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Comment by song | Hacker News Reader

That looks very good, I just wish I could buy it outside of the mac app store. I really dislike buying for the app store and much prefer buying directly from the company...

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Can you explain why? Curious as this differs from most people I've seen.

I agree. I've downloaded the trial, and if I like what I see (and, of course, the price is right) I'll buy a copy, but only if I can buy one directly from you, not via the App store. The App store has many technical limitations, and it also means the consumer is effectively just licensing software from Apple rather than owning it outright.

> it also means the consumer is effectively just licensing software from Apple rather than owning it outright

Isn't almost all software licensed rather than ownership sold? This isn't unique to the App Store.

Sure, most (if not all) software comes with a licence. Maybe I'm not using the best terminology. Maybe I mean "subscribing to", although that implies regular payment. Either way, what I'm referring to is the fact that Apple becomes a point in the critical path to just running your software. Whether intentional, or accidental, Apple can remotely prevent you from running the software you've paid for (e.g. [1]).

And I'm not even beginning to cover the terrible App Store app itself or the enormous cut Apple takes from independent developers.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/12/apple-user...

As far as I know, Apple can decide to shut down any app on their appstore if they wanted. Refer to the flux incident.

So I buy an app, and they can shut down the .app program on my Mac?

Theoretically yes.

For me: If I have a copy of the software I have it forever. With the app store I only have it as long as Apple permits. Using an older version of OS X can create issues as well, if the developer decides not to support it. If for some reason they remove it from the store I have to hope the developers make it available outside that channel. It's certainly happened with iOS apps. I'm open to being proven wrong though.

In that way its similar to how music used to be. Had tapes; they went away. Got the LP. Gone but not forgotten. Bought the CD. They went away. Bought the DVD. All those stores are closed. So MP3. Or streaming.

Even before that you had the option of buying sheet music and playing it on an instrument, but that's a significant barrier to entry. And I guess the scores would wither away in a few generations.

Digital music actually became more flexible when it went from DRM protected music to MP3s. At least with that I can backup and restore it as it pleases me. But I get your overall point. It just doesn't change my preference.

True! A few months ago I wanted to install Aperture on a new laptop; since it's been pulled from the App store I couldn't find it anymore, and this is what customer support told me:

  I've reviewed your request, but as much I would like to restore the item for you,
  I won't be able to download "Aperture" to your account because the amount of time
  that has passed since this purchase was made prohibits us from restoring it.

Goodbye App store.

Well, unless you just want to install Aperture to export stuff out, that's for the best.

Aperture has been EOLed -- it's not advisable to install it even if you could, as you'd be installing deprecated software that can stop working at any future OS update.

That wouldn't be much different than any software company not allowing you to download their old program anymore.

Not quite the same. At least you'd have the option to run the old software in a virtual machine or on an old spare piece of hardware.

It should be up to the buyer whether or not they choose to take that risk, not to the seller to paternalistically make that decision for them.

Errr, isn't traditionally the seller that decides, if, when and for how long they want to sell their wares?

But in this case, the buyer already purchased the product.

And lost it, and was looking for a replacement.

> I wanted to install Aperture on a new laptop; since it's been pulled from the App store I couldn't find it anymore i.e., bought a license and installed the application, but wasn’t given a legal way to do the exact same thing on another computer—one of the rights Apple grants to users of the App Store; nothing lost, no replacement needed

It's this kind of stuff that has me boggled that they charge the same prices for apps in the store vs. apps on media or downloaded directly. Tha app store version is more conventient, maybe, but fundamentally less featured. I'm essentially buying just a license, not the app itself.

I have the same story - bought Sketch 2 in France for 50 euros, moved to US as they updated to version 3. Can't get the old version back (it just doesn't appear in itunes at all - tried to get this resolved with no luck) and my only option is to re-purchase the product.

My understanding is that for both the Mac and iOS app stores, the Purchases tab has all the apps you've bought, whether they're currently available on the store or not. This is how I re-download older operating systems or previous releases of apps. That said, I can imagine Apple also having a parallel system that takes the app away from there too -- but I don't think this is the default.

"Using an older version of OS X can create issues as well, if the developer decides not to support it."

I fail to see how this isn't a problem for stuff sold outside the App Store as well.

I like the ability to install apps from the Homebrew Cask Tap [1] to automate my laptop setup where possible. Apps that are only available in the App Store aren't usually installable this way.

[1] https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask

True, but they're usually easy enough to install themselves.

Sorry hadn't seen your message earlier. Everyone pretty much covered it but basically I have multiple reasons why:

- an app on the app store can be pulled out at any moment.

- I can't backup a specific version of the software that I like (I've seen before software become overly bloated in future versions forcing me to keep using an older version)

- I do not want to support Apple's policies on the app store and do not want to ever end up having a system that's as restricted as IOS (although if that happens I'd jump ship back to Linux so I guess my non app store purchases would become useless anyway)

- my experience with ios app store reviews told me that Apple rules are idiotic, the review experience is poorly managed and they don't give a fuck about keeping developers happy now that iphones are massively successful (very different than when they were trying to court developers back in 2005ish...). I don't want my money to help finance this with the 30% cut that Apple takes.

It all really boils to control, being able to keep backup of the software I use, having access to that software even if the developer stops selling it for whatever reason. I dislike the fact that end users have less and less control over the platform they buy and I do not want to be part of that.

I'm a tad hypocritical since I use a mac and I have an iphone lying around to test and software dev on but buying on the app store is where I draw the line.

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