Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store • Hacker News Board

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#101

Post by drivebyacct2 » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:24 PM UTC

archgrove wrote: post #97

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two and half, three years ago, people predicted this move for OS X after the locked down nature of the iPhone really took hold. There are people that swore up and down that signed applications would never come to OS X and that there would never be a walled ecosystem on a non-iOS Mac product. Now we know this to be blatantly false. Apple's biggest money comes from devices that have an exclusively walled ecosystem. It…

Wait, what? Who claimed that signed applications won't come to OS X? Windows has had them for years . People said that OS X would never be limited to App Store purchases only and that's still the case. In fact, lots of people expected the default to be "App Store curated only, with an off switch. Instead, we got the comparatively surprising "Signed only with no checks on what's signed, with easy to use off switch" (i…

How can you say they're completely wrong? Every iteration brings in more iOS features, often with no way to opt-out or the option is buried away or hidden in a plist setting. Mission Control versus the old Expose? App persisting (both in memory and) state. Not showing hidden files in Finder. More iCloud integration at seemingly every turn in Mountain Lion.

It's clear that Apple is making OS X more and more and more like iOS. I think you're right the loud-mouth "DOOM" scare posts are a bit silly and I hope I'm not coming across that way. I just think that people are accepting this when they wouldn't have imagined OS X looking like it will soon with Mountain Lion a year or two.

Sigh, if you're going to downvote, please have the courtesy of telling me what was so inflammatory about my post. Especially if you're going to drive by downvote all of mine in a particular portion of the thread. I mean, good god, this post is simply a listing of observations and then an agreement with the parent that many people draw absurd conclusions.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#102

Post by Ryanmf » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:24 PM UTC

ramses wrote: post #70

zdw wrote: post #3

Dev tools don't really have a place in managed environments IMO - they just need too low level of access to a system to be able to do their work. Now, say a game or web browser that runs potentially malicious content, sure, sandbox it. But other things like code interpreters, low level Unix tools, or inter process tools like AppleScript, they're still open to (mis)use by anyone. I'm going to guess that most malware f…

There's another kind of applications, besides dev tools, that's going to be affected by this. I'm a user of one of Apple's "pro" applications, Logic Pro 9, a top music recording software (or DAW). I started using it long before it was put in the appstore, and was surprised when they moved it there, as it was a 5 DVD install. Anyways ... the tool interacts with plugins written in a Logic Pro independent standard, VST.…

Mainstage is in the Mac App Store as well, nothing about Rewire support is consistent with MAS guidelines.

Unfortunately, it appears this may be a "do as I say, not as I do" situation.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#103

Post by LaGrange » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:31 PM UTC

Ryanmf wrote: post #98

LaGrange wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm suggesting that every single application prior sandboxing was not safely distributed. It's not like anyone had a choice, there was an age before airbags. I also disagree that extensibility is in conflict with sandboxing. As for pro media software developers, I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of time and polishing of the platform. AutoCad LT is already in.

I'm not sure why the Mac App Store represents the high water mark for safety (as opposed to a secure server maintained by the people who actually developed the software or MacPorts/Fink/Homebrew) but whatever. Many popular audio plugins are themselves plugin hosts (just off the top of my head, Native Instruments' Reaktor, Maschine, and Guitar Rig and Five12 Numerology match that description). In this context, wouldn'…

Not really. They still can't access files outside of what has already been granted to the main application.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#104

Post by grecy » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:32 PM UTC

azov wrote: post #93

grecy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Soon there will be no filesystem. Is that a bad thing? I'm not saying it will happen soon, or that those of us long in the tooth will go easily, but I honestly think it's the future. Think about young teenagers who will soon be "in charge". They snap a pic on their phone and send it to someone else. Nobody cares where it is in the filesystem, or even what the filename is. I used to meticulously name, tag and organiz…

> Is that a bad thing? It is a very bad thing. I agree that it looks like this is where the industry is going, and I really, really, really dislike this direction. Files are an incredibly useful abstraction. Sure, there are programs that work with photos and songs, but thee's a whole class of applications that works with "data" no matter what this data is. Think of stuff like backups, synchronization, compression, en…

>Files are an incredibly useful abstraction

I agree with you. The "Files" abstraction has served us very well for more than 30 years. That's not justification to not attempt to find a better way.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#105

Post by msbarnett » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:37 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #82

tzs wrote: post #27

Wouldn't security-scoped bookmarks solve some of the problems he describes? From the sandbox design guide: -------------------------------- Starting in Mac OS X v10.6, the NSURL class and the CFURLRef opaque type each provide a facility for creating and using bookmark objects. A bookmark provides a persistent reference to a file-system resource. When you resolve a bookmark, you obtain a URL to the resource’s current…

Bookmarks are a working solution, the problem is getting the user to locate those urls in the first place. I'm having many of the same problems that the OP mentions and explaining to the user how to locate folders and files correctly is a usability nightmare. "Click the button below, locate file xyz and 'Open' it to proceed" I would be perfectly ok with a system "Grant permission to xyz" dialog, but the open file dia…

> "Click the button below, locate file xyz and 'Open' it to proceed"

Rather than presenting it as some pointless mechanical chore in which you direct a user to a specific file in a known place, wouldn't "Choose where you would like Foo.app to save your XYZ (project/file/whatever)" make a lot more sense?

