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Apple Promotes Jeff Williams to COO, Puts Phil Schiller in Charge of App Store

114 points by Rifu 11y ago

wlesieutre 11y ago
> In addition, Apple says it’s expanding VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller’s duties to now include running the App Store across all Apple platforms. Emphasis mine, this means there's now a visible figure responsible for the Mac App Store. I'm not in Mac development, but by many accounts it's been neglected to the point that the well known software is bailing. Most specific complaints center around the sandbox limitations, but there's also frustration with wondering what you're shelling out such a big chunk of your money for if the store hasn't improved in years. Apple can get away with whatever they want on iOS because there are no other options. On Mac, they can't expect to charge 30% of revenue and have everyone stick around if the service isn't worth it. Example, with many related links at the bottom: https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the-mac-app-store/ https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the-mac-... I don't know what they have planned to fix it, but the timing of this feels like at least a tacit acknowledgement that there's a problem.
- frik 11y ago
  > sandbox It's a security feature of OSX. I would love if Windows has an application sandbox too and show file extension by default. A bad program can destroy everything incl encrypting all your data.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    I'm not saying the sandbox is a bad thing, and I definitely like it for just downloading and trying out software of questionable quality from companies that I've never heard of. But it has tradeoffs: https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-and-sandboxing/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-and-sandboxing/ If you wanted to (for example) distribute Sublime Text through the App Store, you'd run into the same sorts of problems. If it's a piece of software that I reasonably trust, do I want to make that trade? Eh. Maybe. Gain some protection against potential security bugs, lose some flexibility/productivity.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    It's a security feature but also an innovation roadblock. I don't fault them for having security features it's how they are administered thats the major issue.
- ohitsdom 11y ago
  This comes up whenever the Mac App Store is mentioned, but it deserves being repeated until it's fixed: The Mac App Store is an awful program. It's incredibly slow. You make a great point- I'm glad there's now a public face and hope that it's a sign Apple is taking the issue seriously.
  - wlesieutre 11y ago
    That reminds me, I have a screenshot of the App Store where it downloaded all of the store page data, but didn't get the stylesheet. And since it's just a shitty webview in a box and not a full browser, there's no obvious way to make it reload. These sorts of things happen when you download your whole program's page layout off the internet. How idiotic would it look if you pulled up a playlist view in iTunes and everything turned into an unstyled HTML bulleted list? Don't have the computer with that screenshot handy, but I can post it later.
    - kybernetyk 11y ago
      >And since it's just a shitty webview in a box and not a full browser, there's no obvious way to make it reload. cmd r usually does the trick (or store -> reload page in the menu).
      - projct 11y ago
        The larger point is that most Mac users wouldn't know to do this, I think.
        wlesieutre 11y ago
        Right. I fixed it by relaunching, but I shouldn't have had to. And the even larger point is that that Apple's software updater shouldn't need a Reload function any more than Windows Explorer should need me to mash F5 after I save a new file. It's crappy design through and through. But it's 2015, so everything is a web view. Because reasons. If Apple rewrote Finder to display folder contents as a web view so that they could reuse a frontend between icloud.com and local file management, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Working in the Finder? iCloud Drive is a web view! Heck, let's use that to display the local filesystem too! Back it with a server on localhost that examines directory contents and generates a webpage to pass to the Finder! Code reuse! Efficient development! Future benefits from optimizations to webkit that will still be slower than the native software it replaced! Even better, you can do away with all that WebDAV and SMB crap! When you want to browse files on another Mac, its filesystem webserver can generate the folder listings and serve them over HTTP with file downloads over WebRTC when you open something! It's the future! HFS2, all read/write actions to be handled with AJAX passing JSON objects back and forth. Coming soon in OS 10.13, you saw it here first. I might be slightly annoyed at the recent direction of "everything is webpages" software development. Ah well.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  The problems also continue on the other side of the App Store, the user side. Particularly on the desktop the App Store is so slow, I have to wonder what they are doing - The numbers in the notifications badge on my App Store icon just pile up since I hate process of updating anything via App Store and drag it out as long as I can. When I actually decide to go in, it takes a good half minute to get a list of what needs to be updated. I opt to "update all", the process seems to start...I can't walk away just yet though since sure as hell there will be at least one dialog asking for my Apple ID somewhere around app 3 out of 11. I've woken up to that dialog often enough just to notice that nothing has been updated while I went to bed. And that's just the update process and doesn't even touch problems like discovery.
