7 ms·

The worst part about this is all the problems are easily solved if Apple simply put the resources into it. * The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piec

The worst part about this is all the problems are easily solved if Apple simply put the resources into it. * The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it. * Sandboxing is great, but there will always be things that fall outside the sandbox. Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that says "My app needs to opt-out of these parts of sandboxing". Put those apps through a much more strenuous review process. * Relatedly, add more entitlements to the Sandbox, even if they also trigger a more in-depth review. * Both iOS and the Mac app stores desperately need feedback mechanisms and some basic customer support tools. This has been obvious since at least iOS v4. I can only imagine this is due to Apple's inability to do good server-side software (and the organization doesn't value it like they value client software). This should automatically give you at least a private way to send a message to users leaving a bad review, then prompt the user to update their review if the response helped them. Asking users to review is hard enough... getting them to update a 1-star review is nearly impossible. * Hire more reviewers. There is no excuse for reviews taking so damn long.

dangero 11y ago
"The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it." Native app is not really a black and white concept when you're talking about an app that mainly just interprets and displays live data it receives. If it's not html, then it's going to be xml/json/some other markup with a custom presentation layer on top. Why would that be better? In this case I just don't think you can point the finger at webview vs native as a problem or a solution. Yes, the app may be crap, but that seems mostly unrelated to the technology used to build it. I'm guessing it's more a factor of lack of resources, team member quality, management, or inter-departmental communication issues in a large corporation.
- janfoeh 11y ago
  You're probably right. I would still agree with the parent in that they feel like a badly done webview wrapper, because the symptoms are so similar. iTunes Store, App Store, MAS, Apple Music — there is definitely a pattern there, at least on the desktop. I find them all similarly clunky, slow, ugly and unpleasant to use. Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot.
  - ethbro 11y ago
    > Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot. Because when you have a captured userbase, there's no incentive to improve / innovate?
    - janfoeh 11y ago
      Even if you believe that Apple as a whole doesn't have the drive to make stuff as good as they can (fair, although I believe otherwise), and even if you believe they have a captured audience (how?) — do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Even accepting everything else, that seems like a huge incentive to me not to get complacent.
      - zdw 11y ago
        > do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Seeing as in 2009 they had >90% of the market of PC's above $1000 (see here: http://betanews.com/2009/07/22/apple-has-91-of-market-for-1-000-pcs-says-npd/ http://betanews.com/2009/07/22/apple-has-91-of-market-for-1-... ) which is the profitable part of the market, probably they are.
      - ethbro 11y ago
        Not sure where you're getting 15% from: the vast majority of articles I read have Apple's app stores generating far more revenue than the competition's. So yes, I believe Apple is probably perfectly happy (in an upper-echelon corporate strategy sense) sitting on their cash cow as opposed to fighting it out for less profitable market share.
        janfoeh 11y ago
        The number is from Gartner for Q3 this year - for whatever they are worth :) http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617
      - 11y ago
- rimantas 11y ago
  xml/json as uses now is data transfer format, not some UI markup. As for why would it be better — because Cocoa is light years ahead in UI libraries and optimizations compared to web mess.
  - nailer 11y ago
    The app store has never felt slower than native apps for me. Instagram also seems to do pretty well.
    - krschultz 11y ago
      Instagram is a native app.
      - s73v3r 11y ago
        Instagram's UI is made in HTML.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ThomPete 11y ago
I agree with you on almost everything beside the web view part. In my understanding web view is used because it's a very advanced layout engine and way easier and more flexible to deal with than to set all this up using the native layout engine. Edit: For clarity.
- 0x4a42 11y ago
  Is it supposed to be a joke/sarcasm?
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    No but perhaps I wasn't being clear what I meant sorry. What I mean is that using web view make it way easier to layout out networked assets. At least thats my experience having worked with both.
    - rimantas 11y ago
      You had some reaaaaally reallly weird experience then. I don't even understand what you mean by "laying out networked assets". With proper architecture your UI won't even know where assets come from.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        What I mean is that laying out using xcode isn't as easy as using a web view for the kind of layout that are needed for something like the app store. Not sure why this is such a crazy thing to say that I need to be down voted for it.
        alextgordon 11y ago
        100% with you. I love AppKit, but the amount of code required to make a simple custom button is insane. What is 5 seconds of CSS takes a good 30 minutes of wrangling with NSButton/NSButtonCell. The very existence of PaintCode is an indictment. It doesn't make sense to say that WebViews aren't "native". With a little effort they can be made to blend in perfectly. It's the same CoreGraphics.
tmd83 11y ago
Its also very slow and whole UI is extremely buggy. Buttons would often be in improper state, download would start very slow, sometimes progress bar wouldn't show up even though download is happening. Resume would fail, caching would fail and almost nothing would give you any reasonable error message or something to solve the problem. It;s probably the buggiest piece of software I have ever had to use. The backend service might be good (or not) but the basic store app feels like something written by an student.
duaneb 11y ago
> Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that says "My app needs to opt-out of these parts of sandboxing". Put those apps through a much more strenuous review process. I disagree with this. I like the sandbox constraint; i don't mind opting out of the app store if my needs necessitate dropping the sandbox. I also think the interface of the app store is the least of its concerns. Everything else you said is on fleek.
- archagon 11y ago
  By Apple's own analogy, Macs are "trucks". So why cater to the non-power users when you know (by virtue of the fact that your other platform is strictly sandboxed) that practically all your power users are on the Mac? Strict sandboxing is not a good fit for the Mac.
  - duaneb 11y ago
    No, I think power users are not a good fit for the apple store. I don't see a huge problem with downloading signed code from another site.
mcphage 11y ago
I think the reason it feels so sluggish is that the servers it pulls data from take so long to respond. I don't think a native view would help with that, but it's absolutely something they need to fix.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  Agreed. The iTunes Store has always felt extremely slow to me, even back in the day when it was implemented as native views.
charlesism 11y ago
* There's also the 30% cut, which makes no sense when you're talking about a well-known and well-trusted app like Sketch. Nobody fears installing Sketch outside of the MAS, so BC may as well host it themselves. I imagine the average new Sketch user discovers the app via recommendation, or article on the web, so BC will likely make more money away from the MAS. Especially when you factor in the improvements: faster bugfixes, and new features they can without sand-boxing.
- kalleboo 11y ago
  Also for software more expensive than about $10, a trial is a must, and the Mac App Store doesn't allow for trials. So the user will seek out the trial version on their website, and then why even bother with the App Store?

