
The Mac App Store’s future of irrelevance - rrreese
http://www.marco.org/2012/07/26/mac-app-store-future
======
jawngee
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 path to a major version number bump is
ridiculous.

Also, the lack of direct contact with customers is obnoxious at best,
crippling at worst. But the sandboxing entitlements kill the best bits of
functionality, so I have not much choice but to say "fuck it" and move on.

I doubt Apple will miss me, though I'm the only other worthwhile editor on
there other than iMovie and Final Cut in terms of actual editing
functionality. The video category is a giant pile of shit save a few select
pieces, mine included.

~~~
Terretta
Have you tried purchasing the "latest" version of World of Warcraft?

You can't. There is no standalone "latest version". You have to purchase the
original, and each version since, and finally the current version.

Correlate those game content / game mechanics updates with In-App Purchases,
and it's clear how someone could offer "major upgrades" if they stop thinking
in terms of version numbers and start thinking in terms of actual upgrade
features. (See "Navigon" for an app that has done this.)

And if the entire app architecture changes, make a new app.

~~~
illumin8
Developers could very well re-architect their application so that when you
download the update to v2, you have to unlock the new features with an in-app
purchase, but to be honest, it's a lot of extra work for the developer, and
there is no way to make it less painful for the users, who will feel like they
are getting nickel and dimed by the developer.

Also, for those users that are brand new on the v2 version, it's a very bad
experience when they have to immediately buy an in-app purchase just to unlock
functionality that should be included. If you drop the price of the v2 version
to accomodate this, then your original v1 userbase will complain that they
paid twice as much.

Here's an example:

v1.0 of App X sells for $9.99 on the app store. Users buy it and are happy.

v2.0 of App X comes out and to unlock the new features, you must pay $4.99 in-
app purchase. Developer drops the price of the app to $4.99 so that new users
don't have to pay $14.99 to get all the features.

New users now complain that they have to immediately make an in-app purchase
just to unlock the software - they don't notice that it's half price now
because they never bought it previously.

Existing users complain that they paid $9.99 and are now being nickel and
dimed for updates, when the price is cut in half now.

You can't win. Unfortunately, Apple has create a model that makes a lot of
profit for them, and makes it relatively painless for the end user, but it's a
model where the developers suffer and can't really support the large
applications that receive many new features every year.

~~~
pgeorgi
The idea to have new features exist as unlockable extras actually is an
advantage to users: if they don't need it, they still get updates for the
feature set they bought.

So all that's missing is a way to give customers of "date X or later"
unlockable features as part of the baseline sale.

~~~
lukifer
Except the developer takes a hit there, too. Given that not everyone needs
every feature, users end up subsidizing each other's desired improvements as
part of a major upgrade. On top of that, not all features have clear lines
that can be drawn around them, technically or marketing-wise.

It's a great model for games and certain specific types of apps (Paper is very
clever). But to push all apps onto this model is highly unrealistic.

~~~
spaghetti
I'm not sure if the developer necessarily takes a hit. Say I have $15 to spend
on a video editing app. $10 for the initial app and $5 for the only premium
feature I want results in me giving $15 to the developer (less Apple's cut
etc). However if the developer adds 5 new features to the app and I have to
choose between buying features that I mostly don't want and can't afford or
not spending the money I'll most likey give $0 to the developer.

Similar situation with luxury features on cars: it makes business sense to
sell them individually.

~~~
lukifer
If you wanted/needed the feature badly enough (ie, it was a mission-critical
tool), you might pay much more for an update that included your desired
feature in addition to stuff you don't need (or even stuff you might not yet
know that you want). Also, the extra "wasted" revenue helps pay the developer
for the thankless but necessary task of under-the-hood improvements, whose
costs have to absorbed elsewhere.

I'm not saying the model can never work, but it's not a good fit for every
product. The developer should be able to create the relationship with their
customers that they think fits best; sometimes that will be IAP, sometimes
subscriptions, sometimes upgrades. There will never be "one business model to
rule them all", or else we'd see all marketplaces naturally converge in that
direction.

------
Bobby_Tables
The iOS App Store does the same thing with changing the rules in the middle of
the game, but it is not subject to potential irrelevance because it is the
only place to get software for iOS devices. So the obvious solution for Apple
is to make the Mac App Store the only place to get software for MacOS.

