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Comment by yapcguy | Hacker News Reader

Ken Case is a nice guy, always polite whenever you speak to him. However, someone should do him a favor and tell him that after 5 years of Apple ignoring him, it's obvious he's in an abusive relationship and needs to get out.

OmniGroup was successful before the App Store, and based on the quality of their software, will remain so even if they quit the App Store.

> “Apple is certainly aware of our desire for upgrade pricing,” Case tells me. “It's something I've been asking for since before the launch of the original App Store in 2008. ... “Our relationship with Apple has always been great--and this certainly doesn't change that,” he says. “I don't think they're trying to work against our interests; they just have to decide where to focus their efforts, and our priorities are not always their priorities.”

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How do you go from Apple not including a feature in the MAS (in this case, upgrade pricing) to "abusive relationship?" I and every other small Apple developer would really love some analytics capabilities in the app store, but we don't go around calling its absence "abusive" on Apple's part.

The MAS is just another sales channel and Apple doesn't force you to use it. It's not incumbent on them to add features just because some people want them.

Unless you want your app on iOS at all. Or unless you want your app to work out of the box on any user's machine without scary security warnings.

Please. The wheretos and the whyfors of the negatives of Apple's particular flavor of walled garden have been discussed ad nauseum. You know damn well the problem here isn't that they don't have an upgrade pricing option, the problem is that they came down like a ton of bricks on someone for sidestepping the problem.

That very much is abusive, and "blah blah you have a choice" does not absolve Apple of criticism of this weak policy.

As long as you've built and signed your app with your dev cert gatekeeper will open it with no scary warning -- no? That's always been my experience at least

Assuming that the OS is set to permit developer-signed apps. That's the default for now. If the Mac moves further in the direction of iOS, it might not stay that way.

Even then I don't feel too good about it. You're still relying on Apple's good graces to keep them from revoking your cert.

It's hyperbole sure. But the fact is that Apple's refusal to add upgrade pricing goes directly against Omni's entire raison d'être. They release exquisitely detailed and full-featured apps, and they've been doing so longer than any OS X developer since their roots are back in NeXT.

The current App Store pricing devalues software, it turns it into a disposable commodity to be purchased and discarded. Apple is willing to sacrifice it's own pro apps to this devalued future because that's not where it makes its money anyway and it has some major scar tissue from being held hostage by the likes of Microsoft and Adobe.

You can say it's just another distribution channel, but it's obvious that the App Store is the future, and is by far the most convenient and recommended channel and that will only increase over time. Comparing it to something that is easily provided by third-parties like analytics is to miss the fundamental connection: Omni makes the type of software that App Store pricing makes impossible to create and maintain over time. If this continues the ecosystem will dry up, and the type of pro users who love Omni's stuff will all disappear as well. It's a bitter pill to swallow because they love Apple's tech, but the writing may be on the wall.

Yes, I'm being a little dramatic, but...

Apple does "force" you to use the MAS. You can't use the iCloud APIs unless your app is sold in the MAS which means you also have to accept sandboxing. Who knows what else will be tied to the MAS in the future.

The situation is farcical because developers are paying Apple 30% of their gross revenue for the privilege of a sales channel with no customer information and the spectacle of begging for things like upgrade pricing and analytics.

I actually really like the idea of sandboxing and entitlements for Mac apps. It's appropriate for like 90% of all the apps I run and I'll happily click through a scary warning for the things I don't think ought to run in a sandbox.

For some developers the MAS is a really nice alternative to direct distribution. You don't have to setup a merchant account and deal with all that. Your apps are automatically searchable (if not really discoverable). You have a built-in review/rating system to establish credibility pretty quickly (which absolutely impacts sales). It's not a horrible system, and again, Apple doesn't force you to use it... unless you want to use iCloud, but then again there's nothing stopping you from doing your own cloud sync solution as Omni has done.

Sure, but the rules are completely arbitrary.

What if they suddenly say only apps distributed in the MAS can use AirDrop, CoreData, CoreAnimation, etc.?

It's not as if they will bother telling developers beforehand.

Go look at the Apple developer forums today, under the iOS 7 beta section, people only found out that the iOS App Store allows older versions of apps to be downloaded because 9To5Mac found out about it and published a blog post. No official guidance (as yet) has been given to developers.

This is just FUD. It's clear why sandboxing is required for the MAS - so that users can expect iOS like safety from the apps. It's also clear why MAS is required for iCloud - because otherwise anonymous developers would be able to arbitrarily abuse the storage service.

There is no slippery slope here.

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