Reasons not to like the Mac App Store

[renaultssoftware]

Has anyone used the Amazon app store? Thoughts?

[chabig]

Quote: Originally Posted by renaultssoftware Has anyone used the Amazon app store? Thoughts?

Pay money. Download an installer. It's the same as installing boxed software, but without the box or the disc. It's like shareware has always been. No automatic installation or updating, like there is with the Mac App Store. What else is there to think about?

[NaOH]

Or, um, use the Google to find reviews. Like this one from Macworld.

[ThreeBKK]

Quote: Originally Posted by renaultssoftware Has anyone used the Amazon app store? Thoughts?

Amazon has an app store?

I think that's great! If it weren't for them, the iTunes Music Store would probably still be 128 Kb/s and laden with DRM. Competition can be a very good thing.

[renaultssoftware]

Quote: Originally Posted by NaOH Or, um, use the Google to find reviews. Like this one from Macworld.

I was looking for personal experiences with the thing. Thanks for the link, though, good read.

[chabig]

Quote: Originally Posted by ThreeBKK I think that's great! If it weren't for them, the iTunes Music Store would probably still be 128 Kb/s and laden with DRM. Competition can be a very good thing.

Let's stick to facts. While competition may be good, Amazon didn't force Apple to drop DRM. It was the music companies that forced Apple to adopt DRM. Apple led the industry in calling for an end to DRM.

[ThreeBKK]

I'm very interested in just sticking to facts, but how are you going to prove that your facts are accurate, and that mine are inaccurate? (Please don't do that in this thread. It's really just a rhetorical question.) If I recall correctly, it was Amazon who came out with DRM-free 256 Kb/s downloads first. Apple followed shortly after. Just an observation (from which we could probably draw many conclusions).

[NaOH]

Steve Jobs published his "Thoughts on Music" piece in February 2007, seven months before Amazon began such sales. Wrote Jobs,

Quote: If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

The NY Times, reporting the same day of Jobs published "Thoughts on Music,"

Quote: A senior executive at one company, who requested anonymity to avoid straining relations with Apple, said that while labels might experiment with other forms of copy-protection software, “we’re not going to broadly license our content for unprotected digital distribution.”

Four months after Amazon began DRM-free music sales, Apple announced the same. Again, the NY Times reporting,

Quote: “Apple definitely wanted to remove D.R.M. from music, but the record labels would not allow them to renegotiate their licensing agreements, because they wanted to help competitors succeed against Apple in the market,” said Bill Rosenblatt, president of GiantSteps Media Technology Strategies, a consulting firm. It is not clear what broke the impasse, but the deteriorating economy may have put pressure on music companies. “For the major labels, it was clearly time for them to accelerate becoming digital music companies in a macroeconomic environment that is downright frightening,” said Greg Scholl, chief executive of The Orchard, a digital distributor of music from independent labels. The compromise gives the recording industry new leverage over their online music sales, Mr. Scholl added. They can start to sell new tracks at the higher price, then gradually drop prices to keep sales moving. Labels could also experiment with bundled packages of songs and even special editions at higher prices. Harry Wang, director of mobile product research at the consulting company Parks Associates, said, “They aren’t going to get a huge amount of money from this new arrangement, but in an ailing music industry, anything that can provide more money will be better than the status quo.”

[ThreeBKK]

New thread for that tangent, please.

[NaOH]

I think I misunderstood your earlier statement. I read your last sentence here,

Quote: Originally Posted by ThreeBKK I'm very interested in just sticking to facts, but how are you going to prove that your facts are accurate, and that mine are inaccurate? (Please don't do that in this thread.

to be a reference to your numerous earlier statements about the Mac App Store being along the lines of "I think the store will mean..."

Sorry about that mistake.

[tw]

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrr-rrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhH-HHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

I cannot remember anything that I have despised so thoroughly in my entire life.

[NovaScotian]

My general feeling as well, tw.

[fracai]

Quote: Originally Posted by tw I cannot remember anything that I have despised so thoroughly in my entire life.

What specifically? Aside from the actual restrictions on apps (TextWrangler not being able to install the command line tools, etc.) I've been pretty happy with it. It doesn't cover my every need, but it's generally been a smooth experience for me.

[tw]

Quote: Originally Posted by fracai What specifically? Aside from the actual restrictions on apps (TextWrangler not being able to install the command line tools, etc.) I've been pretty happy with it. It doesn't cover my every need, but it's generally been a smooth experience for me.