I'm actually a little surprised this didn't happen in 10.8.

~~~
Aloisius
That will be the day I go back to Linux.

~~~
spudlyo
I thought the same thing as I was reading John Siracusa's review of Mountain
Lion. My stomach sunk when I saw the default 'gatekeeper' options.

    
    
        [ ] Mac App Store
        [x] Mac App store and identified developers
        [ ] Anywhere
    

Seems likely at some point down the road the third option will no longer
exist. My next project is getting Linux to run on an old MBP. I still love
their hardware, but OSX is getting fuckin' uppity. I realize that this is just
an attribute on a binary that you can set and unset, but still, the direction
this is going seems clear to me. The further iOSification of OSX is driving me
back to Linux on the desktop.

~~~
ohhmaagawd
what's wrong with "identified developers" only? You don't want to pay the $100
a year to be in the mac dev program?

~~~
spudlyo
What's wrong with Apple trying to control which binaries it will and won't let
you run on its OS? Doesn't Apple always have your best interests at heart?

------
grayprog
As a Mac developer who's also affected by the mandatory sandboxing
requirement, I fully agree. One of our applications, Trickster, doesn't work
sandboxed (being a system utility) as is and we're in this situation where we
have customers on the Mac App Store who can't receive updates anymore.
Needless to say, neither us nor our customers (who'll mostly blame us) are
happy about this.

~~~
phil
Consider inspecting the MAS receipt and issuing them a license in your own
scheme if you are leaving. At least then you get to keep your customers.

------
MarkMc
The accounting software I develop [1] is a year out of date on the Mac App
Store because of the restrictions that Apple have introduced.

And yet I disagree with Marco: This is a one-time problem as Apple tighten
requirements for publishing on the Mac App Store. In a few years users will
have forgotten this problem (if they ever noticed in the first place) and the
benefits of the Mac App Store will make it the dominant distribution platform.
Those benefits are: easy to make a purchase, easy to see reviews for a
product, easy to find a product, easy to install on multiple machines.

Eventually I'll have to change the software to meet Apple's stricter
requirements so it can be published on the Mac App Store again.

[1] <http://www.solaraccounts.co.uk>

------
djbender
Really think he's missing the part where laypeople will see the Mac App Store
as their main portal for software. Sure us geeks will always know what the
best option is, but what about from a common majority consumer's perspective?

~~~
eykanal
They'll find out about software the same way that the "majority consumer" used
to; reading magazines like Macworld, seeing advertisements in various places,
and talking to friends. If anything, the App Store is the one trying to break
into the old model of buying software (find something, pay for it, buy it).

In fact, the two conveniences offered by the App Store (visible to users) is
ease of finding stuff and security. Security isn't much of an issue with the
old model because, historically, there hasn't been many security concerns. If
the "finding stuff" benefit goes away too, then the App Store will be
completely irrelevant.

~~~
slantyyz
>> They'll find out about software the same way that the "majority consumer"
used to; reading magazines like Macworld, seeing advertisements in various
places, and talking to friends.

I don't know many "consumerish" Mac users who read Mac magazines, Daring
Fireball, etc. Hell, I know a lot of more sophisticated Mac users who don't
read any Mac related content except when they have problems. Many of the
consumer Mac users I know don't pay attention to ads for Mac software either.

On your third point (word of mouth), that one has a lot of validity, assuming
that a consumer mac user has a mac nerd or two in his/her circle of friends.

If I look at what most of my consumer Mac friends and acquaintances use, most
of their time is spent in Safari, iTunes, iLife, iWork and maybe something
like Parallels or VMWare to run "work stuff". A few might install some apps
here and there, but few would even know that there was anything outside the
App Store that was worthwhile.

------
tomflack
I've nightmares about endless apps having their own updaters. Adobe/Microsoft
updaters really are the culprits here. Its this that makes me wish the app
store would drop these product-killing restrictions. I don't trust every app
developer to do updaters.

