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Apple In Trouble With Developers
geek writes "According to Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, Apple may be in trouble with developers. According to Arment, the new sandboxing guidelines from Apple are pushing developers away in droves. '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. 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.' Arment also comments on the 'our way or the highway' attitude Apple often takes in these situations and how it may be backfiring this time around."
As a developer I see what he is saying.
But as a user the changes only make it MORE likely I would look in the app store first for something. I know something from there will work along with the system security restrictions.
With more people looking in the app store, the simple truth is more developers will have to service that market somehow or lose users (or at least not grow at the same rate as the mac install base does).
Apple has already changed some ways in which sandboxing works, to accommodate some application needs. And they will do more of that going forward - but historically Apple implements overly strong security to start with, and then whittles it away as required instead of letting users get used to an overly permissive model.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What I've seen is that many apps are starting to have 2 versions:
a) The internet version
-- designed the way the developer wants
-- paid upgrades
-- weak or weaker tie to iOS version
b) The app store version
-- designed the way Apple wants
-- free upgrades (or rarely 100% rebuy upgrades)
-- strong tie to the iOS version via. iCloud
That's a really interesting choice. So far I've always gone for the internet version because the app store worries me. I like the idea of iCloud integration, but most of what I want I could get though dropbox and sym/hard links. I could get the update management the more traditions way (http://www.macupdate.com/desktop/) but frankly all the apps check by themselves at this point mostly.
But I don't know the App store is "in trouble". I think there is likely to be a fork in what you get where. The App store might have lots of inexpensive simple applications, free demos, desktop support for phone apps and other apps that are single purpose while the retail side focus on the $20 on up apps which are more versatile. I don't think it is good that the market is forking creating two software ecosystems with different tastes.
Problem is, I read the linked post and can't tell if he's right or wrong. He refers to developers leaving, he refers to customers being burnt, he refers to sandboxing exclusions... but he doesn't give a single example to illustrate his point!
So what exactly are you talking about, Marco Arment?
#DeleteChrome
Will iTunes run in the "sandbox"? QuickTime? Safari? Keynote? Numbers? FinalCut "Pro"?
If you go back to the article Ament links to, their complaints are:
None of these, save the last one, have anything to do with sandboxing. The last one does, but I don't understand it, because access to the user's calendar and photos are explicitly-defined entitlements that you can access, all you have to do is check a box in Xcode. A sandboxed app cannot access the filesystem of the computer, except for paths specifically named by the user in an Open or Save dialogue (the dialogue boxes are run by a separate daemon that passes the paths to the client application over IPC, so you can't futz with it to pick open more of the user's fs than they specifically let the application see.) Obviously this is deadly to bulk renamers, but I don't understand the complaint in the context of document creation, utilities or accessories, games, or really anything but document indexers -- which would have to just be sold the old fashioned way, on a website.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The problem is that Apple has not developed system wide functions to replace many of the things they are taking away... And for the things they are replacing, they are going for the heavy-handed iOS approach and locking devs down to only sharing specific Apple-approved file types. Basically having the computer act like a "system" is dead in favor of manual apps. The idea of using Apple Script to string your own custom workflow of little apps is right out the window.
Add insult to injury, Apple seems to be preemptively "Sherlock-ing" their most prosperous Mac Devs about one OS version BEFORE Apple copies them. now they are pulling apps and leaving USERS in the lurch without features they had yesterday.