Slashdot Mirror
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."
Remember, that line didn't even work out for Vader and he had Star Destroyers and millions of clone troopers at his command. If you have the upper hand you can sometimes force people to accept a one sided deal. But if you go beyond that and keep changing the terms on it eventually everyone figures out they might as well take their chances because they are hosed anyway. You have to leave them some hope of survival.
I especially liked how the article has this:
"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."
Anyone who would write that, in the context of it being a good thing!, is obviously a Kool-Aid drinker. When you are driving those people away it is a warning sign.
Imagine how badly Microsoft is going to bungle this same gambit. Notice how Valve is already running for the exits? Uh huh, good times ahead for everyone!
Democrat delenda est
I loathe Apple. They are probably one of the most detestable companies in the technology sector right now. I see them as a modern version of 90s Microsoft.
But this? I think this is a move in the right direction. The added security benefits sandboxing brings far outweigh any negative consequences a few developers too lazy to implement something Apple's been telling them they need to implement for the better part of a year might experience (at least according to the OS X review a few days ago from Ars Technica). And it's not like these developers have no recourse; as long as they register with Apple or whatever, the default OS setting will allow users to go download those products from the vendor's website.
There are plenty of reasons to hate Apple. Their push toward better security practices is not one of them.
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
Except there is no evidence that developers are "leaving in drones"
If i were leaving i don't think a drone would be my preferred conveyance.
Apple hinted to sandboxing being mandatory at WWDC11, they announced it would happen later that year, then forced everyone to a few months ago. So, where does this "new" come from exactly?
I love that people on here bitch endlessly about how insecure OSes are. Then Apple makes a move to require devs to code in a more secure manner, result? They freak out. Did I miss anything?
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
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
And it missed a line:
"Disclaimer: Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, is likely more than a bit disgruntled with Apple, now that the functionality of Instapaper has been rolled into Safari."
Apple has a history of driving away developers by incorporating their ideas into the bundled apps. Not many developers though... only those of really well thought out OS enhancements.
While Marco does have a point, the timing of the statement smacks more than a bit of sour grapes. As a developer, he's known the sandboxing exemptions were temporary for, well at least a year. He's had more than a month since the sandbox closed its lid. I think he'll find that anyone developing heavyweight applications never even entered the App Store; they're still going strong on their own. The App store does great things for apps that are happy to live within the sandbox though; lightweight apps that have nothing to do with managing the computer but instead accomplish specific tasks.
What Marco will find is that for every serious application developer leaving the Mac App Store, there are 50 App developers moving in -- some of them migrants from the iOS App Store, who are just adding a secondary target to their development builds.
In my opinion, the App Store was never the place for non-sandobxed software in the first place. In time, Apple may create more sandbox features that will enable more heavy applications to re-enter the Store, but this will only be after the honeymoon period is over with the "App" crowd -- expect another year of shakedown before anyone doing complex OS tasks can "trust" the store.
Kudos to Apple though for starting in restricted mode and slowly enabling more features -- and at the same time having a blanket exemption period for more serious developers to play with the store and see if it's right for them.
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.
I suspect people reading here dont' have a clue about sandboxing or what a BFD it is. Sandboxing is massively overdue. It's been available for years and years in OSX but there has been a zero adoption rate. I came across it in Xgrid, an apple application which relied heavily on it.
Xgrid is a job server that lets other people run jobs on your computer---safely. How the heck do you do that safely and still have left an environment that can do anything at all. You can't do this with linux permissions or firewalls. But you can with sandboxing. in sandboxing you specify in detail what resources every application has access to. What parts of the file system it can't see even if it has unix permissions. What parts of a network it can access. How much memory it can use. etc... It's a universal wrapper that can be created for every program.
Since firefox can be wrapped it's insane to use any browser without wrapping. If some roque plug in contains the ability to do something nasty you dont' care because it can't. it can't access resources it needs. You are essentially shutting down bad behaviour not bad apps.
So why is it not default?
Cause it's annoying to set up. If you take shortcuts in your application based on giving it more privledges than it needs you get punished by the sandbox.
lazy developers hate it.
time to force the issue. it's good for consumers.
It doesn't do anything for apple, other than make the OS better.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.