~~~
sujal
Many (most?) indie mac apps use Sparkle (<http://sparkle.andymatuschak.org>)
to autoupdate. It's generally easy to use, so most people don't need to go the
microsoft/adobe route.

~~~
pooriaazimi
Sparkle is amazing. For years and years, I thought it was actually part of the
OS, as almost every app I had used it. That's how ubiquitous it is on the Mac!

Edit: Very interesting! The guy behind Sparkle (Andy Matuschak) is actually an
Apple employee, working on UIKit! <http://andymatuschak.org/>

> _By day, I work on UIKit to help other people make things._

------
zemo
this whole article goes over my head, because it assumes the reader is already
familiar with the sandboxing issue. I'm not a desktop OS X developer; I'm not
familiar with the topic. I searched around and the only articles I could find
are blog posts about how the sky is falling, with no sources from Apple that
plainly state the app sandboxing requirements.

If you're going to write an article about how some upcoming thing is a
doomsday event, please explain the event clearly and link to the proper
sources, especially if your article is a criticism of a technical
specification. That one or a few applications are backing out of the app store
is not, in itself, evidence that they are justified in doing so.

This article has taught me nothing, but it has made me more afraid.

~~~
spaghetti
I'd like to understand the implications of sandboxing too. It must have some
large negative impact on Instapaper for Marco to care this much. What is it?

~~~
fredsted
Here's a document that goes in-depth about app sandboxing:

[http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Securi...](http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Security/Conceptual/AppSandboxDesignGuide/AppSandboxInDepth/AppSandboxInDepth.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011183-CH3-SW4)

------
tadhgk
Future of irrelevance to who exactly? The 1-in-10000 users who like to play
with root level access and scripts and stuff perhaps, but do the other 9999
even notice the change? I'm thinking not.

Granted it's a big change from earlier times, the strategy of sandboxing works
really well for security and general OS integrity (as iOS has proved) in a
world that has no patience for fragmented and exploitative software. Perhaps
we lose a little something in the process, but it's in the service of a better
overall integrated service and experience.

Oh and by the way: Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro.

~~~
brudgers
_"Microsoft is going the same way too with Metro."_

Not exactly. Metro and its app store are only "half" of Windows 8. The other
half isn't sandboxed in the walled garden style. To put it another way,
Microsoft isn't building the Windows App Store on the back of existing
software, but from the ground up using only sandboxed apps.

Microsoft isn't likely to create the sort of moving target for developers that
Apple has recently because doing so would not be consistent with the B2B model
that underpins their corporate culture.

~~~
monkeyfacebag
FYI, this is not true for Windows RT (the ARM version). That version will only
support applications purchased through MS's store. Given that MS is clearly
pushing for Metro to be the future of Windows, I think this is somewhat
concerning.

~~~
brudgers
On the other hand, Windows on ARM is an extension of the Windows franchise in
the same way that WP7 with it's app store is. In a sense it is like talking
about the iPad when discussion the Mac App store...or would be if iOS
applications ran on the Mac.

Metro is a future of Windows, just as Server Console mode is (though
admittedly on a potentially different scale).

------
crag
Again, Apple doesn't really care what developers feel. What matters are the
masses. Which don't care about these issues. The App Store is easy to use,
accessible and allows them to download their apps on multiple Macs. It's a win
win from their point of view.

Apple's thinking is simple: You (us developer) don't like it, PayPal is that
way". Just that simple. And since The App Store is where most non-developer
mac users get their apps from.. we have a simple choice.

Do I like it, hell no. Will I play by Apple's rules, yes.

~~~
dasil003
Sure developers will play ball as long as Apple is where the money is. There's
no doubt that iOS's amazing run of exponential growth and the creation of a
distribution platform as frictionless as the App Store have been irresistible
to developers.

However I think it's also fair to say that early adopters and developers were
key to Apple's recent success. For instance, OS X lured me back to Macs from
Windows in 2000 largely on the promise of unix under the hood. Many early
iPhone users were jail breakers either to develop apps or to use them.
Developers were on the forefront of Apple success, and I think it's impossible
to quantify the impact that we had, and thus extremely easy to underestimate
it.

It's true that Apple is very mass market and could not achieve it's design
excellence by listening to geek feature requests, but I think they'd better
tread lightly on the larger issues. If they turn OS X into a toy OS that
doesn't allow serious development and pushing the technological envelope, and
all future innovation comes exclusively in the form of Apple new APIs, then I
think that will be a harbinger of Apple decline as the geeks and early
adopters look for the next frontier. Apple without the hacker community is not
nearly as strong as it is today.

------
crazygringo
All these problems could be solved if there were a way for companies to
transfer your existing non-App-store licenses to the App Store, allow for paid
upgrades on the App Store, and allow App Store licenses to be associated with
real serial numbers (or something else) that could be used to "take" your
license with you, in the event the App Store suddenly becomes too restrictive.

Basically make it seamless, monetarily and "upgradily", to go to/from the app
store.

Of course, Apple will never let this happen.

