Ondrej Holzman One problem after another is hitting the Mac software store. The developer team behind the popular sketch app Sketch has announced its departure from the Mac App Store, and it should be a major wake-up call to Apple that something needs to be done about its store.
"After much thought and with a heavy heart, we are removing Sketch from the Mac App Store," announced studio Bohemian Coding its decision, which is said to be based on several reasons. These include, for example, a long approval process, restrictions of the Mac App Store against iOS, sandboxing or the impossibility of paid updates.
"We've made a lot of progress with Sketch over the past year, but the user experience on the Mac App Store hasn't evolved as much as it has on iOS," the developers hit on a burning question that's been hotly debated in recent weeks. That is The Mac App Store, unlike the App Store on iOS, is a nightmare for practically everyone.
It wasn't an easy decision for Bohemian Coding, but as they want to continue to be a "receptive, approachable and easy-to-reach company", they decided to sell Sketch through their own channels, as it will guarantee a better user experience.
It is said that this is definitely not a childish reaction to the last one certificate issue that prevented many users from running their purchased applications, but it's clear that a massive error on Apple's part didn't help matters. In addition, the departure of Sketch is a problem for Apple in that it is far from the first application of its kind.
Previously, BBEdit, Coda or Quicken, which are among the top in their categories, were ordered from the Mac App Store. "Sketch is the Mac App Store's showcase for professional Mac software," pointed out in his commentary John Gruber. This is evidenced by the fact that Sketch won an Apple Design Award, and Apple even provided templates directly for Sketch for Watch user interface designers.
The announcement of the end of Sketch in the Mac App Store was met with great response in the development community, and there would not be too many colleagues who would oppose the people of Bohemian Coding and understand their decision.
“The Mac App Store should be designed to make developers like Bohemian Coding (and Bare Bones, Panic and others) happy. He should be doing Mac development better, no worse, than when you sell outside of the App Store," added Gruber, who says the aforementioned apps are among the best available on the Mac.
For example, Sketch is only for Mac, it doesn't exist at all on Windows, but while his and other developers have been loyal to Apple and its computers for many years, the Californian giant is not paying them back in the same coin now. "If this hasn't set off alarm bells at Apple, something is seriously wrong," Gruber concluded his scathing comment, and we would find many others like him.
Then on Twitter he shook his head in response to Sketch's departure, Paul Haddad, developer of the popular Tweetbot app, made a very apt comment: "Could the last person to leave the Mac App Store please go out?" substantial. The bottom line is that if the exodus of the best apps from the official store continues, Apple may actually shut it down for good. It already has a fundamentally tarnished reputation.
Will it still be available for MAC at least by downloading from the web?
Sure. Only distribution via the Mac App Store ends.
The only reason why the balls should have gone to the Store ;-).
When BBEdit moved to the Mac App Store and released a new version for less money than the previous updates cost me, I asked them if they were crazy or if I didn't understand something - that it seemed to me that they were making fun of their loyal users. After I had already paid them hundreds of dollars for the product, they were releasing a new version for only $49 - both for new and existing users. So, newcomers could have the given application for the same price as those who had already paid several times more for it. They wrote back that they are sorry, but that Apple does not offer the possibility of paid updates in its App Store, so they give a new version at the price of previous updates for everyone - so that "old-timers" do not have to pay more than they were used to. I wrote back to them that in that case my money should be enough for them and that I was ending their product after many years and switched (at that time) to TextMate and actually stopped using BBEdit - because of shit.. annoyance. Although more on Apple, but of course also on BareBones.
I'm writing all of this under the article about Sketch leaving the App Store because I was certainly not one of the users (and BareBones from the developers) who was turned off by the Mac App Store, and that the Bohemian Coding team completely understand and support their move.
The entire App Store - even the one for iOS is a tragedy from the user's point of view. Apple produces only a few pieces of products (from the point of view of the number of products of other platforms) and understandably has the ability to know exactly which HW and OS version the App Store is currently communicating with, so it could perhaps offer for download such SW (or such versions) that can be HW/OS to operate. The fact that it does not offer business models for the sale of SW, which have been established for decades, of course turns off even more developers than users.
In recent years, Apple has been "improving" absolutely everything, ... but that would be enough OT here
So back to prehistoric times. Again, we will open accounts with each company from which we want to buy software, again I will find out where we have a link to which product and if it happened to have expired. And again, a lot of questionably functioning installers that make a mess on the disk and can't clean up after themselves.
As a user, I like the idea of the AppStore as a one-stop source for software. It is comfortable. The processing and business model behind it is another matter, there is really a lot of room for improvement.
I also think it's a shame. The idea is certainly good. However, considering that the Mac App Store has been around for about 3 years and hasn't offered such basic things as a demo option in that time (I'm not going to buy something for 50 Euros that I don't have a chance to try) and there are a lot of restrictions on developers, it's unfortunately sad.
One would understand that it might take some time to fine-tune certain things, but basically nothing has happened in those three years.
It fits into Apple's strategy, which, in my opinion, makes computers out of inertia. in fact, he is interested in phones and watches, marginal iPads.
And the last things they did? Airport laughable, not updated for several years. I don't have a retina display at all (which must be a shame, especially for those who bought a Mac pro and have been waiting years for a retina display).
For those who bought Sketch in the apple store, just download the current version and after starting it, a dialog will appear where you send your email... you will then receive your serial number.
I'm glad that Apple doesn't allow paid updates and system approvals. What I bought here works as I need it to. It has all the bugs, but it's not the infected google store. A lot of luck goes out to the Sketch author and their customers a lot of paid patches to make the next version work for them.
Smad Apple does something about it and the user experience with MAS is terrible. Slow, outdated design, lack of clarity... Personally, I would like to see them redo the whole store and come up with universal apps for mac because the number of apps for mac is really quite narrow and doing things like messenger etc. is quite impractical.
More exodus than exitus... I don't want to pry, but there is a bit of a difference.
Thanks, fixed.