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| The Mac App Store's future of irrelevance |
| By Thom Holwerda on 2012-07-26 22:35:51 |
| In agreement with Marco Arment? I shall quickly venture outside and inform myself of the possibility of catching a fleeting glimpse of an avian sus scrofa domesticus. "The Mac App Store is in significant danger of becoming an irrelevant, low-traffic flea market where buyers rarely venture for serious purchases. And I bet that's not what Apple had in mind at all." There's an issue with the Mac App Store: Apple runs the danger of chasing most serious applications away from the store. While I would personally consider this to be a big win for computing, I'm sure Apple doesn't exactly see it that way. |
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| Comment by Drumhellar |
| By Drumhellar on 2012-07-27 00:58:55 |
|
Flea-Market is an apt description. #1 source of Bat Hero and Spiderguy action figure! |
 - Score: 3 |
| RE: Comment by Drumhellar |
| By quackalist on 2012-07-27 01:45:51 |
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I'm appalled by the lack of lock-down on the Mac compared to the iPhone/iPod which is facilitating the Mac App Store's future irrelevance, think of the shareholders. Were does this leave the relevance of Metro? |
| - Score: 1 |
| Agree |
| By darknexus on 2012-07-27 02:36:16 |
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The Mac app store *is* going to become irrelevant, for any number of reasons as I see it: 1. OS X is not iOS, no matter how much closer Apple brings them in functionality. The sort of "sandbox" that Apple wishes to mandate on apps for the Mac is not acceptable to most serious users. They may be fine with it on a mobile device, where such things have been par for the course since day one in the case of iOS, but the Mac has a serious ecosystem of entrenched apps that need to be able to do things outside of Apple's requirements. If you look in the Mac app store, you won't even see commonplace apps like Skype for this reason. Mac apps need to access the filesystem, USB devices, etc. 2. Mac developers aren't going to pay Apple's $99 fee. This is not iOS, where there are no other sources of apps. We're accustomed to searching and downloading from web sites the serious productivity applications we need, and no developer fee is required to put your app up in a dmg on your own page, thank you very much. I've always thought that requiring developers to pay for the privilege of making your platform better was complete bullshit anyway. 3. Tying some apps to one Apple ID is no good depending on the various licensing options an app may offer, eg. family packs where you can purchase five licenses at a discount. You don't necessarily want apps to be tied to your Apple ID in this case, e.g. if you have other family members you wish to use a valid family license but do not wish to give them access to your account. Bottom line: OS X is not iOS and will never be. I don't think the app store for OS X is necessarily doomed to failure under all circumstances, but as Apple has made it at this moment, it will not be taken seriously by anyone other than Apple. |
| - Score: 9 |
| It's better this way |
| By tuaris on 2012-07-27 04:37:54 |
| If the App store were to succeeded, we'd have a larger problem. |
| - Score: 12 |
| Comment by Radio |
| By Radio on 2012-07-27 06:23:20 |
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> This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple. Bastard. Edited 2012-07-27 06:23 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE[2]: Comment by Drumhellar |
| By Radio on 2012-07-27 06:24:32 |
| OSX is build from the ground up for piracy, because of a corrosive mentality of openness bleuarghgeuargh *mouthfrothing* |
| - Score: 10 |
| Comment by Radio |
| By Radio on 2012-07-27 06:33:50 |
|
Follow-up: http://www.marco.org/2012/07/26/... > I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on my Mac App Store post this morning, and I’d like to clarify some points and respond. I did not say or intend to suggest any of these: *I will not buy anything from the Mac App Store again. *Most Mac users will stop shopping in the Mac App Store. *Most developers will stop putting apps in the Mac App Store. Man, it took him less than 24 hours to get caught by the brigade for deviating from the party line. > The most common response I received, by far, was that this would only impact geeks like us. Nearly every response was along the lines of “I agree with you, but my [computer-newbie relative] won’t care,” or “The App Store is for average people, not geeks like us.” I, for one, welcome our new idiot overlords. Welcome to Idiocracy. Edited 2012-07-27 06:34 UTC |
| - Score: 7 |
| Missed opportunity |
| By iswrong on 2012-07-27 06:38:34 |
|
I could have liked the App Store very much: finally a central software repository, rather than a situation where every application has its own updater and installation method. More trust, less hunting around. I can understand why Apple wants to sandbox applications, it reduces the attack vector when an application is exploited, or when a malicious application ends up in the App Store. Unfortunately, many of the applications that I use frequently do not fit in the current sandboxing model: VMWare since it installs drivers and requires direct hardware access, my GPS software (requires hardware access), Dropbox, etc. The problem is that Apple wants to nanny us too much. They should have added many more entitlements, and ask the user if they approve in user-friendly terms. Then I could decide myself what an application is allowed to do on my system. Installing device drivers, VMWare? Sure! SuperDuperTwitterClient? Hell no! Some will say that this is primarily a problem for power users. I beg to disagree, many of the applications that my non-techie friends use, will never be available in the app store. Besides that, we are talking about Macs, general purpose computers that people use for programming, design, etc. Not tablets! We still get some protection via the 'only run signed apps' gatekeeper option. But it's all a missed opportunity. The Mac App Store could be a central repository of software, now it's primarily a repository of Apple software, some games, some utilities, and lots of junk. Edited 2012-07-27 06:39 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| Something similar recently⦠|
| By Beta on 2012-07-27 09:57:35 |
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MacOS is designed for Piracy! Once enough developers leave the App Store and ‘side‐load’ applications, Apple will have no recourse but to block that method of getting apps, or they could stop blocking APIs. I know which they’ll choose. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Comment by marcp |
| By marcp on 2012-07-27 11:14:43 |
|
Oh, well. They want money. More money. Even more money. That's their main and primary goal. And how can you get lots of money? by charging gazillion of people small fees and payments. They know what they're doing. People who buy specially crafted piece of software once on the few years are not a benefit to Apple. It's just not enough. They need to be able to convince users to buy new version every X months, so they get even more money. Now, there's nothing wrong in earning money. However, this type of practice, which we already know from the commercial software market in general ["we have a new version with 2 new feature. You need to upgrade, or else"]. If anybody thinks users are most important for Apple then he's obviously wrong. Money's on the first place. |
| - Score: 4 |
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