Just the whole experience was annoying. problems:

• the interface (as far I can tell on short inspection) has no way to efficiently browse apps. I see a bunch of table cells that have name, icon, price and rating, but no description, so I have to open each one to get an idea of what it does
• but there's no tabbing, so I can't open several apps from the main list and then browse them quickly, I have to drag through them one by one, which means a lot of back-and-forth if I want to compare two (or god forbid three) apps
• the system forced me to enter all sorts of unneeded personal information - why the hell does the app store need to know whether I'm a mr., mrs., miss or dr., to the point where it refuses to let me continue signing up unless I tell it?
• the system forced me to enter credit card information, even though I was only interested in looking at free apps. I DO NOT LIKE TO GIVE OUT CREDIT CARD INFORMATION UNLESS I'M READY TO BUY SOMETHING. That's just aggravating, and I am going to see if I can cancel my app store account just because of that - but they probably won't let me.
• The system forces me to download everything into /Applications (I habitually use ~/Applications for third party apps, and it's annoying to have to enter an admin password just to download some free app and then have to enter it twice more to move the app where I want it and delete it from /Applications
• The system asks me to enter the app store password far too frequently (enough that I find it irritating)

It's just a positively stupidly designed app that forces me to do things that I neither need nor want to do, and is not at all flexible towards the way I like to do things. You can just tell that whoever designed it was super focused on making it look *bright* and *cheerful* - like aqua on steroids - and totally slacked on the HIG and functionality aspects. I kept thinking about the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation...

I'm simply not going to use it again unless I absolutely, positively, no other options have to. It sucks.

[edalzell]

Quote: Originally Posted by tw It's just a positively stupidly designed app that forces me to do things that I neither need nor want to do, and is not at all flexible towards the way I like to do things. You can just tell that whoever designed it was super focused on making it look *bright* and *cheerful* - like aqua on steroids - and totally slacked on the HIG and functionality aspects. I kept thinking about the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation...

Just like the App Store. Not aimed at you. Aimed at the other 95% of Mac users who never bought software before.

[ThreeBKK]

Thank you tw for posting that. I have not yet "upgraded" to 10.6.6 and the Mac App Store yet, so it's nice to be reminded again why I've been avoiding it for this long.

Maybe there's no point in trying to resist. The way I see it, Apple will be doing everything they can to make sure the Mac App Store is the only way to get apps on our Macs, just like the other iDevices.

[NaOH]

Quote: Originally Posted by ThreeBKK I have not yet "upgraded" to 10.6.6 and the Mac App Store yet, so it's nice to be reminded again why I've been avoiding it for this long.

Why avoid upgrading beyond 10.6.5? You deny yourself bug fixes, security enhancements and other updates (i.e., today's Java update), but you're no more required to use, let alone launch, the Mac App Store application under 10.6.8 than you are under 10.6.5.

[ThreeBKK]

If I'm understanding it correctly, there's more to the 10.6.6 update than just a single additional application. There's a lot of stuff under the hood that was put there to support the Mac App Store and make it just work, or not work, as sometimes the case may be.

Unfortunately, Apple hasn't made it, or couldn't make it, modular and separate from the OS updates. That's a shame because I'd like to be able to upgrade the OS without committing to all of that hidden support structure, at least until I see where they're going with this.

One question that comes to mind: Was it technically impossible to keep the Mac App Store separate from regular OS updates, or did Apple combine them intentionally to force all Snow Leopard users to jump in?

[hayne]

I haven't looked at the technical details about the App Store implementation. But nothing is technically impossible - it's just that some things are much easier to do. Apple's applications often rely on infrastructure that is supplied by OS X updates. And the security aspects of the App Store clearly need some OS support.

The larger issue is that it is not tenable to just stay on some old version of OS X and refuse updates. There have been and will continue to be important security fixes that come with the OS X updates and you need to install these if you don't want to risk losing control of your Mac (via malware).
If you have lost trust in Apple, then you would be best advised to move over completely to Linux where (at least in theory) you can check on what the OS is doing.

[tlarkin]

If you are a developer you must download all your dev builds from the app store with your apple ID. It puts everything in /Applications automatically, and you have to "purchase" the app (for free since you are a dev) and a lot of times it lacks options.

I don't get the point of this....

I prefer direct downloads where I can pick and choose what revisions I want. Also, this requires me to create an additional Apple ID to use at work, or add my personal one to my work's enterprise dev account.

Overall, bad idea, and annoying if you ask me.