dangero 11y ago

"The actual MAS store app itself is a horrible piece of garbage wrapping a bunch of web views. Just make it a real native app and rewrite it." Native app is not really a black and white concept when you're talking about an app that mainly just interprets and displays live data it receives. If it's not html, then it's going to be xml/json/some other markup with a custom presentation layer on top. Why would that be better? In this case I just don't think you can point the finger at webview vs native as a problem or a solution. Yes, the app may be crap, but that seems mostly unrelated to the technology used to build it. I'm guessing it's more a factor of lack of resources, team member quality, management, or inter-departmental communication issues in a large corporation.

janfoeh 11y ago
You're probably right. I would still agree with the parent in that they feel like a badly done webview wrapper, because the symptoms are so similar. iTunes Store, App Store, MAS, Apple Music — there is definitely a pattern there, at least on the desktop. I find them all similarly clunky, slow, ugly and unpleasant to use. Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot.
- ethbro 11y ago
  > Apple almost seems to be inherently incapable of creating a decent store front, and I am curious as to why they have that organizational blindspot. Because when you have a captured userbase, there's no incentive to improve / innovate?
  - janfoeh 11y ago
    Even if you believe that Apple as a whole doesn't have the drive to make stuff as good as they can (fair, although I believe otherwise), and even if you believe they have a captured audience (how?) — do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Even accepting everything else, that seems like a huge incentive to me not to get complacent.
    - zdw 11y ago
      > do you indeed believe that Apple is happy with 15% (US) market share for desktops and laptops? Seeing as in 2009 they had >90% of the market of PC's above $1000 (see here: http://betanews.com/2009/07/22/apple-has-91-of-market-for-1-000-pcs-says-npd/ http://betanews.com/2009/07/22/apple-has-91-of-market-for-1-... ) which is the profitable part of the market, probably they are.
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Not sure where you're getting 15% from: the vast majority of articles I read have Apple's app stores generating far more revenue than the competition's. So yes, I believe Apple is probably perfectly happy (in an upper-echelon corporate strategy sense) sitting on their cash cow as opposed to fighting it out for less profitable market share.
      - janfoeh 11y ago
        The number is from Gartner for Q3 this year - for whatever they are worth :) http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617 http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3146617
    - 11y ago
rimantas 11y ago
xml/json as uses now is data transfer format, not some UI markup. As for why would it be better — because Cocoa is light years ahead in UI libraries and optimizations compared to web mess.
- nailer 11y ago
  The app store has never felt slower than native apps for me. Instagram also seems to do pretty well.
  - krschultz 11y ago
    Instagram is a native app.
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      Instagram's UI is made in HTML.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ThomPete 11y ago

