Store that is not available there?

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#73

Post by efsavage »

archgrove wrote: post #20
Bobby_Tables wrote: post #7

The iOS App Store does the same thing with changing the rules in the middle of the game, but it is not subject to potential irrelevance because it is the only place to get software for iOS devices. So the obvious solution for Apple is to make the Mac App Store the only place to get software for MacOS. I'm actually a little surprised this didn't happen in 10.8.

Which would instantly kill the Mac as a development platform, and render all previously purchased software irrelevant. This just won't happen, though I can see a version of OS X that does this by default (perhaps on all "non-pro" models).

"render all previously purchased software irrelevant"

Remember how much business they lost last time they did this (the intel switch, or even the os x switch)? Oh wait...

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#74

Post by monkeyfacebag »

brudgers wrote: post #45
tadhgk wrote: post #17

Future of irrelevance to who exactly? The 1-in-10000 users who like to play with root level access and scripts and stuff perhaps, but do the other 9999 even notice the change? I'm thinking not. Granted it's a big change from earlier times, the strategy of sandboxing works really well for security and general OS integrity (as iOS has proved) in a world that has no patience for fragmented and exploitative software. Per…

"Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro." Not exactly. Metro and its app store are only "half" of Windows 8. The other half isn't sandboxed in the walled garden style. To put it another way, Microsoft isn't building the Windows App Store on the back of existing software, but from the ground up using only sandboxed apps. Microsoft isn't likely to create the sort of moving target for developers that Apple has r…

FYI, this is not true for Windows RT (the ARM version). That version will only support applications purchased through MS's store. Given that MS is clearly pushing for Metro to be the future of Windows, I think this is somewhat concerning.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#75

Post by veidr »

spaghetti wrote: post #48
zemo wrote: post #31

this whole article goes over my head, because it assumes the reader is already familiar with the sandboxing issue. I'm not a desktop OS X developer; I'm not familiar with the topic. I searched around and the only articles I could find are blog posts about how the sky is falling, with no sources from Apple that plainly state the app sandboxing requirements. If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming t…

I'd like to understand the implications of sandboxing too. It must have some large negative impact on Instapaper for Marco to care this much. What is it?

It has no implications for Instapaper at all.

His complaints are entirely from the Mac user perspective. (And are complaints that I share.) Tons of great apps can't be sold via the app store unless they degrade themselves to comply.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#76

Post by Garwor »

dchest wrote: post #72
Garwor wrote: post #43

The neckbeards will buy from the developer. The ordinary customers Apple has been relentlessly targeting for a decade will buy from the Mac App Store. Which group is bigger?

How will they buy software from the Mac App Store that is not available there?

For ordinary customers, software that's not on the Mac App Store might as well not even exist. Developers who try to make a living selling serial numbers on the web via Paypal are going to be selling to a tinier and tinier slice of the market. We're headed toward appliance computing for almost everybody and a Linux box for the rest of us.

Apple understands this; hell, even Microsoft is starting to understand this. Does anyone doubt that we're headed in the same general direction on the Windows Store?

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#77

Post by untog »

St-Clock wrote: post #49
Splines wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the only viable way to do this would be for Apple to make Macs obsolete. Like boiling a frog, if they upscaled the ipad to a desktop-lite device over the next few years, and eventually replaced their fully featured cousins with these devices, they would be able to accomplish it with far much less resistance. (The iMac may have been a few years too early - they could have positioned the iMac as the trojan hors…

But you need a Mac to develop most (i)OS applications and I cannot imagine some of the more complex apps being developed on an iPad-like device.

It's all about where the mass market is. Just like the low-selling Mac Pro machines, Apple could quite happily keep OS X going for the professional minority that require a POSIX-like experience. The vast majority would use a slightly upgraded iOS, where all of that is hidden away.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#78

Post by MarkMc »

The accounting software I develop [1] is a year out of date on the Mac App Store because of the restrictions that Apple have introduced.

And yet I disagree with Marco: This is a one-time problem as Apple tighten requirements for publishing on the Mac App Store. In a few years users will have forgotten this problem (if they ever noticed in the first place) and the benefits of the Mac App Store will make it the dominant distribution platform. Those benefits are: easy to make a purchase, easy to see reviews for a product, easy to find a product, easy to install on multiple machines.

Eventually I'll have to change the software to meet Apple's stricter requirements so it can be published on the Mac App Store again.

[1] http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#79

Post by pn »

spaghetti wrote: post #48
zemo wrote: post #31

this whole article goes over my head, because it assumes the reader is already familiar with the sandboxing issue. I'm not a desktop OS X developer; I'm not familiar with the topic. I searched around and the only articles I could find are blog posts about how the sky is falling, with no sources from Apple that plainly state the app sandboxing requirements. If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming t…

I'd like to understand the implications of sandboxing too. It must have some large negative impact on Instapaper for Marco to care this much. What is it?

It does not have any imapct on Instapaper.

In short, sandboxing is an idea where every app lives in an isolated environment. By default an application can only access its own files, every other system resource is unavailable until the user explicitly allows the app to use it. It has impact on many apps, for instance your favorite git client won't be allowed to open the repositories you've been lately working on, just because they're located in Documents.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#80

Post by technomancy »

Aloisius wrote: post #39
Bobby_Tables wrote: post #7

The iOS App Store does the same thing with changing the rules in the middle of the game, but it is not subject to potential irrelevance because it is the only place to get software for iOS devices. So the obvious solution for Apple is to make the Mac App Store the only place to get software for MacOS. I'm actually a little surprised this didn't happen in 10.8.

That will be the day I go back to Linux.

Why wait? It's clear they would love to do this and are just holding off until they think they can get away with it.
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