<story><title>Mac App Store: The Subtle Exodus</title><url>http://blog.helftone.com/mac-app-store-the-subtle-exodus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldcode</author><text>As much as I support Apple and have been since 1979, including being an early Mac developer in 1985 and even working there in the horrible mid-90&amp;#x27;s, the major problem is that Tim and Jony don&amp;#x27;t care (and Steve didn&amp;#x27;t either for that matter) about developers enough to do anything more than what works for Apple. Whether the people in charge have no budget or don&amp;#x27;t care or are hamstrung by politics, nothing will change until and if the top people start to care. Apple makes so much money even with all the crap we have to put up with as developers they clearly have no reason to change and sadly I don&amp;#x27;t expect them to. You don&amp;#x27;t tell the world&amp;#x27;s most valuable company how to run their business. It didn&amp;#x27;t work for people telling Microsoft in the 90&amp;#x27;s or Apple today.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the brutal truth but it is what it is.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tolmasky</author><text>Its just as bad if not worse from a customer perspective. The Mac App Store is basically the antithesis of what Apple is theoretically about (&amp;quot;the details&amp;quot;) while at the same time highlighting everything Apple is bad at (ahem hem &amp;gt;services&amp;lt;). Some simple examples:&lt;p&gt;1. I go to buy an app, oh, I already own it. I know since it says &amp;quot;Installed&amp;quot;. So helpful, now I can go search for it again on my computer. Compare this to the iPhone where it isn&amp;#x27;t completely idiotic and instead of &amp;quot;installed&amp;quot; says &amp;quot;open&amp;quot; which you can click on.&lt;p&gt;2. Type &amp;quot;Diasy Disk&amp;quot; into the Mac App Store search. You&amp;#x27;ll get 5 results that AREN&amp;#x27;T &amp;quot;Daisy Disk&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s because Apple couldn&amp;#x27;t search their way out of a paper bag.&lt;p&gt;3. Let me send a link to this app to my friend. Of course its buried in an unlabeled drop down since sharing content is a decade ahead of any thinking going on at Apple. Let&amp;#x27;s not try to get any network affects for these apps, that would be silly.&lt;p&gt;4. The top 10 is full of apps I already own. Super useful. Really makes me want to open this thing up periodically if I&amp;#x27;m feeling spendy. Heaven forbid the tailor that page to at the very least show the top 10 apps &lt;i&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t own&lt;/i&gt;. But we live in a world where selling me toilet paper online is more sophisticated than applications.&lt;p&gt;4.1. My favorite is that #2 on top free is OS X Mavericks. How about just putting up a banner telling me reasons to upgrade to Mavericks instead of eternally taking up a slot in the top 10 free essentially making it a top 9? Especially when most your customer base is already on Mavericks and thus making that slot the most useless slot ever.&lt;p&gt;5. Hey what was that app I was looking at yesterday? Welp, since we chose to make it a super-fast amazing &lt;i&gt;native&lt;/i&gt; experience, I don&amp;#x27;t get simple features like &lt;i&gt;browsing history&lt;/i&gt; that I&amp;#x27;d get from this being in a browser. But hey, at least all these 3d graphics in the Mac App Store are crazy performant right? Now if only I could view two apps at once, you know, like maybe two competitors I&amp;#x27;d like to compare, in tabs...&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s funny because they ended up having to mirror the content on the web anyways, so the Mac App Store is now the worse of the two options you get (the other being google -&amp;gt; mac app store pages)</text></comment>
<story><title>Mac App Store: The Subtle Exodus</title><url>http://blog.helftone.com/mac-app-store-the-subtle-exodus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>coldcode</author><text>As much as I support Apple and have been since 1979, including being an early Mac developer in 1985 and even working there in the horrible mid-90&amp;#x27;s, the major problem is that Tim and Jony don&amp;#x27;t care (and Steve didn&amp;#x27;t either for that matter) about developers enough to do anything more than what works for Apple. Whether the people in charge have no budget or don&amp;#x27;t care or are hamstrung by politics, nothing will change until and if the top people start to care. Apple makes so much money even with all the crap we have to put up with as developers they clearly have no reason to change and sadly I don&amp;#x27;t expect them to. You don&amp;#x27;t tell the world&amp;#x27;s most valuable company how to run their business. It didn&amp;#x27;t work for people telling Microsoft in the 90&amp;#x27;s or Apple today.&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the brutal truth but it is what it is.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clumsysmurf</author><text>As an independent Android developer, I have the same feelings towards Google Play.&lt;p&gt;There have been many things about Play that devs have repeatedly brought up, but Google does not take action. For example, iOS has &amp;quot;Promo Codes&amp;quot; but not Play.&lt;p&gt;Another is not being able to migrate a paid app to IAP (In App Purchase) without pissing everyone off (the linkage is lost between what the customer already paid for and the new IAPs).&lt;p&gt;Not to mention the algorithmic jail you wind up in if you ever inadvertently get caught tripping some automated alarm in the googleplex.&lt;p&gt;I wish there was some strong alternative by now, whether Ubuntu Touch or Windows Phone. We need more options.</text></comment>