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MplayerX Leaving Mac App Store
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."
Please consider Mitt Romney when you vote for president in November. The current administration (Barack Hussein Obama) has instituted failed policies that have driven the unemployment rate to 8.2% and has left millions of your fellow Americans without jobs. On top of that, he has increased the food stamp handouts and welfare roles with the intent to make people dependent on an enormous federal government. He has attempted to destroy our nations economy and is actively hostile to corporations or any people of means, as they do not fit into his 'socialistic vision' for America. Mitt will return our economy to its former vim and vigor, and we can all hope to attain what he has already done. We cannot afford four more years of economic destruction and becoming reliant on Big Brother Government policies. It would be our undoing. Thank you for your consideration.
and if they had an auto-update mechanism (like sparkle) people wouldn't need to check their website for app updates because (drumroll) in soviet russia, app checks website for updates!
Apple and its store both suck. Glad even middle-class white middle-aged males are noticing, since that is their general demographic. Hipsters need to switch to Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD.
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?
They've had over a year to get this straightened out, not three months. If MplayerX won't sell in the app store, some other product will fill the void in that market. This is of course assuming people are going to the app store for such a media player.
I have it installed, but never even thought to look for it there. Nothing to do with sandboxing requirements - I just would've figured their developers would object to the concept of the App Store on principle.
#DeleteChrome
I would put forward that this conclusion is actually only true right now, but I expect over the coming years that is liable to change.
As an increasing number of applications *DO* become available on the app store, I would suggest that a growing number of people are going to increasingly rely upon it. Eventually, I expect that a critical mass will be reached (I predict about 2 years from now), and Apple will shut the door to external sales on the Mac outside of jailbroken devices forever.
This will probably be cause for a lot of people to abandon the mac platform, but I expect that the remaining userbase will be sufficiently large by that point in time that other developers will eventually be drawn to writing for the platform, attracted by the promise of what will seem to them, initially at least, to be a largely untapped market.
And what happened with iOS is going to happen again with MacOSX.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
For all their much vaunted backwards compatibility or large collection of apps the reality is that either the app developer keeps updating their app or it breaks. That was what happened with Stanza. It was probably a mere coincidence that it broke around the time iBooks was released.
Or was it?
What an inept campaign staff Mitt Romney has. Gaff after gaff, and now we're dealing with endless boilerplate spams from his "social media" people. Really, conspicuously lame. Kind of undercuts his basic argument, that we should vote for him because he's a good manager. In fact, he makes me think of every bad manager I've ever worked for.
MPlayerX will still be available just not in AppStore. I would assume existing users will still get updates through internal update service.
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?
Mac App Store is a piece of crap anyway. I doubt anyone would even notice.
Did you ever notice that people who accidentally hit buttons on their phone while they're talking on it are dumb? I mean really, really dumb.
I can't be the only one who noticed.
What's wrong with the way apps have always worked? I like VLC, I go download it, it checks for updates when I use it. I push the update button when there's an update.
I have a few app store apps, but it's in addition to what I've always used. App store encourages devs to write apps for mac. I like more options, good system.
I got off of the Apple bandwagon a long time ago after I realised how much Apple's ecosystem is like a prison. I'd rather have my freedom. Microsoft and other companies are moving more and more in the direction of Apple (and Apple just keeps moving in the wrong directions). Even Canonical, Red Hat, System76, ZaReason, and quite a few others have really annoyed me in recent years. Not so much because they have taken drastic steps towards imprisoning you although more for their ignorance and complacency. Canonical and others are giving in to Microsoft's secure boot crap and moving away from GRUB. GRUB isn't the problem. Microsoft is. STOP GIVING IN.
There is enough crap I have to go through to get from point A to point B when I travel because of societal complacency in the criminal (I'm using that word loosely) actions of our world's leaders and the systems they've implemented (authoritarians who love censorship and promote thuggish behaviour). I don't want that experience when I go online.
The only company I've even got any respect for any more is ThinkPenguin. For those who don't know this company sells computers and accessories for GNU/Linux and they actually have a respectable set of values. The company doesn't sell hardware dependent on non-free software (drivers or firmware) and supports freedom like nobody else. They contribute a significant percentage of their profits to the Free Software Foundation and Trisquel project (one of the few strictly free distributions) amongst others. I believe 10% of certain distribution channels go to the Free Software Foundation and 25% of sales from libre.thinkpenguin.com (a version of the site tailored to free software users) go to the Trisquel project. And they are supporting a lot of other projects as well.
from the website, before they started pointing to the app store instead.
MPlayer leaving the app store? Guess I'll use TEN and Kali instead
Maybe there is something I don't know, but why do these other apps exist when
VLC is such a useful app for playing all kinds of file types and pretty much
can deal with anything you throw at it ?
If I missed something please explain.
Some of this is just a learning curve on the part of developers. As has been pointed out, a lot of the issues surround access to the file system but as long as the user selects a folder (via the OS' built-in privileged process proxy that presents the selection UI for your app) or drags it to your app, you can store a link to it that is part of your sandbox, including across reboots.
In this App's case, it would mean reworking his UI slightly to have users select folders with content in them, not individual movies. Then he can show a list of movies in that folder and let the user pick, all the while reading separate subtitle files or moving to the next movie with no issues.