~~~
adambyrtek
Who would pay the Apple tax in case of license transfers? I can't imagine
Apple simply letting go of their cut.

~~~
crazygringo
Well I imagine you'd only ever need to move _to_ the App Store because of an
upgrade which required it (because certain features are only available to App
Store-distributed applications). So Apple would get their cut of the upgrade
fee, and future upgrade fees as well. Obviously it's not as much as the full
app immediately, but ideally over time it would add up for them with paid
upgrades.

------
tnorthcutt
I think I agree with everything Marco says in this article except for

 _Apple can never require an App-Store-only future_

I think they can, and will, regardless of their sandboxing or other policies.

------
m_st
As a customer I totally agree. I wouldn't care about simple 5$ tools being
removed. But if more expensive tools like PDFPen Pro (which I bought) get
removed then I will certainly be very upset. And just because this danger is
present I'm very careful and not buying any expensive software anymore from
the Mac App Store whenever given the choice (except Apple software of course).
That's a pity for both developers and customers.

~~~
omfg
One would assume you could email the developer and get setup with a non App
Store version / license in that scenario.

------
fecklessyouth
Somewhat related anecdote in light of 10.8: I never properly upgraded from OS
10.5. I pirated 10.6 and skipped 10.7, partially because I'm a cheap college
student and partially because the changes between versions never seemed that
dramatic to me.

I had to re-install my OS and thus downgraded from 10.6 to 10.5. All of a
sudden, none of my iLife apps are working, plus a host of others, and I can't
download Apple ones designed for 10.5. I lose momentum scrolling, and realize
that, hey, an upgrade once every three years is a good idea. I wait for 10.8
to come out, so I can buy it like a good, normal consumer, and soon discover I
need 10.6 to install it.

So I'm buying two upgrades? Alright...wait, I can't buy 10.6 anymore. 10.8 is
the only OS available, and I don't have 10.6 on a disc. So it looks like I'm
pirating again.

------
Garwor
The neckbeards will buy from the developer. The ordinary customers Apple has
been relentlessly targeting for a decade will buy from the Mac App Store.
Which group is bigger?

~~~
jopt
It's not about where we buy our apps, it's about where we sell them.

If the App Store doesn't work for developers, it won't work for users. The
users can't buy stuff that isn't there just because they outnumber the
developers.

~~~
Garwor
Other developers will happily come along, work within Apple's guidelines, and
sell to the giant slice of the pie chart. It's obviously a radically different
model of software development, and one that's probably far less appealing to
current developers, but that's what happens when industries change. The
incumbents never like it.

The same thing's coming to Windows, too, thanks to the Windows Store. The
whole industry's headed toward appliance computing. Maybe you can sell
software to Linux users.

~~~
jopt
That makes it sound like sandboxing is a matter of personal taste, and that if
I as a developer consider my self "too good to sandbox" someone else will eat
my lunch.

I fully agree with your line of reasoning in many other debates about the App
Store, and I'm not against appliance computing. Take the 30% cut, for
instance. If Smile had discontinued TextExpander's App Store presence because
they didn't like the 30-70 split, I would be the first to point out that this
leaves money on the table for someone who runs a lower-margin business, and
that everything is in order as per the free market.

Sandboxing is different in that many features can't be done; not because of
price point or some rms-esque FOSS principle, but because policy is holding
the technology back. Developers are not given a choice.

It's not about "a different model" where incumbents refuse to compete and lose
their foothold because of stubbornness. It's about limiting what any developer
can do; they're not given a choice.

We will have perfect competition in the realm of distraction-free writing
environments, but we will have no third-party backup tools. Nobody can happily
come along and write one, because nobody is allowed, incumbent or otherwise.

TL;DR: No, I'm not speaking out of fear of competition. Sandboxing doesn't
just hurt incumbents. It limits products, not development models.

