It’s not just the geeks like us | Hacker News Reader

It’s not just the geeks like us

marco.org

18 pointsrkudeshi5 comments

Marco's follow-up post is only technically correct because he uses words like "most", "many", "probably", and "nearly". In fact, do a Google search for "most many probably nearly" and his post is #6!

He should have just stood by his words. From his follow-up post (quotes from original post):

I’ve gotten a lot of feedback on my Mac App Store post this morning, and I’d like to clarify some points and respond. I did not say or intend to suggest any of these:

1. I will not buy anything from the Mac App Store again.

"But now, I’ve lost all confidence that the apps I buy in the App Store today will still be there next month or next year. The advantages of buying from the App Store are mostly gone now. My confidence in the App Store, as a customer, has evaporated.

Next time I buy an app that’s available both in and out of the Store, I’ll probably choose to buy it directly from the vendor."

2. Most Mac users will stop shopping in the Mac App Store.

"And nearly everyone who’s been burned by sandboxing exclusions — not just the affected apps’ developers, but all of their customers — will make the same choice with their future purchases. To most of these customers, the App Store is no longer a reliable place to buy software."

3. Most developers will stop putting apps in the Mac App Store.

"And with reduced buyer confidence, fewer developers can afford to make their software App Store-only. This even may reduce the long-term success of iCloud and the platform lock-in it could bring for Apple. Only App Store apps can use iCloud, but many Mac developers can’t or won’t use it because of the App Store’s political instability."

I find it strange that people would pooh-pooh Marco's argument away. Marco wrote an article two years ago called "The Mac App Store isn’t for today’s Mac developers" (http://www.marco.org/2010/10/29/the-mac-app-store-isnt-for-t...) so he obviously knows the appeal and potential of the App Store.

If anything, they should hear him out more because he was an early advocate.

I'd like to agree with Marco's argument (and probably do over the long run). At the very least, I certainly hope this particular argument is correct.

But, seriously, the cognitive dissonance on display here is absolutely breathtaking. This is the exact argument Android fans make about iOS. If he wants his argument to be convincing, he needs to address the elephant in the room.

The iOS sandbox is less restrictive in practice than the Mac App Store one. iOS manages to give a perfectly fine user experience by partitioning the user's home directory per application. Getting away with that on the desktop is harder. It's a different paradigm -- very few Android users, I'd bet, interact with the file manager on a regular basis. Every Mac user uses the Finder.

Sure. I'm not saying there aren't arguments to be made about the difference. What I am saying is that Marco needs to actually make one if he wants to be convincing here.

That being said, I'll make two other points:

1. File managers aren't a good example of the benefits of Android's relative lack of restrictions for non-geek users. Good examples are alternative browsers (like Firefox - the best Gingerbread browser, IMO) and alternative, full-featured stores of all kinds (app/books/music/...).

2. Given items like this ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4292754 )suggesting that Apple is trying to bring the iOS file system concepts to the Mac, I don't think I'd base an argument on how today's Mac users use the file system.

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