There does need to be a category of Developer Utilities / System Utilities that allow things like asking for Admin rights. This is one place Apple is totally wrong. Sure, make the review process extra detailed and don't allow apps to go into that category unless they are truly utilities, but it is definitely needed.
The days of [app permissions] == [user permissions] are long over... We're just stuck with a broken security model that never anticipated people would be running so much code from so many sources, code that can't necessarily be trusted (or that itself loads data/code from untrusted sources). It's like the difference between traditional Unix permission bits and ACLs: once you use ACLs you realize how primitive user/group/owner is. Sandboxing is an attempt at limiting the permission of apps but it remains to be seen if that's the best way.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Mplayer in the app store? Sorry, no. Mplayer is GPL. That makes binary-only distribution a problem. (Unless I'm to petition Apple, who doesn't have the source, to give me the source per GPL...)
I'm guessing that the guy behind this "mplayer x" has nothing to do with the original mplayer, either.
The sad fact is, this sort of flagrant GPL violation is very common in the various app stores. We should demand more of app developers. Apple and other should actively work to take down people who are just trying to make a buck off of other people's work, against their wishes.
Apple is making record profits ($35 billion last quarter) and only 14.2% of those profits ($1.287 billion) came from sales of Mac hardware last quarter (all desktops and laptops). (source) The percentage of money Apple makes from desktops and laptops is getting progressively smaller each quarter. And the number of 'professionals' in those numbers is smaller still. The bottom line is that there is FAR more money to be made from consumers. To the point that professionals really don't matter to Apple's bottom line at all. Consumers, consumers, consumers. Consumers consuming music/video ($1.571 billion, up 29 percent from $1.571 billion a year earlier.) and apps ($891 million, up 28 percent from $696 million a year earlier.) on their iPads ($9.17 billion, up 52 percent from $6.046 billion a year earlier.), iPod Touches ($1.06 billion, down 20 percent from $1.325 billion a year earlier.) and iPhones ($16.425 billion, up 22 percent from $13.31 billion a year earlier.). That's where the money is. That's where nearly ALL the money is. Microsoft is seeing the same light. That's why Windows 8 is what it is. It is a 100% consumer operating system, corporations be damned. It's about setting up an ecosystem of apps, music and video across your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone. So, no, it doesn't matter if you can't install Eclipse, Mac Ports or various command-line tools on your Mac. The Mac App Store is about consumers, just like the iOS App Store. Not creators or 'professionals'. Even if you estimate that 10% of Mac's desktop/laptop hardware sales were 'professionals' (an extremely high estimate) and every single one of them abandoned Mac as a result of these changes (unlikely), that's still only $493 million. 1.4% of Apple's revenue. And that will be more than offset by another platform where Apple for all intents and purposes controls the keys to the kingdom (Mac App Store will be 95%+ of all Mac software sales in the next couple years) and makes a 30% cut of all software sales. They can ditch professionals and make a killing on consumers.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Apparently, to a dumbdroid like you Android competes against Mac OS X.
I have it installed ... rarely use it ... because it sucks at playing almost every format I have tried.
On the other hand, VLC has never failed to play what ever I have thrown at it.
So yes ... use VLC and skip the drama. MPlayerX is not ready for primetime.
Unfortunately, MplayerX is unusable at its current state for a significant number of users because of this issue that has been open and unaddressed for months. The lag is unbearable and keeps me from switching from VLC. I would like to do so because MplayerX' killer feature, remembering the play position, is missing from VLC even though it has been requested by its userbase for years.
These devices are only bought by iDiots, who are too stupid to know they don't actually own that they paid for, and that they are being totally ripped off.
Maybe there is à market for a non-Apple app store? If someone gets in the act now, and Apple pulls the rug, then it would be possible to apply anti-trust laws.
With regards to sandboxing, I can understand why Apple is doing this, but have they gone too far with their sand boxing model? What needs to be improved and does a better model exist elsewhere?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Hmmm...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dErAZL1Hr8
+
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zIEZDt188I
I think you're on to something.
I've been using Macs for nearly ten years and this is the first time I've even heard of MPlayerX, so I guess I'm not missing out on much.
I spend every dollar I get my hands on. Willard Romney? Not so much. What scares me about the very rich is that give the chance they will halt all human progress. Not because their evil, but because when you're that rich you can't imagine a better life. How can you be progressive when you already have the best that can be imagined?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Perhaps not, but it never hurts to plan ahead.
Or does apple forbid something like that, pointing you away from the store ?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know I'm a very minor voice in this, but I find it annoying to sign in to Apple's tracking just to download a free app. I will still install MPlayerX on all the Macs that I have control over.
Too many people are willing to give up their privacy to apple to get software that was once just freely available. This goes for the android app stores too. I really don't like signing on to web pages that require javascript from a multitude of sites before I am able to download.
"If people can't get their dev environment running, they won't dev apps"
Why wouldn't they be able to get their dev environment running? I understand what you are trying to say but realistically Apple does supply Xcode and any other tools needed to make apps on it's platform. If you don't like it Apple will just tell you to piss off like they do on everything else. It's not fair but then again Apple has never been about fair.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I'm going back to Linux.
Well, I never thought of that. This means also that having a free OS is the total refusal of just "consuming" anything in the digital world, but enjoying certain works and stuff that works.
... To destroy the entire comment section.