[petejansson]

Purely from a user's perspective, the Mac app store has a considerable advantage in centrally managing updates. Non-MAS apps each have their own eclectic ways of updating. Some support automatic update checks, while users have to explicitly check others. For the ones with automatic updates, there are a number of ways it's handled. Users don't generally want scores of update daemons running, and the whole business of "On launch, check for update, notify the user and let them choose whether to update now" really feels like the web page pop-ups that are so popular. ("I launched the app to do work, not to see if there was an update. The update prompt is in my way.") This cries out for a better user experience.

[apineda]

Update on the way out? ie. Pop up with two options "close" and "update and close", at least this time you've already accomplished what you were after with the application.

[jonknee]

Maybe it's just me, but when I am ready to quit an app the last thing I want to do is go through an update process.

[ascagnel_]

Especially one that will relaunch the app when it's done.

Ideally, you'd want a system-level daemon that downloads and preps updates in the background, and either waits until the system is idle (I think Apple has some tech like this already for running Time Machine backups), with pending updates optionally installed on system shutdown (am I shutting down to save on battery, to restart, or because I'm about to leave the office and I don't care how long it takes for the system to shut down).

[seltzered_]

I think Kelly Sutton (of the late layervault) figured this out with his fork of sparkle, called "autosparkle" - https://github.com/layervault/Sparkle . I haven't personally integrated it into my app yet, but supposedly it makes updates a much more silent process - which is really important for 'always-on' tray apps like layervault was, or the one I'm making.

Here's their announcement of it from 2013: http://layervault.tumblr.com/post/50501747774/open-sourced-a...

[theOnliest]

What I've always wanted, and no one seems to do, is to have the update box pop up on startup (as usual), and then have a button that says "Install on quit." Then I wouldn't have to be interrupted when I opened an app to do something, and it would be taken care of when I finished so that it's ready for the next time.

[placeybordeaux]

Yeah it's a little insane how long it's taken for Apple and Microsoft to get software updates right when it's so common and humdrum on the linux side of things.

[Denzhadanov]

So would you think that MAS is generally better in terms of perception and trust?