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#106

Post by recoiledsnake » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:37 PM UTC

ramses wrote: post #70

zdw wrote: post #3

Dev tools don't really have a place in managed environments IMO - they just need too low level of access to a system to be able to do their work. Now, say a game or web browser that runs potentially malicious content, sure, sandbox it. But other things like code interpreters, low level Unix tools, or inter process tools like AppleScript, they're still open to (mis)use by anyone. I'm going to guess that most malware f…

There's another kind of applications, besides dev tools, that's going to be affected by this. I'm a user of one of Apple's "pro" applications, Logic Pro 9, a top music recording software (or DAW). I started using it long before it was put in the appstore, and was surprised when they moved it there, as it was a 5 DVD install. Anyways ... the tool interacts with plugins written in a Logic Pro independent standard, VST.…

>Is Apple going to cripple Logic Studio? Or will they also have to take their "pro" software out of the appstore?

The answer is simple, Apple's apps will have special access that will make them better than 3rd party apps which have to jump through all these hoops.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#107

Post by vacri » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:54 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #86

vacri wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... what about my scripts? Should I have to load some specific manager - iScript - in order to access my creations? Just because 'the filesystem is dying'? What about my store of .iso files? Do I need iIso?

I think people who need to manage files outside of a particular application will become the exception, not the rule. As long as you can access the underlying file system when you need to, I see no problem with most people not having to care about it.

How do you move photos from Alice's computer to Bob's computer? "Check out these"? With the concept of files, you can move photos/music/whatever in a number of ways - thumb drive, network shares, cloud. If you only work through 'photo manager' applications, how do you do it? What if the creators of the photo manager didn't want to support thumb drives? What if the way the photo managers on the different devices use different ways of referring to the photos?

I think 'regular' users have plenty of use for understanding the filesystem. I also think that it's okay to have some degree of expectation for the user - dumbing it down for the lowest common denominator is harmful (look at politics!). What do you really gain by alienating the power users?

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#108

Post by Steko » Thu, Feb 16, 2012, 11:58 PM UTC

barryfandango wrote: post #84

When I think of all the articles that have passed through the HN front page about mobile developers' terrible experience with the app store, I can't imagine why a desktop software developer would voluntarily subject themselves to it. Sure, iDevice developers have no choice. But for desktop software there's this handy thing called the Internet. Why kick up revenue to apple, subject myself to submission rules and arbit…

"When I think of all the articles that have passed through the HN front page about mobile developers' terrible experience with the app store"

Right, there are no success stories.

"Why kick up revenue to apple"

People keep saying this like Apple doesn't deliver buying customers and revenue. The app store making a profit on sales is exactly how every other store in the world works. Why does Apple 'kick up revenue' to Amazon when they could just sell all their iPads online through Apple.com? The answer is because lots of people shop at Amazon and Apple will sell way more iPads with Amazon then without them.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#109

Post by scott_s » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 12:06 AM UTC

vacri wrote: post #107

scott_s wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people who need to manage files outside of a particular application will become the exception, not the rule. As long as you can access the underlying file system when you need to, I see no problem with most people not having to care about it.

How do you move photos from Alice's computer to Bob's computer? "Check out these"? With the concept of files, you can move photos/music/whatever in a number of ways - thumb drive, network shares, cloud. If you only work through 'photo manager' applications, how do you do it? What if the creators of the photo manager didn't want to support thumb drives? What if the way the photo managers on the different devices use d…

You're still thinking of exceptional cases. Photo managing applications have, and will improve, native ways of sharing the photos, even if it's as simple as sending an email.

I see no reason why making the common case simple (not "dumb") means you have to eliminate, or even alienate, the power users. Frankly, since I started using a Mac, iTunes and an iPhone, I stopped managing music files. And I think that's great. Files are an implementation detail. What I want is music or radio programs, not files.

Re: Between a rock and a hard place – our decision to abandon the Mac App Store

#110

Post by lazerwalker » Fri, Feb 17, 2012, 12:34 AM UTC

smackfu wrote: post #99

smacktoward wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretend I'm Apple answering these questions for a moment... > Chrome "Safari." > Photoshop/Adobe CS "Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut? Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?" > Fusion/Parallels > Text Editors > FTP Clients "We're in the consumer products business, not the 'tools for nerds' business. Ask an XServe customer if you want more information." > Microsoft Office "We cou…

Really, the average consumer's needs are met by iLife + iWork. That gives a photo editor, a movie editor, spreadsheet, and word processor.

The problem with iWork is interoperability with MS Office. I recently got my parents set up with a new iMac and had them buy iWork instead of MS Office. They quickly switched back to MS Office after getting frustrated at having to export their Pages docs as Word docs every time instead of saving, and dealing with formatting loss when importing from Doc into Pages.

iWork is a much better and more user-friendly set of software than MS Office (unless you're an Excel power-user, in which case the OS X version of Excel probably isn't cutting it for you either), but it's tough to recommend it for non-technical people who need to work with Windows folk.