Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blogs.atlassian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 157 posts

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

#111

Post by UnFleshedOne »

xp84 wrote: post #89
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?

Quit trying to get everyone off your lawn and accept that you are a (presumably) some kind of developer. Computers are not made just for your needs. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. In this case, you'll eventually have to be running some kind of developer tool to have this kind of access. This is probably appropriate. The average computer user (of any mainstream OS) has as much use for…

File manager as a developer tool... The very idea makes me want to chase somebody off my lawn, but it does sound plausible. Every time I work with an application that insists on managing things on its own, I can't help but ask "but where _are_ the files??". I guess there is this notion that files are what's "real" in an otherwise ephemeral system. They are what you run, they are what you store your pictures in, they are what you recover from a busted harddrive.

Normal users seem to be very comfortable with the idea of unspecified magic though.

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

#112

Post by vacri »

scott_s wrote: post #109
vacri wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's an error to simply transfer "it works for music" to "it works for everything". That it works for music is largely because sharing media files is verboten in our Brave New World - sharing is not a problem that needs to be solved there. But sharing non-media files between users is not an exceptional case, not even remotely - it's common as muck in business.

The idea that the 'normal' user is only a home-based casual web-browser/photo-taker/music listener is misleading from the outset.

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

#113

Post by dmbaggett »

smacktoward wrote: post #42
hemancuso wrote: post #30

The real question regarding the Mac App Store, IMHO, is whether or not it forbids a broad enough class of still-popular applications that it fails to achieve the goal of becoming the default distribution method for applications on the Mac and instead is relegated to games and simple utilities that fit nicely inside this model. Very very popular apps like: Chrome Photoshop/Adobe CS Fusion/Parallels Microsoft Office Te…

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…

Not sure why you're getting down-voted. For regulators, this will be the key question: is Apple disadvantaging third parties who produce software that competes with their own?

As someone who has lived through a protracted antitrust review (Google acquiring ITA Software, a company I co-founded), I can tell you that there are dozens of hard-working people at the DOJ and FTC ready to make their careers on taking Apple down should Apple give them the tools to do so. A "some animals are more equal than others" app store policy -- whether intended or unintended -- is definitely fodder for a juicy DOJ/FTC lawsuit.

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

#114

Post by batista »

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.…

Anyways ... the tool interacts with plugins written in a Logic Pro independent standard, VST.

Actually, Logic Pro does not interact with VST plugins at all. It interacts with AU (Audio Unit) plugins. Plugins like Native Instrument's etc that come as VST plugins also come in AU versions.

Is Apple going to cripple Logic Studio?

No, Apple is not going to cripple Logic Studio. They even said so, a few months ago.

Or will they also have to take their "pro" software out of the appstore?

They can also do whatever they want with THEIR apps in the appstore, like have them there despite not implementing sanboxing, or giving them arbitrary sanboxing rights (after all, Apple TRUSTS their own apps not to be malware).

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

#115

Post by batista »

smacktoward wrote: post #42
hemancuso wrote: post #30

The real question regarding the Mac App Store, IMHO, is whether or not it forbids a broad enough class of still-popular applications that it fails to achieve the goal of becoming the default distribution method for applications on the Mac and instead is relegated to games and simple utilities that fit nicely inside this model. Very very popular apps like: Chrome Photoshop/Adobe CS Fusion/Parallels Microsoft Office Te…

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…

Photoshop/Adobe CS "Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut?

What DID they do to Final Cut? They spend tons of money and engineering time to rewrite the app from scratch with a modern codebase and added new innovative features. The got it to 64bit, they added the magnetic timeline (HUGE timesaver), the improved tons of workflow stuff, they made it take advantage of multiple cores, and they made it work with files in whatever format they are in to begin with.

In the process, as with any version 1.0 app, FPCX lost a few of the features that the old, bloated, version of FCP had. Some because you just cannot just scratch from scratch and replicate absolutely everything at once, and others because they don't make much sense moving forward. Some of those features, like multicam editing, they delivered in subsequent minor versions (of which there have been 3 already).

That is much more than what Adobe does, which is incrementally adding a few features, without ever rethinking their apps, and keeps adding bloat upon bloat (Flash based custom panels, anyone?) to the same 10 or 20 year old codebase. Apple betted on the future, Adobe plays it safe.

So, I beg to differ in respect to FCP X.

Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?"

