[pkamb]

Many OS X apps are utilities that help you work with other apps. Running all the time in the background, monitoring, looking at keyboard input, observing folders, etc. These types of apps are fundamentally at odds with the Sandbox. But they're used often by many/most OS X users, even the less technically inclined.

Whereas the design and simplicity of iOS has ensured, from the start, that these types of apps cannot exists on that OS.

> Are the sandbox limits really too restrictive for most apps (I guess new APIs/permissions could improve that with time)

The last 5 years have proven that Apple is not interested in granting exemptions to the Sandbox or new entitlements for, say, Accessibility apps.

[dperfect]

A good point about utility/accessibility apps. For most everything else though, I prefer not to inherently grant all those permissions to every app I install.

But again, Apple doesn't require distribution through the MAS (even if the majority of apps can work effectively within the restrictions), so how does the MAS's existence make the OS X ecosystem worse off overall?

If Apple is ignorant enough to leave money on the table by failing to provide a good marketplace/environment for a large number of apps (as may very well be the case), then non-MAS distribution will still flourish. Maybe they'll wise up and improve the situation in response. Maybe not, and we're back to the way things were before the MAS.

[pkamb]

It's not the existence of the Mac App Store that hurts, it's the existance of this (theoretically) great marketplace that we can't use to distribute normal, useful OS X apps. Especially if you had a great little app going in the MAS, and now can't update it because it can't be sandboxed.

And hosting, key generation, payments, etc. are a fairly significant roadblock to shipping an app that the MAS formerly allowed you to completely ignore.