~~~
Garwor
I don't disagree with you at all; I just think that in the appliance-computing
future where your computer is basically a toaster, the vast majority of users
(ie, potential software customers) won't care about the "missing" apps at all.
It's not a coincidence that most of the apps running up against sandboxing are
tools aimed at power users -- third-party email clients, application
launchers, BBEdit, backup tools, etc. These are specialized apps for users on
the thin end of the bell curve. I don't think Apple cares much if they lose
all the people who care about third-party text editors if they're able to
start selling computers to millions of other ordinary people who have
heretofore been terrified of installing software on their computers.

I'm not happy about it either; I guess I just understand what Apple's trying
to do, and why Microsoft seems so eager to follow suit by setting up its own
store. The "you have to be a computer guy to use computers" era is almost
over.

------
cletus
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 correctly points out that certain system utilities cannot be sold this
way. He is correct but consider the alternative: to not require sandboxing
means no one will bother implementing it. Of course Apple could make effort to
promote apps that do (or hide apps that don't) but this puts a considerable
education burden on the consumer. I'm with Apple on this one: it's simpler and
better this way.

Now paid upgrades I have mixed feelings about.

On the one hand paid upgrades can produce the wrong incentive on the
developer: I've seen good apps go from 18 month major version upgrades, to 12
months to 6 months with no reduction in upgrade price. I've also seen old
versions abandoned for pretty lame reasons.

IMHO having all users on the same version is better for the developer and the
consumer. It makes support easier. It creates a consistent experience.

But on the other hand I do feel like there is a place for paid upgrades.

Are in-app purchases a possibility here? I honestly don't know what's possible
with the Mac App Store here.

I think developers do get too concerned with turning a user into a perpetual
revenue stream however. This is really an old business model that is somewhat
outdated.

Steam provided the first evidence of this that I can recall. Some years ago
they started selling older games for $5 and under. In some cases IIRC the
revenue for discounted sales exceeded release date sales at the premium price.
More: [1]

The iOS App Store produced and continues to produce further evidence that
lower prices and a higher volume can often be a better result than selling the
"old" way (higher price, fewer units, which typically also involves paid
upgrades).

Often content producers (and I include developers who sell software in this)
don't always know what's best for them. This all sounds remarkably like
Netflix in many ways. Netflix has provided a means of monetizing old and less
popular content yet Hollywood seems to view them as the enemy.

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?

EDIT: sandboxing goes beyond "malware". I increasingly don't want apps making
arbitrary changes to my system. Some may be what I want but most won't. This
includes things like forgetting to untick the checkbox that installs some
browser toolbar to (on Windows anyway) apps making arbitrary (and sometimes
wrong) changes to local policies, registry entries, etc (so the Mac equivalent
of that).

EDIT2: as a consumer, I want to buy through the App Store. Apple has my
payment details. I have a common place to get updates. When I buy from a
third-party site I have to deal with:

1\. Registration;

2\. A payment gateway that may or may not work;

3\. Despite an automatic payment a human may need to email me a license file
and/or download link that in some cases has taken days;

4\. Whether or not to trust your site with my information; and

5\. A completely separate process for updating.

So anecdotally as one consumer, if your app can be on the Mac App Store and
isn't I'm simply not buying it with very few exceptions (eg I'd still buy
Photoshop even if I don't want to).

[1]:
[http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_de...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174587/Steam_sales_How_deep_discounts_really_affect_your_games.php)

~~~
bluesnowmonkey
> In a world where malware is increasingly a problem

I don't see that as the case. There is malware out there in torrent land,
sure. But if you acquire software from reputable sources (like a paid app
store, referral from a friend, heard about it on a forum like HN, package
repository), malware just isn't a concern.

If you put malware on an app store, the world will notice, its rating will
tank, and people will stop downloading it. Reputation is the sandbox.

