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MplayerX Leaving Mac App Store

Posted by timothy on from the kicked-out-of-the-hothouse dept.

New submitter technonono writes "MplayerX, a popular and free video player app on Mac OSX, is now leaving Mac App Store 'after arguing with Apple for three months.' The developer claims that Apple's sandboxing policies would strip the app into 'another lame Quicktime X,' which is unacceptable. The app is releasing updates on its own site, where users who bought it from the App Store would most likely never notice them. The situation was 'foretold' by Marco Arment, at least for one app."

2 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Is this a genuine case? by Quick+Reply · · Score: 1, Troll

    He claims that "MPlayerX will lose so many features if it adopted Sandboxing, it could not load the subtitle automatically, it could not play the next episode for you automatically, ". I dont see how a Sandbox would prevent these features from working, can anyone verify this to be true?

  2. Re:why is this still an issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's been clear for a long time that Apple intends to exercise authoritarian-type control over your machine. Everyone who objects to this has left the platform, and everyone who doesn't object has stayed. It's clear what the situation is, and everyone gets to make their own choice about whether it is acceptable for there to be a central authority who controls your computing experience.

    So why is this being considered an issue any more?

    Because Apple customers are mostly clueless and too technically inept to readily switch to any other platform. So they really feel stuck.

    Windows sucks in its own ways - malware being a big one. And Linux might mean *gasp* learning something new. If these people liked doing that then they would be past a newbie-level of understanding by now. And lots of them were warned early on about Apple's fascination with control and about walled gardens etc but didn't want to listen. They fell for the hype and the fashionability of Apple products and the marketing and the frequent mentions in all sorts of media like this site for example. Now they feel stupid because they don't want to lose what little control they have over their own devices.

    And because whining about a relative non-issue that you should have anticipated long ago is the only way a lot of people can get attention. So they do that instead of making a point and reasoning it out.