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The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

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Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#231

Post by btgeekboy »

r00fus wrote: post #212
pnathan wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a consumer, I only buy from the App Store when it's absolutely required. I vastly prefer to live outside the App store and the Sandbox. I haven't gotten malware in years, and I don't particularly expect I'll get it in years to come; if I do, it'll probably be a zero-day in Flash, OpenSSH or HTML5. So, anecdotally, as one consumer, if you have a program in the Mac App Store, I really won't be buying it unless its a…

Don't understand this. MAS has a killer feature (as with iOS App Store) - one purchase for multiple users or machines with one credential set to manage purchase and upgrade. Handling multiple software instances and licenses is a HUGE pain point for the customer - it gets exponential if you're forced to manage licenses across machines and/or users (thus site-licenses for businesses). It is tough enough even for a powe…

I'd argue the exact opposite. Case in point #1: I bought a license for Sublime Text 2 from the developer. I'm free to use it on all of my Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. (Meaning, when I'm forced to use Windows, I actually have a decent text editor I like!)

Case in point #2: I'm trying to buy 15 copies of OS X 10.8 for our older (>1 month old) Macs. I have two options: create 15 Apple IDs, or buy 20 Volume Licenses from Apple, 5 of which I will never need as we don't buy used computers.

Don't get me wrong; I love that I paid for Aperture and can effortlessly install it on multiple systems. (Photoshop, on the other hand...) But it's not everything to everyone.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#232

Post by tanepiper »

coderdude wrote: post #167
jiggy2011 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny , for years Apple were all like "Macs can't get viruses!" now they're saying "we need app store lock in too prevent malware!". I guess there's a distinction to be made between actual malware and software that co-installs crap (Ask toolbar etc) but often end users do not see that difference. Besides, if something has passed app store verification then surely Apple are happy that it is not malware? Therefor…

>Besides, if something has passed app store verification then surely Apple are happy that it is not malware? I'm not so sure. What is their process for verifying that an app is not or does not contain malware? If it's simply to run the software and see what it does then they can really only verify that apps aren't immediately misbehaving. What if the app is set to do its misdeeds after the 100th time it is run, or af…

I'm pretty sure Apple has some form on introspection they run on binaries - that's how they find out who is using non-public APIs for example.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#233

Post by mkramlich »

vacri wrote: post #224
batista wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's funny , for years Apple were all like "Macs can't get viruses!" now they're saying "we need app store lock in too prevent malware!". Yeah, it's funny because: 1) Apple never said that explicitly. 2) It was (and still is true), i.e not that Macs could not technically get viruses, but that they had got no viruses, with the exception of some lame trojans. In all, a minuscule number of OS X Macs were ever affected…

Apple never said that explicitly. Yes, they did. "Macs are safe and don't get PC viruses" to an expert means "it is possible that attack vectors still exist", but to the general public means "no viruses".

to the general/non-techie public PC means Windows machine. IBM PC -> MS-DOS -> Windows

so yeah, Macs don't get (Windows) viruses is a reasonably accurate claim.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#234

Post by r00fus »

btgeekboy wrote: post #231
r00fus wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't understand this. MAS has a killer feature (as with iOS App Store) - one purchase for multiple users or machines with one credential set to manage purchase and upgrade. Handling multiple software instances and licenses is a HUGE pain point for the customer - it gets exponential if you're forced to manage licenses across machines and/or users (thus site-licenses for businesses). It is tough enough even for a powe…

I'd argue the exact opposite. Case in point #1: I bought a license for Sublime Text 2 from the developer. I'm free to use it on all of my Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. (Meaning, when I'm forced to use Windows, I actually have a decent text editor I like!) Case in point #2: I'm trying to buy 15 copies of OS X 10.8 for our older (>1 month old) Macs. I have two options: create 15 Apple IDs, or buy 20 Volume Licenses…

I don't understand why this [1] doesn't work for you - I was able to put exactly 12 licenses in my cart. According to this page [2], the process is to download the installer once and distribute manually.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/D6358 [2] http://www.apple.com/mac/volume-licensing/

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#235

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

nsxwolf wrote: post #100
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few reasons why I think this will never happen: * Taking something away from someone that they've always had (as would be the case with OS X) is very different to never giving them it (as has been the case with iOS). * People are used to doing stuff that isn't possible with the current restrictions - with iOS they've only ever had those restrictions so they're not aware of what they might be missing out on. * Devel…

They'd need to make a "developer version" of OS X, which would just be OS X with this hypothetical super-Gatekeeper shut off. Then the whole thing just gets silly. I believe the PC will remain a PC. Take away its nature and you might as well just hand everyone an iPad.

