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Leaving the Mac App Store

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Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#301

Post by ethbro »

janfoeh wrote: post #284
ethbro wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot. Because when you have a captured userbase, there's no incentive to improve / innovate?

Even if you believe that Apple as a whole doesn't have the drive to make stuff as good as they can (fair, although I believe otherwise), and even if you believe they have a captured audience (how?) — do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Even accepting everything else, that seems like a huge incentive to me not to get complacent.

Not sure where you're getting 15% from: the vast majority of articles I read have Apple's app stores generating far more revenue than the competition's.

So yes, I believe Apple is probably perfectly happy (in an upper-echelon corporate strategy sense) sitting on their cash cow as opposed to fighting it out for less profitable market share.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#303

Post by Bjartr »

janfoeh wrote: post #245
dangero wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it." Native app is not really a black and white concept when you're talking about an app that mainly just interprets and displays live data it receives. If it's not html, then it's going to be xml/json/some other markup with a custom presentation layer on top. Why would that be bet…

You're probably right. I would still agree with the parent in that they feel like a badly done webview wrapper, because the symptoms are so similar. iTunes Store, App Store, MAS, Apple Music — there is definitely a pattern there, at least on the desktop. I find them all similarly clunky, slow, ugly and unpleasant to use. Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious…

>creating a decent store front

Because when looking at the metrics they care about (see: $) they see a runaway success, and dismiss the idea that it isn't already "decent".

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#304

Post by jeffmk »

relaxatorium wrote: post #81

The thing that's craziest about the MAS to me is how bad the actual application is. It's super slow, constantly hangs, and is just such a bad experience from the consumer side that it undermines the (very real) benefits of having a centralized store of applications you've purchased and installed. It'd be one thing (and a fairly standard Apple move) if the customer experience was good and they didn't care about trampl…

Indeed, I actually have a ridiculous and frustrating ongoing problem, apparently insoluble, where no matter how many times I update an app that appears under "Updates Available", it will reappear after seemingly successfully updating.

So I've installed the identical copies of XCode, iMovie, The Unarchiver, etc., etc., over and over. Then entries with identical versions and release dates very shortly after reappear in the list.

This, on top of countless other frustrations (such as transferring my MBP from my home "battlestation" to offsite causing full system crashes about 1/3 of the time, Time Machine not working properly with my NAS setup, WiFi overheating/malfunctioning FUBAR right after upgrading to Yostemite, various other minor random things breaking and annoyances, and so on, including the generally arrogant attitude Apple takes of its customers and developers), I've had enough. Next computer I'm running back into the arms of Linux, because the main argument against it is that Linux eats up a lot of time configuring, but I'm already wasting way too much time dealing with my OS' issues, one that ostensibly "just works", so I might as well get the benefit of having a working, productive development system at the end of it.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#305

Post by hapless »

pcwalton wrote: post #148
simonh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure who you're quoting with those quote marks. It's not Apple though, because I don't believe they ever said any such thing. The reason Apple has always given is security. This is the reason they gave for not allowing third party access to the JIT version of the javascript engine. Their critics at the time claimed this was really because they didn't want other browsers competing with Safari, and they'd never…

> The reason Apple has always given is security. This is the reason they gave for not allowing third party access to the JIT version of the javascript engine. This doesn't make sense. You could disable the JIT, compile WebKit to native code, and ship it on iOS without the app requiring any more technical permissions. Apple just doesn't want you to do that for business reasons. If you want to maintain that it's a secu…

You're free to do exactly that. Nothing stops you from publishing a web browser that renders static HTML. But the only way to include a JS interpreter is to use the Apple-provided WebKit.

Language interpreters are forbidden to download any code from the internet, so you cannot use JS found on a web page in your own interpreter.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#306

Post by duaneb »

xenadu02 wrote: post #204

The worst part about this is all the problems are easily solved if Apple simply put the resources into it. * The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it. * Sandboxing is great, but there will always be things that fall outside the sandbox. Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that s…

> Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that says "My app needs to opt-out of these parts of sandboxing". Put those apps through a much more strenuous review process.

I disagree with this. I like the sandbox constraint; i don't mind opting out of the app store if my needs necessitate dropping the sandbox. I also think the interface of the app store is the least of its concerns.

Everything else you said is on fleek.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#307

Post by hakcermani »

The certificate expiration issue apart I would move to a non appstore version at least for my 1Password. I started using 1Password to store all my passwords including iTunes password and the recovery email. One fine day, I try to launch 1P and i get an error box saying I need to authorize the app on the computer using my iTunes ! Rats now this is a deadlock ! Possible solutions are use the same password for 1Password vault and iTunes or buy iPassword from agilebits directly. I will go the latter route in future.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#308

Post by simcop2387 »

the_af wrote: post #154
mrec wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use and generally like Steam, but I'd never call its discovery "good". Users are drowning in the number of titles, the recommendation engine is pretty poor, and there's no support for filtering . I'll never buy an RTS or a multiplayer-only game, stop showing them to me. I'll never buy an early-access game or a game with 3rd-party DRM, stop showing them to me. I could cull 90% of the stuff in my discovery queues, au…

Same here. I like and use Steam, but its UI for casually browsing games (aka "casual shopping") isn't very good. For example, when you are browsing a list of games, if you click on one to see additional details and then try going back, you lose your place in the list. This is infuriating for long lists. It kills the browse & shop experience. The web interface for Steam is better than the app's. Then again, this is wh…

Yea that's the exact reason that I end up using the web interface for browsing games. The fact I can browse and open up 30 tabs of games and then look at them one by one without losing my place anywhere is so much nicer.

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#309

Post by janfoeh »

ethbro wrote: post #301
janfoeh wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you believe that Apple as a whole doesn't have the drive to make stuff as good as they can (fair, although I believe otherwise), and even if you believe they have a captured audience (how?) — do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Even accepting everything else, that seems like a huge incentive to me not to get complacent.

Not sure where you're getting 15% from: the vast majority of articles I read have Apple's app stores generating far more revenue than the competition's. So yes, I believe Apple is probably perfectly happy (in an upper-echelon corporate strategy sense) sitting on their cash cow as opposed to fighting it out for less profitable market share.

The number is from Gartner for Q3 this year - for whatever they are worth :)

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617

Re: Leaving the Mac App Store

#310

Post by chillacy »

stevetrewick wrote: post #132
aerialcombat wrote: post #95

They should seriously do something about the review times. I'm sure they can come up with a plenty of good solutions if they wanted to. I suggest maybe giving developers a bank of a set number of expedited review passes per year or so, so they can use it when they really need it. Damn it.

It actually works like this in theory. You can get a couple of expedited reviews for critical or urgent fixes [0], but Apples definition of 'critical' and 'urgent' don't typically include having just shipped a crash bug that will effect your entire user base unless you are Rovio are a similarly large actor. [0] https://developer.apple.com/support/app-review/

Yea, I'm a small dev and I did that last time a critical feature of my app was broken, and the review still ended up taking a a week. Meanwhile people were sending me support emails and I know even more were silently frustrated. It's not fun to be powerless over your own destiny like this.
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