[hemancuso]

The real question regarding the Mac App Store, IMHO, is whether or not it forbids a broad enough class of still-popular applications that it fails to achieve the goal of becoming the default distribution method for applications on the Mac and instead is relegated to games and simple utilities that fit nicely inside this model.

Very very popular apps like:

  Chrome   
  Photoshop/Adobe CS   
  Fusion/Parallels   
  Microsoft Office   
  Text Editors   
  FTP Clients   
  Dropbox

All need to be procured and installed outside the app store. While it's not impossible to imagine some of these asking for the temporary exception and getting in, they would all have to remove features or heavily modify themselves to comply with the rules.

The Mac App Store loses a bit of its allure when you get your new MacBook Air [even as a non developer] and can't find basics like Chrome or Dropbox or Microsoft Office in there.

[Keyframe]

The Mac App Store loses a bit of its allure when you get your new MacBook Air [even as a non developer] and can't find basics like Chrome or Dropbox or Microsoft Office in there.

I can testify about that. I just bought MBA recently and opened up App Store out of curiosity, however almost all of software I needed I bought at writer's store (apparently there is final draft now in app store, but I bought directly from Final Draft). Same goes for Office, Chrome, Dropbox, etc...

[smacktoward]

Pretend I'm Apple answering these questions for a moment...

> Chrome

"Safari."

> Photoshop/Adobe CS

"Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut? Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?"

> Fusion/Parallels

> Text Editors

> FTP Clients

"We're in the consumer products business, not the 'tools for nerds' business. Ask an XServe customer if you want more information."

> Microsoft Office

"We could care less if we sell boring-ass business software into enterprises."

> Dropbox

"iCloud."

[archgrove]

Or, far more accurately, "You can get these all apps from the developers directly. We don't support them on the Mac App Store at this time, and we don't discuss future product directions".

[drivebyacct2]

Two and half, three years ago, people predicted this move for OS X after the locked down nature of the iPhone really took hold. There are people that swore up and down that signed applications would never come to OS X and that there would never be a walled ecosystem on a non-iOS Mac product. Now we know this to be blatantly false. Apple's biggest money comes from devices that have an exclusively walled ecosystem. It seems pretty clear that they want users using what they provide to them. I don't think it's incredibly inaccurate to say that they don't care that they're not supporting major competing applications.

[archgrove]

Wait, what? Who claimed that signed applications won't come to OS X? Windows has had them for years. People said that OS X would never be limited to App Store purchases only and that's still the case. In fact, lots of people expected the default to be "App Store curated only, with an off switch. Instead, we got the comparatively surprising "Signed only with no checks on what's signed, with easy to use off switch" (i.e. app by app exemptions even for full lockdown mode).

Apple's money comes from selling a cohesive experience. That, on iOS, that's been helped by a "walled garden" approach does not indicate that the same approach will make OS X better. Some people have been crying wolf since iOS 1.0 about the demise of the open Mac platform. They were wrong about Snow Leopard, they were wrong about Lion, and they're wrong about Mountain Lion. It's beginning to sound like a certain boy and a certain wolf.

[drivebyacct2]

How can you say they're completely wrong? Every iteration brings in more iOS features, often with no way to opt-out or the option is buried away or hidden in a plist setting. Mission Control versus the old Expose? App persisting (both in memory and) state. Not showing hidden files in Finder. More iCloud integration at seemingly every turn in Mountain Lion.

It's clear that Apple is making OS X more and more and more like iOS. I think you're right the loud-mouth "DOOM" scare posts are a bit silly and I hope I'm not coming across that way. I just think that people are accepting this when they wouldn't have imagined OS X looking like it will soon with Mountain Lion a year or two.

Sigh, if you're going to downvote, please have the courtesy of telling me what was so inflammatory about my post. Especially if you're going to drive by downvote all of mine in a particular portion of the thread. I mean, good god, this post is simply a listing of observations and then an agreement with the parent that many people draw absurd conclusions.

[batista]

Mission Control versus the old Expose?

Yeah, isn't it much better?

App persisting (both in memory and) state.

Yay, a modern operating system practice finally in OS X. The OS should take advantage of what it can do, to balance apps loading faster and using less resources. For all I care, the ideal would be all apps to be always INSTANT ON.