  - astrange 11y ago
    Do you have apps with multiple Apple IDs or countries? You could also just leave it set to automatically update everything.
cpr 11y ago
Small rays of hope for fixing the app store problems start to glimmer on the horizon...
dhagz 11y ago
I've been wanting to start developing software for the Mac, and seeing that there is now someone in charge of the App Store - not just for iOS but for the Mac as well - is a big thing. OSX is my main platform, and I've watched the Mac App Store stagnate and float around in a holding pattern. Here's hoping it finally gets a wishlist.
- jordanlev 11y ago
  The fact that the App Store is crummy on the Mac should not be a hindrance to developing Mac software (unlike iOS, where the App Store is the only way to distribute software). Go forth and develop your mac app, and just sell it directly to your customers!
- ThomPete 11y ago
  I learned something the hard way so let me pass it on :) The Mac App Store is just a distribution channel and should not hold anyone back if they seriously think they have a product of value. Even if they improve the Mac App store the rationale for even having it wont change much and so some of the same issues will still prevail IMO. You will still only be featured if you either know someone or use some of their latest features/libraries. You will still not be able to do a lot of things because of Sandbox. You will not be able to reach the majority of target market (Google is your friend there) And there are plenty of other great solutions for distribution out there. Just my five cents. P.S. If you are serious about developing for the Mac but don't have a project. Contact me I am expanding my product line and could use a good osx dev.
- jason_slack 11y ago
  Developing and distributing OS X apps has long preceded the App Store, though. Actually, some of the apps that I am very loyal to still don't distribute on the App Store or they offer both options. I still have a very popular OS X app and I don't distribute it through the App Store at all (primarily because it works on OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD). This is a bit of freedom for me as I can do interesting things to gain functionality that the App Store would deny.
exabrial 11y ago
Now if they can reverse the momentum on the "War on Ports" on their "pro" models of crap. And get rid of the damn trash can design for the Mac Pro.
robterrell 11y ago
No mention of Eddie Cue? He was previously in charge of the store, right?
- oddevan 11y ago
  As far as I can remember, yeah.
- georgespencer 11y ago
  Yes. IMO: Optically, Cue has been peculiar in the last year. The night before the keynote introducing Apple Music, he was photographed at a basketball game. The keynote was a disaster: he was easily the least polished presenter; the segments didn't flow together; he stumbled a few times; he did awful dad dancing and cracked jokes which folks didn't laugh at; Drake (?) and Jimmy Iovine had clearly not told anyone what they were going to say. The product has not been a smash hit success, either. There was so much heat over how bad it was that some of Apple's best-known cheerleaders in the press and blogs were battering it for being unusable and buggy. This is a logical clipping of Cue's wings. Apple Music + Beats 1 are a significantly different challenge to iTunes which was buoyed by rapid expansion of a category (iPod -- which lest we forget forced Amazon to have a product page for "non-iPod MP3 players") and a low threshold to entry. Apple Music is a wartime product competing against Spotify's headstart. Schiller has for years been better at courting developers. He's more at ease scaling from macro perspectives on Apple's philosophy down to nerding out over software.
  - eridius 11y ago
    Eddie Cue is doing a lot of things (including being responsible for iCloud and the Maps backend IIRC). And really his strength and the reason why he was instrumental to iTunes lay in his ability to negotiate and drive deals with all of the music industry players.
    - bonaldi 11y ago
      Deals which are visibly not getting made for the Apple TV service, by most accounts
ebbv 11y ago
I really hope this comes with big changes. The App Store on all platforms has been a disaster for years, IMHO. Overrun with junk ware, it really needs some serious people power put into curating categories to help you find what you're interested in. Years ago I used to download new iOS apps all the time, I rarely do any more. Every time I go on the store all I see is junk apps loaded with in app purchase traps.
- matwood 11y ago
  The app store has a whole section of apps without IAPs. Unfortunately it lacks a method of try before buy, but someone at Apple is occasionally listening.
- nacs 11y ago
  The iOS app store is actually pretty clean if you look at Google Play -- now that is truly overrun with junk ware. Same with the Chrome extension store.
stephgonnasteph 11y ago
Where's the diversity though...