And why should they? A quad core iMac is just as capable for the needs of 90% of creatives, and in fact, if you looked at any design studio in the past 2-3 years you were more likely to find one of those than a Mac Pro or a G5.

They also know that they sell a very small amount of those Pro machines, and it's not like Intel is making new chips for them all the time.

Besides, Thunderbird, the Apple/Intel interconnect perfectly suited for professionals and creatives that no other PC vendor took the time and effort to create, solves most of the connectivity issues that an iMac (or even a MacBook Pro laptop) had related to a Mac Pro.

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

#116

Post by batista »

smacktoward wrote: post #31
Ryanmf wrote: post #16

Apple needs to do better than this. For the duration of the company's existence, one of their biggest customer segments has been the creative industry. I can't think of a single pro audio/video/graphic/etc app that doesn't make extensive use of plug-ins, another Mac App Store disqualifier. Do the developers of these apps necessarily have a "right" to iCloud APIs, delta updates, and other benefits of playing in Apple'…

> For the duration of the company's existence, one of their biggest customer segments has been the creative industry I would have thought the Final Cut Pro X debacle ( http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/professional-video... ) would have served adequate notice to those folks that Apple doesn't consider them an important market segment anymore...

It's the opposite. Taking the time AND money to rewrite the old Final Cut Pro codebase from scratch is an indication that Apple is pretty much dedicated to their Pro apps.

Unlike, say, Adobe, that merely piles incremental bloat upon incremental bloat, and calls it a "new version of the suite".

The complains are from people that:

1) see a black interface as some kind of iMovie-fication (iMovie is black, so they have dumded down FCP).

2) Think professional software means convoluted GUI (they made things simpler, so they have dumbed it down)

3) Expect a rewrite of a 10+ year old codebase to have feature parity with the old version from day one.

4) Expect a rewrite of a 10+ year old codebase, with the intention to support modern movie making practices, to also cater for obsolete practices that the old version covered (like tape editing).

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

#117

Post by batista »

Ryanmf wrote: post #102
ramses wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unfortunately, how?

The whole point of sandboxing is to reduce the damage a badly written or mal-intended application can do to a system.

Surely Apple TRUSTS their own apps.

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

#118

Post by batista »

Ryanmf wrote: post #69
LaGrange wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the sandbox seems like a requirement for safely distributing apps that allow plug-ins.

Are you suggesting that every pro media application released before March 1, 2012 was not safely distributed? I guess I should step back a bit and make my argument more clear. I'm not opposed to the concept of sandboxing, I recognize the benefits of these policies as Apple's user base grows and malware becomes a greater concern. My contention is that the imposition this places on users and developers alike will most…

Are you suggesting that every pro media application released before March 1, 2012 was not safely distributed?

Yes. Is that hard to grasp? Sanboxing is safer than the old distribution practice. You won't find any security expert to disagree with this.

Thus, every pro media application distributed without sandboxing was LESS safely distributed than a sandboxed one.

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

#119

Post by chc »

LaGrange wrote: post #63
Ryanmf wrote: post #16

Apple needs to do better than this. For the duration of the company's existence, one of their biggest customer segments has been the creative industry. I can't think of a single pro audio/video/graphic/etc app that doesn't make extensive use of plug-ins, another Mac App Store disqualifier. Do the developers of these apps necessarily have a "right" to iCloud APIs, delta updates, and other benefits of playing in Apple'…

Actually, the sandbox seems like a requirement for safely distributing apps that allow plug-ins.

Can you explain how this works? My understanding is that plugins — defined for clarity's sake as "loadable code that interacts with the original application but was not included in it" — are not allowed in the sandbox. Has this been fixed? Or did you mean something else?

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

#120

Post by batista »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #101
archgrove wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 l…

Mission Control versus the old Expose?

Yeah, isn't it much better?

App persisting (both in memory and) state.

Yay, a modern operating system practice finally in OS X. The OS should take advantage of what it can do, to balance apps loading faster and using less resources. For all I care, the ideal would be all apps to be always INSTANT ON.

Not showing hidden files in Finder.

Hidden files shouldn't be an end user's concern.

More iCloud integration at seemingly every turn in Mountain Lion.

Yeah, finally. We don't live with ONE computer anymore, we have several, plus several devices. We want them synced. We want them to backup online. We want a modern Cloud service from Apple.

Post reply on HN