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Comment by yapcguy | Hacker News Reader

"We are not allowed to distribute updates through other channels to apps which were purchased from the App Store."

The solution is simple.

All Mac developers should stop selling through the App Store, regain control of the distribution channel, and leave the Mac App Store barren of quality applications.

Until Mac developers have leverage, Apple will continue taking their 30% cut and enforcing rules which suit them and not the developers.

EDIT:

Just wanted to add...

What are developers going to do when Apple says every single new API in Mavericks can only be used if the app is sold through the Mac App Store? This has already happened with the iCloud SDK, so it's likely they will continue on this path.

What if one day Apple says you can only have a developer certificate if your apps are sold exclusively through the Mac App Store?

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You don't have to wait for Mavericks, it has already happened. Apps that are sold through the App Store can not make use of the the media keys on Apple keyboards, which is why VLC can use them and other apps can't.

Edit: other than iTunes

Yep, it's a double-edged sword.

The App Store may offer things like the iCloud SDK but will restrict apps from using features that compete with Apples own apps, as well as any cool hacks which apps outside the App Store are free to make use of.

My take is that Apple is herding developers into the App Store, enticing them with SDK features and the promise of riches, and at some point they will change the default gatekeeper setting so that users see great big warning signs and are too scared of running non App Store software.

We're probably still a few years away from this happening, but the writing is on the wall.

Big fat warning is already the default, isn't it?

By default it only warns if the app is unsigned.

... or switch back to Linux, and just download everything you need, without encumbrances like this. I recently switched back on all of my OSX and Windows machine, and it feels great. Only through years of contributions to open source projects, and hanging my head in shame can I ever be redeemed. Oh, and Steam is only going to get better!

I still haven't found a linux distro that doesn't eventually resort to me fudging with xrandr for a week trying to get multiple monitors working correctly. Granted, this was 3 years ago. Have any linux distros solved the problem of configuring multiple monitors using a gui yet?

> Have any linux distros solved the problem of configuring multiple monitors using a gui yet?

For two monitors on one video card, things are pretty okay on Ubuntu and derivatives. More than that, especially 3+ with non-uniform geometries, and you will have fun. If you have multiple video cards, you will have even more fun.

"fun"

I have two nVidia cards in SLI powering 3 monitors.

Setup was pretty simple using the binary nVidia drivers on Kubuntu, 0 config file wrangling.

Now, having those three monitors in non-uniform geometries is something I wouldn't even consider tackling

[EDIT]

Kubuntu 12.04

All monitors in a single X Session and automatic application window sizing works as you would expect in KDE

(i.e. Maximising a window maximises to the current monitor only and being able to drag to right side of one monitor causes the window to use up half of the current monitor)

Can you get them all in the same X session? I've never tried SLI, I generally just upgrade to a beefier main card and use a second card to drive extra monitors. I have an HD6970 and an HD6450 on 4 monitors that work great under OS X (Hackintosh'd) and Windows and things go extremely sideways under Ubuntu.

I had 3 monitors / 2 Nvidia cards working fine in Kubuntu 11.04 and 12.04. All one X session. It was easy. But that was with uniform geometry. (I had 3 identical monitors.) Haven't tried non-uniform.

Ah well, Radeon with Crossfire under Linux is... yea, good luck. All I can say is nvidia in SLi works fine.

Define correctly. Multi-monitors worked just by plugging them in, and I could configure the mode (clone, extend, etc) using a GUI panel.

I did use xrandr to setup the virtual screen so that I could define the exact position of one screen relative to the other, which enabled objects to continue in an horizontal line across monitors.

My understanding is that the driver-makers that cooperate with Xorg and the kernel implement the official multiple-monitor stuff nicely and everything more or less Just Works. Unfortunately, that's pretty much only Intel. nVidia and AMD like to do everything themselves rather than cooperate, and so things like multiple-monitor support can require driver-specific config tools, or messing with config-files to tell the drivers to emulate the standard interfaces so the standard tools will work.