Not showing hidden files in Finder.

Hidden files shouldn't be an end user's concern.

More iCloud integration at seemingly every turn in Mountain Lion.

Yeah, finally. We don't live with ONE computer anymore, we have several, plus several devices. We want them synced. We want them to backup online. We want a modern Cloud service from Apple.

[batista]

Two and half, three years ago, people predicted this move for OS X after the locked down nature of the iPhone really took hold. There are people that swore up and down that signed applications would never come to OS X and that there would never be a walled ecosystem on a non-iOS Mac product.

Actually, nothing of the kind ever happened. Maybe some idiots did, but security experts have been nagging Apple to add signed apps all the time (Windows had them for ages), and people were also interested in a Mac App Store (not to mention developers, who saw it as another gold rush after the successful iPhone App Store).

Besides, from the very first OS X, say, 10.0.1 to 10.8, nothing has been taken away from user freedom. What exactly can't you do in 10.8 that you could in 10.0.1? They only ADDED stuff, i.e not you can also get stuff from the App Store, and in 10.8 you can also run secure, signed, apps.

Plus, why wouldn't OS X have a "walled garden"? Linux distros had one for ages, we call 'em "package repositories". Yeah, you can install stuff in other ways too in a Linux distro, but then again, so you can on OS X 10.8.

[dmbaggett]

Not sure why you're getting down-voted. For regulators, this will be the key question: is Apple disadvantaging third parties who produce software that competes with their own?

As someone who has lived through a protracted antitrust review (Google acquiring ITA Software, a company I co-founded), I can tell you that there are dozens of hard-working people at the DOJ and FTC ready to make their careers on taking Apple down should Apple give them the tools to do so. A "some animals are more equal than others" app store policy -- whether intended or unintended -- is definitely fodder for a juicy DOJ/FTC lawsuit.

[smackfu]

Really, the average consumer's needs are met by iLife + iWork.

That gives a photo editor, a movie editor, spreadsheet, and word processor.

[lazerwalker]

The problem with iWork is interoperability with MS Office. I recently got my parents set up with a new iMac and had them buy iWork instead of MS Office. They quickly switched back to MS Office after getting frustrated at having to export their Pages docs as Word docs every time instead of saving, and dealing with formatting loss when importing from Doc into Pages.

iWork is a much better and more user-friendly set of software than MS Office (unless you're an Excel power-user, in which case the OS X version of Excel probably isn't cutting it for you either), but it's tough to recommend it for non-technical people who need to work with Windows folk.

[batista]

Photoshop/Adobe CS "Creatives? Did you see what we did to Final Cut?

What DID they do to Final Cut? They spend tons of money and engineering time to rewrite the app from scratch with a modern codebase and added new innovative features. The got it to 64bit, they added the magnetic timeline (HUGE timesaver), the improved tons of workflow stuff, they made it take advantage of multiple cores, and they made it work with files in whatever format they are in to begin with.

In the process, as with any version 1.0 app, FPCX lost a few of the features that the old, bloated, version of FCP had. Some because you just cannot just scratch from scratch and replicate absolutely everything at once, and others because they don't make much sense moving forward. Some of those features, like multicam editing, they delivered in subsequent minor versions (of which there have been 3 already).

That is much more than what Adobe does, which is incrementally adding a few features, without ever rethinking their apps, and keeps adding bloat upon bloat (Flash based custom panels, anyone?) to the same 10 or 20 year old codebase. Apple betted on the future, Adobe plays it safe.

So, I beg to differ in respect to FCP X.

Have you noticed how little we talk about the Mac Pro anymore?"

And why should they? A quad core iMac is just as capable for the needs of 90% of creatives, and in fact, if you looked at any design studio in the past 2-3 years you were more likely to find one of those than a Mac Pro or a G5.

They also know that they sell a very small amount of those Pro machines, and it's not like Intel is making new chips for them all the time.

Besides, Thunderbird, the Apple/Intel interconnect perfectly suited for professionals and creatives that no other PC vendor took the time and effort to create, solves most of the connectivity issues that an iMac (or even a MacBook Pro laptop) had related to a Mac Pro.