Somehow hackers are pirating iPhone apps right now (you can find pirated apps for free to install on jailbroken iphones). I don't know how they are doing it, but if the Mac App Store will work the same way, they've already solved it.
This is all such a distraction from what we all should really be working on: enhancing the web to become the desktop. I really hope the Mac App Store does not take off, as it is a setback for the web to revolutionize desktops.
There are several main attractions of web apps over desktop apps:
* Easier to update/prototype/iterate/etc
* Cross-platform by nature unless you do something stupid
* Easier to charge (piracy is pretty much impossible)
The Mac App Store solves at least the last one. For quite a few developers, that may be enough to make the Mac market more appealing than the web market, which also has its share of disadvantages, such as the difficulty of creating a really great user experience, cross-browser issues, limitations of javascript and browser and the like, hosting costs, and so on.
But I don't want them to be sexy. I want the web to be sexy. And it can happen. The disadvantages of web development are shrinking quickly as javascript is getting incredible attention and browsers are converging on standards. And the web has the greatest benefit of all: no proprietary-ness, no walled gardens. I know that's overused, but it's very true.
Web apps typically end up storing all your data on somebody else's system, and they can limit or revoke your access at any time. I don't see how that's less proprietary than local apps.
This is a matter of preference, but I'm glad that the App Store reinvigorated client apps. I don't see web apps as an inherent good. The best web app interfaces today barely approximate the usability of the desktop software I had on my PC 15 years ago. I'm not thrilled about the ads, either. I'll happily pay for client apps, and I'm thankful the app stores make that possible.
if i'm not mistaken, on the iphone they've just disabled the kernel checks that require binaries to be signed before running.
i'm not sure how apple is doing it on osx because it has to run lots of binaries that will never be signed.
But then again, it seems like a lot of people have issues paying $3 for an app on a device that conceivably costs hundreds of dollars.
It's frankly kind of pathetic.
- A few major developers will get on board with this, and publish their mainstream titles via the App Store. This will lend credibility.
- Indie developers will jump on next, seeing another low-friction distribution medium that gives them more eyeballs (at least at first) than they were previously getting.
- Enter the "fart apps", ie. low-value applications that do one thing (poorly), but only cost $0.99 or are free, providing downward pricing pressure for everyone else in the App Store.
- Another OSX release comes and goes, this time with warnings to users whenever they install "unsigned" applications. Developers are encouraged to get Apple to sign their apps prior to shipping, even if they're a boxed app on the shelf, to prevent the user from seeing the big scary warning. Conveniently, this is a very similar process to submitting an app to the App Store; App Store distribution increases.
- A few more OSX releases ensue, Apple stops signing applications that aren't also distributed via the App Store. Distribution of software outside of the App Store (boxed software, online direct-to-user, competing digital distribution like Steam) begins to wither on MacOS.
I'd hope it goes without saying that I'd like to be proven wrong about the above.
Unlikely. A fart app has comic value on a phone because you can pull it out at the bar and use it to show off your iPhone while you're drunk. The comic value is seductive enough while drunk that your friends might buy it too, hence perpetuating the plague.
I'm not sure how laptop or desktop based fart apps would propagate, however. Would you download, even for free, a application that produces fart noises on your laptop? Dubious.
The rest of your scenario doesn't worry me so much. What does worry me is if they build hooks into the OS so that signed apps distributed through the app-store have greater privileges (e.g. with respect to playing DVDs) than other apps. This would finally be a way in for the so-called "Trusted Computing" initiative which would lock down your own machine against you (unless you jailbreak your mac, which seems just wrong).
Even with that, people will still find ways around it, but given that Apple did at some point agree to implement DRM restrictions on music files distributed through iTunes I suspect they'd also implement Trusted Computing with a bit of arm twisting from the MPAA. That would suck a whole lot more than the tragic disappearance of boxed software (good riddance).