I use two monitors with an nVidia card, and it just works. You can configure stuff through nVidia's GUI application, if you want to.

My personal experience over the last couple of years:

I ran Gentoo for years, and my experience was similar to yours. I could get things to work but it took a lot of frustrating trial and error, and then periodically a version upgrade would break everything and I'd get to start over. About a year and a half ago I finally got sick of it and installed Kubuntu.

Kubuntu 12.04 + 2 monitors + AMD proprietary drivers = you get to choose between accelerated OpenGL and multiple monitor support. You can't have both at the same time. (At least I couldn't, with the video card and driver versions I had 6 months ago. I spent many hours trying, then remembered I have more money than time and bought a $90 Nvidia card.)

Kubuntu 12.04 + 2 monitors + Nvidia proprietary drivers = easy. The GUI worked, first try, no problems. The only goofy thing was that my left monitor showed up on the right side, giving me a choice between physically moving the monitors or changing the default positions in the GUI. I changed the defaults in the GUI.

Also, on my former work machine, Kubuntu 11.04 and 12.04 + 2 Nvidia cards + 3 monitors = easy. (Some cow-orkers had 2 Nvidia cards and 4 monitors, also easy.)

I haven't tried newer versions of Kubuntu on a multi-monitor box, so it's possible (but not likely) they've gone backwards.

> The only goofy thing was that my left monitor showed up on the right side, giving me a choice between physically moving the monitors or changing the default positions in the GUI

You could have switched the cables. Just saying :)

Depends on if both cables were the same type. Possible the monitor ports were different?

Different cable types. One analog, one DVI.

I have 3 monitors over 2 video cards on Fedora 19 - works fine & as one would expect.

I used Linux as my main OS for 7 years before switching to a mac. I just got fed up with all the hardware compatibility problems and stuff that didn't work without spending hours messing around with library dependencies etc. I'm not going back in a hurry.

I switched to linux and it was great. but one thing keeps bugging me. Every now and then, after and update my nvidia-drivers are lost, I loose my second screen and have to go nuts, while searching for a way to tell my laptop, that there is a secondary screen (that is much bigger and better and makes working with the laptop ok).

So this is the only thing in my experience, that really sucks. The rest (compared to WIN) is really, really great.

How long ago did you switch back, because recently this seems to happen less and less. If you're smart and pick a laptop which has proven linux compatibility it really doesn't happen anymore.

I remember 5 years ago getting speakers to mute on my laptop when I plugged headphones in was impossible but I haven't seen a similar problem in my last few laptops.

I have no problem with using Linux instead of Mac OS X. I would love to in fact, but I have a laptop. One of the greatest features of my laptop is that I can close it up and take it with me. I can then open it up and continue work.

The problem I run into with Linux is that sleep, suspend, and hibernate do not seem to work or work reliably. This is what is holding me back from jumping to Linux for the most part.

Your solution is bonkers and has zero chance of happening.

You know what Valve charges to put you on the Steam store? 30% or more. You know why some people do it? Because they make more money doing it. You know why some people don't? Because they make more money not doing it.

valve doesn't limit you on the functionality that your game can use.

That's bullshit, they have all kinds of limits on what they allow.

Such as?

Yep. My business recently ported (well, _I_ ported) our main product from Windows to OSX. After reading up a bit on the App Store and the Apple developer ecosystem, we decided to completely avoid all of it and distribute our software on our own. Having a third party dictate major business decisions in this manner is absurd and ought to be avoided when possible. It's not clear what we'll do if Apple takes steps to force developers to join up and use the App Store (which isn't outside the realm of possibility).

Good decision.

It's quite a pathetic situation when Mac developers have to resort to filing bug reports, yes bug reports, to try and address the issue of upgrade pricing.

https://twitter.com/danielpunkass/status/375377881012396032

What an incredibly simple solution you've devised. I'm not sure why it hasn't been adopted!? It's so simple!

Either way, I've alerted the committee of the Nobel Prize of Economics about your discovery.

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