I can see them changing the language around the various Gatekeeper options and adding additional "are you sure?" warnings to scare people off the allow everything option and unsigned / non-Mac App Store installations but I don't think it will go any further than that.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#236

Post by jayfuerstenberg »

statictype wrote: post #225
cletus wrote: post #120

There are two issues that are coming up here: sandboxing and paid upgrades. They are quite different. As a consumer I am completely for sandboxing for myself and for other consumers. In a world where malware is increasingly a problem sandboxed apps will become the norm. That's the reality we live in. Sandboxing being a requirement means that I can fairly safely install anything from the (future) Mac App Store. The OP…

Perhaps another model worth considering is to start the price of your app low and as it improves and gains popularity, steadily (and predictably) raise the price. . Has anyone tried this? Did it work? I believe Pinboard.in does exactly this.

I've experimented with my app's pricing starting at a premium price of $6.99 and lowering it to as much as $1.99. Right now it sits at $2.99.

I've learned that if the value of your app is communicated well a higher price won't hurt sales.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#237

Post by leviathan »

franzus wrote: post #159
jawngee wrote: post #26

I'm pulling my video editor Shave ( http://shavevideo.com ) out of the Mac App Store for these reasons, though most specifically the lack of paid upgrades. For a $10 video editor that, quite frankly, beats the pants off a lot of crap out there for day to day editing tasks, I can't afford to devote the time and resources it requires to maintain it without it having a baseline level of income. Not having an upgrade pat…

One of the most annoying things about the app store are the review times. With our app ( http://armadilloapp.com ) we had to wait over 5 weeks to get into the store. 2 weeks till the first review, then there was a rejection where I had consult Apple's DTS which took another week to get resolved plus another 2 weeks waiting for a new review. Now we have version 1.0 in the app store and have version 1.1 waiting for rev…

I'm in the same boat; I have a small iphone app that's been waiting to get into the store for 2 months now. Rejections are such random nitpicks and take forever to get resolved.

They rejected the app repeatedly for the following reasons:

  - didn't like one of the supplied screenshots.
  - in-app purchase does not provide a restore button (which I've never seen in any other app btw)
  - the restore button of an in-app purchase is not labeled restore.
The average wait between rejection and re-review is 2 weeks.

I think this is a typical example of bikeshedding, I have another (retired) app that is still in the store, it's full of bugs, and crashes constantly, but the functionality is so big and complicated that it was accepted instantly without any rejection. But this is a very simple utility app, so they want to nitpick over all small details.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#238

Post by karolist »

larrik wrote: post #135
pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was painful about it?

Installing software has no consistency. The built-in terminal is basically broken: -page-up and page-down don't work unless you hold shift -It uses CTRL-C instead of Command-C, unlike the rest of the OS. -I still can't find hotkeys to jump to the beginning of end of line, or skip over entire words (home, end, ctrl-arrow in Linux and Windows) Home and End are COMPLETELY USELESS on OS X. I have never, in decades of com…

Agree with everything. Mouse acceleration curve is the deal breaker for me because I couldn't get it close to Windows feel. The pointer slowdown is too sharp at the end of your mouse move, the pointer itself gets jerky and jumpy when tracking over a small area.

I've tried various free and paid tools, but no joy (OS X Lion). Funny that I have no such problems with trackpad, but maybe that's attributed to myself appreciating the trackpad too much while using it because every other one I've tried sucked unbelievably.

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#239

Post by [deleted] »

larrik wrote: post #135
pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was painful about it?

Installing software has no consistency. The built-in terminal is basically broken: -page-up and page-down don't work unless you hold shift -It uses CTRL-C instead of Command-C, unlike the rest of the OS. -I still can't find hotkeys to jump to the beginning of end of line, or skip over entire words (home, end, ctrl-arrow in Linux and Windows) Home and End are COMPLETELY USELESS on OS X. I have never, in decades of com…

[deleted]

Re: The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance

#240

Post by [deleted] »

larrik wrote: post #135
pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was painful about it?

Installing software has no consistency. The built-in terminal is basically broken: -page-up and page-down don't work unless you hold shift -It uses CTRL-C instead of Command-C, unlike the rest of the OS. -I still can't find hotkeys to jump to the beginning of end of line, or skip over entire words (home, end, ctrl-arrow in Linux and Windows) Home and End are COMPLETELY USELESS on OS X. I have never, in decades of com…

[deleted]
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