They're flat out saying the opposite; that Mac App Store applications will be pretty much limited to unprivileged user stuff (the overwhelming majority of what I do).
I bet we'll see a ton of developers hitting it from day one, hoping to get in before everyone else does and the market gets saturated.
The install base will start out at zero initially and quickly rise, but I'm sure 90%+ of the people who install Lion (by definition early adoptors) are going to check it out and many of them will buy something.
I say this as someone who's planning to release an App for it, for what it's worth.
Just taking the same share ratio of 70 / 30 from the mobile to the desktop space also doesn't seem favorable, since the mobile space used to be a much more walled garden, where it was an accomplishment to make distribution work at all. That is not the case on the desktop.
How about "appliances?" Really, the ordinary non-tech end user wants something more like an appliance, and less like a software project.
Counterpoint: Now pirates just need to break one DRM system, and you as developer have no way of fighting back.
Because it is there. People do it in part for the challenge, and in part to send a message along the lines of "you can't stop us this way".
I'm pretty sure it's possible to pirate Steam games. I know it is possible to pirate iPhone apps. I wonder what makes this blogger thinks Apple will to better than with this app store.
That said, I do think that platforms like this reduce piracy in general. Gabe Newell, in reference to steam, said something like "People didn't buy games because piracy was beating us at a service level" (not a direct quote). Having an app store like this reduces the headache of having to go to the store in some ways.
You can pirate nearly any game at the cost of loosing "official" multiplayer.This goes all the back to the first Starcraft or even earlier. But you can play on non-official (private) servers. I played pirated TF2 on a private server for a few weeks before my Orange Box arrived in the mail (yeah, old fashioned).
Also, it sounds like the author's never looked at pirating iPhone apps - iPhone apps are more tied to an unique identifier, and that hasn't stopped iPhone apps from being pirated. The level of effort the masses are willing to put into getting a $0.99 app for free does more to limit piracy than any technical countermeasures.
I also assume that every Mac is going to have to be assigned a UDID now, unless Apple is completely reinventing their DRM scheme. Regardless, the piracy options for Mac apps are almost certainly going to be similar to their iOS cousins, if not a little easier because every Mac is effectively "rooted" out of the box.
2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected.
If they manage to do it in a way similar to steam, they'll be tremendously successful. The only problem is that a lot of people don't view games the same way as apps. I have friends who don't torrent games like MW2 & indie games but they end up pirating office for mac. In fact, I would say over 50-60% of my friends have torrented copies of office. Then again, my friends probably aren't representative of most people. While the majority of people don't bother pirating apps on the iOS, I wonder how much this will change with bigger and more expensive apps on the Mac App Store, like with mac office.
One convenience with something like the App Store is that as long as you sign in, you have access to your apps on your machines. More importantly, it's available online digitally so you can redownload it anytime you want without the worry of losing your dmgs. That alone is a major plus for me and probably will get me to buy more software than I usually do.
And DRM systems are always going to be broken and again, the bigger question is how will Apple execute this?
I still have a sense that people view games on steam vs normal apps differently though. I know a lot of people who don't feel right pirating certain games, but will gladly pirate other apps. I guess we will see when the App Store launches.
The app store does the same thing. Linux distros get to say what apps are put in their repos based on arbitrary rules. I think a lot of the FUD and anti-Apple rhetoric is just that (and this is coming from a guy who doesn't like Apple!)
The more important issue, and one I think SOME pundits are getting right: Let Apple have their App Store, as long as they allow people to run arbitrary (read: any) programs on their Mac. If they start locking down the Mac computers like they do the iPhones, THEN will be the time to attack Jobs' character with more vitriol than even Zuckerberg has been getting.
OSes like OS X and Windows have been missing this for a long time. I'm very curious to see how it will work out for Apple.
Then again, if they do not allow it, would they be subject to anti-trust (or is it monopolistic) practices?
As a proof of concept, it's already been done and there is nothing to suggest that it wouldn't work for Apple and in verticals outside of gaming.