I agree with you on almost everything beside the web view part. In my understanding web view is used because it's a very advanced layout engine and way easier and more flexible to deal with than to set all this up using the native layout engine. Edit: For clarity.

0x4a42 11y ago
Is it supposed to be a joke/sarcasm?
- ThomPete 11y ago
  No but perhaps I wasn't being clear what I meant sorry. What I mean is that using web view make it way easier to layout out networked assets. At least thats my experience having worked with both.
  - rimantas 11y ago
    You had some reaaaaally reallly weird experience then. I don't even understand what you mean by "laying out networked assets". With proper architecture your UI won't even know where assets come from.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      What I mean is that laying out using xcode isn't as easy as using a web view for the kind of layout that are needed for something like the app store. Not sure why this is such a crazy thing to say that I need to be down voted for it.
      - alextgordon 11y ago
        100% with you. I love AppKit, but the amount of code required to make a simple custom button is insane. What is 5 seconds of CSS takes a good 30 minutes of wrangling with NSButton/NSButtonCell. The very existence of PaintCode is an indictment. It doesn't make sense to say that WebViews aren't "native". With a little effort they can be made to blend in perfectly. It's the same CoreGraphics.

tmd83 11y ago

Its also very slow and whole UI is extremely buggy. Buttons would often be in improper state, download would start very slow, sometimes progress bar wouldn't show up even though download is happening. Resume would fail, caching would fail and almost nothing would give you any reasonable error message or something to solve the problem. It;s probably the buggiest piece of software I have ever had to use. The backend service might be good (or not) but the basic store app feels like something written by an student.

duaneb 11y ago

> Have a "Power User / Developer Tools" category and associated checkbox in iTC that says "My app needs to opt-out of these parts of sandboxing". Put those apps through a much more strenuous review process. I disagree with this. I like the sandbox constraint; i don't mind opting out of the app store if my needs necessitate dropping the sandbox. I also think the interface of the app store is the least of its concerns. Everything else you said is on fleek.

archagon 11y ago
By Apple's own analogy, Macs are "trucks". So why cater to the non-power users when you know (by virtue of the fact that your other platform is strictly sandboxed) that practically all your power users are on the Mac? Strict sandboxing is not a good fit for the Mac.
- duaneb 11y ago
  No, I think power users are not a good fit for the apple store. I don't see a huge problem with downloading signed code from another site.

mcphage 11y ago

I think the reason it feels so sluggish is that the servers it pulls data from take so long to respond. I don't think a native view would help with that, but it's absolutely something they need to fix.

kalleboo 11y ago
Agreed. The iTunes Store has always felt extremely slow to me, even back in the day when it was implemented as native views.

charlesism 11y ago

* There's also the 30% cut, which makes no sense when you're talking about a well-known and well-trusted app like Sketch. Nobody fears installing Sketch outside of the MAS, so BC may as well host it themselves. I imagine the average new Sketch user discovers the app via recommendation, or article on the web, so BC will likely make more money away from the MAS. Especially when you factor in the improvements: faster bugfixes, and new features they can without sand-boxing.

kalleboo 11y ago
Also for software more expensive than about $10, a trial is a must, and the Mac App Store doesn't allow for trials. So the user will seek out the trial version on their website, and then why even bother with the App Store?