~~~
jiggy2011
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 they can be somewhat more lenient with
sandboxing restrictions?

~~~
coderdude
>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 after being installed for a month? There is really only so much a
reviewer can do in order to push an app out within a reasonable time frame.

Sandboxing in a way is just as much protection from liability for Apple as it
is protection from malware for its users.

~~~
tanepiper
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.

------
jharrier
Marco's follow-up post to this one is only technically correct because he uses
words like "most", "many", "probably", and "nearly". In fact, do a Google
search for "most many probably nearly" and his post is #6!

He should have just stood by his words. Instead of taking criticism, he
reverts to treating readers as idiots who didn't understand his post. We
understood. And many disagreed. It happens. From his follow-up post (quotes
from original post):

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:

1\. I will not buy anything from the Mac App Store again.

"But now, I’ve lost all confidence that the apps I buy in the App Store today
will still be there next month or next year. The advantages of buying from the
App Store are mostly gone now. My confidence in the App Store, as a customer,
has evaporated.

Next time I buy an app that’s available both in and out of the Store, I’ll
probably choose to buy it directly from the vendor."

2\. Most Mac users will stop shopping in the Mac App Store.

"And nearly everyone who’s been burned by sandboxing exclusions — not just the
affected apps’ developers, but all of their customers — will make the same
choice with their future purchases. To most of these customers, the App Store
is no longer a reliable place to buy software."

3\. Most developers will stop putting apps in the Mac App Store.

"And with reduced buyer confidence, fewer developers can afford to make their
software App Store-only.

This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in
it could bring for Apple. Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac
developers can’t or won’t use it because of the App Store’s political
instability."

------
guelo
I'm going to put this comment here even though it doesn't belong because I
wanted to make people aware and there's nowhere else to put it. Some HN
moderator is censoring stories about Twitter being down, probably the biggest
tech story of the morning.

First, this story was on the front page and it got killed
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4296416>

Then this other story, <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4296811>,
appeared briefly on the front page. But interestingly it wasn't killed it just
doesn't show up on the front page.

If you scroll through the new story submissions you'll find a bunch of dead
Twitter stories.

~~~
lsc
yeah. the outages.org mailing list is also whining about it. Google talk is
also having problems.

I suspect, though, that instead of getting 'censored' here, that hacker news
readers are flagging it as not very interesting.

Come back with a story once they have a 'lessons learned' type document;
something telling us what happened.

~~~
guelo
This is one of the top 10 sites world wide being down for over an hour now.

Why is Google Talk down, which affects a fraction of the users, on the front
page but Twitter is being actively censored?

Besides, HN comments are a lot of times more insightful and interesting than
the link. We might have gotten a Twitter engineer commenting on what was going
on or something else interesting.

~~~
lsc
> This is one of the top 10 sites world wide being down for over an hour now.

sure, and it's big news on outages@outages.org. (which used to be just fiber
cuts but has evolved into 'major webapp down' notices, too.) - the idea behind
outages@outages.org is to notify network operators when services that may
impact them are down. The idea is that if my customer is complaining about
things being slow to boston, well, if I read outages that morning, I might
remember a fiber cut that would explain it. I guess the same could be true if
my customers were complaining about not being able to get to twitter.

(personally, I'm in the camp that gets irritated when "random webapp is down"
messages are posted to outages@outages.org. _I_ don't care that twitter is
down. I've chosen my customers well enough that they don't complain to me when
something that is obviously not my fault like that happens. But, I am only one
person, and the majority have spoken; I won't fight it. I will whine a little,
though.)

News.ycombinator is not about outages, and really not about network and
systems operators. Most of you use IAAS or PAAS. Though so far, I've seen a
lot of tolerance for interesting network and systems operator stories.

But yeah, "x is down" is... not an interesting story. "X went down earlier
today; here is what happened" sometimes is.

>Besides, HN comments are a lot of times more insightful and interesting than
the link. We might have gotten a Twitter engineer commenting on what was going
on or something else interesting.

I think uninteresting articles ought to be voted down or flagged or otherwise
gotten rid of. If the comments are more interesting than the article, then
it's an uninteresting article, unworthy of the front page link.

>Why is Google Talk down, which affects a fraction of the users, on the front
page but Twitter is being actively censored?

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

------
jsz0
How about a content rating system? People are familiar with this from movies,
television and music. A developer could declare their un-sandboxed application
the equivalent of NC17 while most users live happily in their equivalent of a
PG13 universe.

------
fpgeek
I'd like to believe Marco is right, but let's not kid ourselves. There's been
large, high-profile, five-year experiment on exactly this and the
disappointing results are in: [almost] nobody gives a sh*t about Freedom 0.

------
mikejarema
I'm wondering how soon until we see OSX being jailbroken.

I suspect system level choices like this are bound to continue in order to
push users in the direction of iCloud and AppStore usage (ie. vendor lock-in).

Though such moves appear draconian from our perspective, I believe Apple times
such moves around when some internal metrics indicate a tipping point has
happened, namely the developer backlash won't be substantial enough to affect
Apple's bottom line.

It's only a matter of time before the iPhone dev team puts some effort towards
serving the OSX crowd that wants to jump ship but not give up "OSX"
completely.

