The real question is this: Is Apple going to eventually make the app store the only way of installing apps on a Mac? I think this is likely and if so is going to be the end of the line for me as an Apple customer.
Actually, the real question is: what would Apple gain from killing 90% of the app ecosystem?
There are some apps that can't be really sandboxed (Little Snitch, virtualization tools), some apps you can't sell on the AppStore (video/audio/photoshop plugins) and there's even Apple apps that aren't available there yet (Logic, Filemaker, ).
Also, Macs are the only way to write OS X and iOS apps, it would make the barrier to entry way too high for most people, shutting off potential developers. How would you write, say, your Rails backend to your iOS app, on your Mac, if it was locked down?
But yeah, I would jump ship to Linux immediately as well.
If you believe that Apple is making a lot of money with their App Stores, sure. But they don’t. Even with the absolutely massive iOS App Store. The Mac App Store is tiny in comparison.
You and the other reply missed the part where even the iOS AppStore doesn't make as much money to warrant them running a whole ecosystem and shutting off musicians/producers/video editors/developers/hackers/enterprise users/people using Java stuff.
Apple has backed off on harsh decisions for much less than that. Remember Final Cut X? I bet the video editing community is much smaller than the developer community. Google, as an example, uses a lot of Apple laptops. They'd instantly stop buying them if that happened.
Until there's any sign of Apple wanting to close OS X, this is purely FUD.
Except they repeatedly said they're just above cut-even on the iOS AppStore. It's strongly doubtful that they'd do something like that purely for financial reasons.
I don't think they are that dumb, of course they know they would lose customers like us.
Indeed! Look at a novice Mac user, and you understand why Apple built the MAS. No matter how easy software installation was, the process was still difficult for most users (how to handle a bundle, package, zip file). The MAS has streamlined both installation and paying for an application.
Also, it's what people who bought a Mac because of the iPhone/iPad halo effect expect.
Locking down OSX would be an epic technical and social battle. I can't think of any reason they would go to war with their power users just to do that, especially since they already have a curated platform. They probably just want to give novice users a safe, curated experience by default.
I can absolutely see them doing this... and SOON. Give the MAS ecosystem a year, two at most, to mature.
There WILL be a switch somewhere, in the system prefs... a defaults write command... why? Because of Adobe, ProTools, Microsoft, and to a lesser extent stuff like homebrew and macports.
If there is a switch then there’s no problem. There would be no social battle. (Some people would be annoyed but that’s about it.)
I can absolutely see Apple adding such a switch and activating it by default. It wouldn’t be a big deal. (Well, I think Apple technically already added that switch. As far as I know Parental Controls can be set up in a way to only allow apps from the App Store.)
I draw the line here too. I accept the control tradeoff on iOS because I view them as appliances, not computers, and there are upsides to the curated experience. But if I can't fully control my primary computing device, I'm out. (I'd be okay with the machine shipping in "grandma mode", so long as there's an official way to disable it completely.)
Not just a fear, but a reasonable conclusion. Obviously sandboxing won't be effective for third party software unless 100% of all third party software is enforced to use sandboxing and won't run without it. It's pretty much an inevitable conclusion that that is coming because the system doesn't work unless you go all or nothing.
There are some apps that can't be really sandboxed (Little Snitch, virtualization tools), some apps you can't sell on the AppStore (video/audio/photoshop plugins) and there's even Apple apps that aren't available there yet (Logic, Filemaker, ).
Also, Macs are the only way to write OS X and iOS apps, it would make the barrier to entry way too high for most people, shutting off potential developers. How would you write, say, your Rails backend to your iOS app, on your Mac, if it was locked down?
But yeah, I would jump ship to Linux immediately as well.