~~~
jopt
It's bad enough that apps are leaving the App Store because of sandboxing. You
don't have to make shit up. The owner of a Mac can enable root access through
the Directory Utility, completely legit, and can install and run code from any
source without even doing so. Jailbreaking OS X makes no sense; there's no
jail.

~~~
mikejarema
True enough, and I'm probably abusing terminology here, sorry for that.

It's more me wondering out loud if there will be some alternative to OSX,
largely built off of OSX in order to get around limitations like sandboxing.

~~~
jopt
That's quite another story. If I have to write Sci-Fi: Perhaps an underground
scene that use and code for older versions of OS X, patching the system
themselves to get only the good parts of system updates, while staying out of
Apple's redefinitions of the computing experience.

------
kevindication
Contrast this end-user experience with that of Steam's. These are essentially
the exact same applications except that Steam has 1) carefully cultivated a
huge, multi-platform ecosystem of apps and 2) has never willingly broken the
application's environment.

Steam is arguably the only game distribution platform of significance (yes,
yes, battle.net and its limited selection of widely played titles) and will
continue to dominate because of the careful thought they've put into
distribution.

Seems like Apple should take a lesson, no?

------
Aloisius
What software besides Postbox has pulled out? The author makes it sound like
there is a mass exodus.

I've bought most of my software outside the App Store, so I'm not tuned in.

~~~
draebek
I'm not positive about this, but it sounds like lots of the
applications/utilities made by Many Tricks are going to be pulled, or will at
least see slower/limited updates if any:
<http://manytricks.com/blog/?page_id=2208>

------
cageface
_This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in
it could bring for Apple._

Apple is never going to have the kind of platform dominance that would make
iCloud really compelling. At least the other vendors realize that they need to
operate in a polyglot world.

As much as I like my MBA and iPad I refuse to lock my essential data into a
system I can only really access with hardware from a single vendor.

------
jusben1369
I think PG highlighted that Apple doesn't get software back in 2009:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/apple.html>

In that particular case he was lamenting the App Store approval process and
how much it alienated developers. Here we are 3 years later with no change to
that policy and no slowing down the App Store juggernaut.

------
mej10
I hope they will weaken this restriction, and will just not have non-sandboxed
apps show up without searching for them, or without switching some "power
user" option on.

Some types of applications simply cannot exist with these types of
restrictions. They are removing entire classes (e.g. window managers, system
utilities) of applications from the App Store with this.

~~~
briandear
But what's the real market size for window utilities? Not something your
average user buys. I use size up and cinch, but I'm a developer. My dad
doesn't care about fairly obscure system utilities. Besides, it isn't like
those tools can't be used on ML-- just not through the MAS. MAS is a shopping
mail, not a specialty shop. I don't by rock climbin gear from Target, but I'll
gladly by an espresso machine from Target.

------
caf
It seems like there's a market opening here for a third party App Store
equivalent, that offers the single-point-of-payment / ease of upgrades
advantages for the consumer, but eliminates the developer pain points
(sandboxing and paid upgrades).

This is viable for as long as third party applications can still be downloaded
and installed outside of the Apple App Store.

------
Caballera
I don't know if it's been said or discussed before, but why don't Developers
just make yearly revisions to sell on the Mac App Store, or even the iPhone
iOS app store. You could have a Genericproductname'2012 or '12, and next year
release a 2013 ('13) that has the new features, then remove the prior
versions.

------
pkamb
Several of my apps won't receive any new updates because they use the
Accessibility API, which isn't sandbox-compatible. It's a real shame, because
developing for the Mac App Store for the past year has been awesome.
Unfortunately the money/discovery isn't there for sole devs to go outside the
Store.

------
olleicua
I think the first sign that App Store wasn't trustworthy was Apple leaving gcc
out of the free version of XCode. I never trusted App Store. I think without
Steve Jobs Apple has lost it's ability to pretend it's a decent company. Why
doesn't someone do what RedHat did except for for consumers.

------
mzuvella
Seriously? Do you remember what company this is? Apple does this every time
and then corrects it down the road. Why? Because they receive more press that
way. Come on guys, they are not stupid.

------
js4all
The lack of paid upgrades is irrelevant. I never understood what people are
missing here. Apple has shown how to do it: Phase out the old version and
offer the new version as a new product.

~~~
alex_c
And lose any app store rankings in the process. A bit similar to launching a
new site every time you release a new version of your product.

~~~
js4all
I see your point. I haven't thought about that.

On a second thought: If your customers are satisfied, they will give good
reviews on the the new version and it will regain its rankings. That's a great
risk for the developer, I have to admit.

~~~
jarek
This approach also forces the developer to build in a notification system to
tell people the new app is out and how to find it.

I guess you could can make a small update to the 'old' app that will pop up a
window notifying of the new one when the old app first starts, but that seems
rather kludgy.

------
zurn
The thing that kept me from installing even free apps from the mac app store
is the same that keeps me away from Market/Play on Android: it requires Apple
ID.

------
Vecrios
I have an incorrect understanding of the word sandbox in this context. So to
clarify, what does the author of this blog mean by "the sandbox is
restricted"?

------
smoody
It seems to me that there's an opportunity for someone to create a knock-off
of the Mac App Store _without the restrictions_. I'd be a customer.

~~~
cytzol
With Mountain Lion and the iCloud feature only allowed on apps from the Mac
App Store, this is a lot harder to do than it previously was.

~~~
smoody
There are a lot of cases where iCloud isn't relevant (at the moment) -- many
types of apps are not document-centric and I believe that, going forward,
fewer will be.

------
soapdog
for those looking for an alternative app store for mac, look at
<http://appbodega.com/> I think it is great. It looks good. It is easy to
interface with and they appear to be quite responsive.

------
jusben1369
Can anyone give a 101 explanation specifically around what the "sandbox" issue
is?

~~~
pohl
Pages 14 and 15 of John Siracusa's review of Mountain Lion tell it pretty
well:

[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/14/#gatekeepe...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/os-x-10-8/14/#gatekeeper)

------
carson
I think the idea that Apple can't require MAS is wrong. Maybe they can't for
_everyone_ but I would bet they can for a lot of people and probably plan to.
At some point developers will be buying the developer version of the OS that
gets them around the sandbox.

~~~
briandear
There's no sandbox on the OS. RTFM.

------
moron
Marco is accusing Apple of having made a critical strategic error. Where are
all the people who call him a member of the Apple cult and all that crap?
Funny how they disappear when it comes time to talk about what Apple is doing
wrong.

~~~
Yhippa
To me the tone of the article is that he is worried that Apple is missing
chances of further enhancing lock-in to the Apple brand, specifically on the
Mac OS desktop platform. The guy re-purchased apps he already had so that he
could help with that lock-in. I see the rationale for doing that but when you
start throwing free cash on duplicate app purchases to enhance lock-in I don't
know what could be more cult-like.

~~~
shadesandcolour
Picking which operating system to use enhances lock in by itself already. I've
bought software both inside and outside of the mac app store and since I have
that software I'm locked in to the program. If I could move all my
applications to the app store I would do it in a heartbeat because it gives me
one place to go for updates. Apple is certainly missing out on opportunities,
but not only for "locking people in" but also for making their user experience
better.

------
franzus
I tend to buy small utility apps in the range of $10 on the app store. But I
would never buy "serious" software on the Mac app store.

The MAS already has this flea market feeling to me and so I'd rather have a
real license from the original vendor than this app store receipt thingy.