114 points by Rifu 11y ago

> In addition, Apple says it’s expanding VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller’s duties to now include running the App Store across all Apple platforms. Emphasis mine, this means there's now a visible figure responsible for the Mac App Store. I'm not in Mac development, but by many accounts it's been neglected to the point that the well known software is bailing. Most specific complaints center around the sandbox limitations, but there's also frustration with wondering what you're shelling out such a big chunk of your money for if the store hasn't improved in years. Apple can get away with whatever they want on iOS because there are no other options. On Mac, they can't expect to charge 30% of revenue and have everyone stick around if the service isn't worth it. Example, with many related links at the bottom: https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the-mac-app-store/ https://www.macstories.net/linked/sketch-is-leaving-the-mac-... I don't know what they have planned to fix it, but the timing of this feels like at least a tacit acknowledgement that there's a problem.

frik 11y ago
> sandbox It's a security feature of OSX. I would love if Windows has an application sandbox too and show file extension by default. A bad program can destroy everything incl encrypting all your data.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  I'm not saying the sandbox is a bad thing, and I definitely like it for just downloading and trying out software of questionable quality from companies that I've never heard of. But it has tradeoffs: https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-2-5-and-the-mac-app-store/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-and-sandboxing/ https://panic.com/blog/coda-and-sandboxing/ If you wanted to (for example) distribute Sublime Text through the App Store, you'd run into the same sorts of problems. If it's a piece of software that I reasonably trust, do I want to make that trade? Eh. Maybe. Gain some protection against potential security bugs, lose some flexibility/productivity.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  It's a security feature but also an innovation roadblock. I don't fault them for having security features it's how they are administered thats the major issue.
ohitsdom 11y ago
This comes up whenever the Mac App Store is mentioned, but it deserves being repeated until it's fixed: The Mac App Store is an awful program. It's incredibly slow. You make a great point- I'm glad there's now a public face and hope that it's a sign Apple is taking the issue seriously.
- wlesieutre 11y ago
  That reminds me, I have a screenshot of the App Store where it downloaded all of the store page data, but didn't get the stylesheet. And since it's just a shitty webview in a box and not a full browser, there's no obvious way to make it reload. These sorts of things happen when you download your whole program's page layout off the internet. How idiotic would it look if you pulled up a playlist view in iTunes and everything turned into an unstyled HTML bulleted list? Don't have the computer with that screenshot handy, but I can post it later.
  - kybernetyk 11y ago
    >And since it's just a shitty webview in a box and not a full browser, there's no obvious way to make it reload. cmd r usually does the trick (or store -> reload page in the menu).
    - projct 11y ago
      The larger point is that most Mac users wouldn't know to do this, I think.
      - wlesieutre 11y ago
        Right. I fixed it by relaunching, but I shouldn't have had to. And the even larger point is that that Apple's software updater shouldn't need a Reload function any more than Windows Explorer should need me to mash F5 after I save a new file. It's crappy design through and through. But it's 2015, so everything is a web view. Because reasons. If Apple rewrote Finder to display folder contents as a web view so that they could reuse a frontend between icloud.com and local file management, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. Working in the Finder? iCloud Drive is a web view! Heck, let's use that to display the local filesystem too! Back it with a server on localhost that examines directory contents and generates a webpage to pass to the Finder! Code reuse! Efficient development! Future benefits from optimizations to webkit that will still be slower than the native software it replaced! Even better, you can do away with all that WebDAV and SMB crap! When you want to browse files on another Mac, its filesystem webserver can generate the folder listings and serve them over HTTP with file downloads over WebRTC when you open something! It's the future! HFS2, all read/write actions to be handled with AJAX passing JSON objects back and forth. Coming soon in OS 10.13, you saw it here first. I might be slightly annoyed at the recent direction of "everything is webpages" software development. Ah well.
thirdsun 11y ago
The problems also continue on the other side of the App Store, the user side. Particularly on the desktop the App Store is so slow, I have to wonder what they are doing - The numbers in the notifications badge on my App Store icon just pile up since I hate process of updating anything via App Store and drag it out as long as I can. When I actually decide to go in, it takes a good half minute to get a list of what needs to be updated. I opt to "update all", the process seems to start...I can't walk away just yet though since sure as hell there will be at least one dialog asking for my Apple ID somewhere around app 3 out of 11. I've woken up to that dialog often enough just to notice that nothing has been updated while I went to bed. And that's just the update process and doesn't even touch problems like discovery.
- astrange 11y ago
  Do you have apps with multiple Apple IDs or countries? You could also just leave it set to automatically update everything.

cpr 11y ago

Small rays of hope for fixing the app store problems start to glimmer on the horizon...

dhagz 11y ago

I've been wanting to start developing software for the Mac, and seeing that there is now someone in charge of the App Store - not just for iOS but for the Mac as well - is a big thing. OSX is my main platform, and I've watched the Mac App Store stagnate and float around in a holding pattern. Here's hoping it finally gets a wishlist.

jordanlev 11y ago
The fact that the App Store is crummy on the Mac should not be a hindrance to developing Mac software (unlike iOS, where the App Store is the only way to distribute software). Go forth and develop your mac app, and just sell it directly to your customers!
ThomPete 11y ago
I learned something the hard way so let me pass it on :) The Mac App Store is just a distribution channel and should not hold anyone back if they seriously think they have a product of value. Even if they improve the Mac App store the rationale for even having it wont change much and so some of the same issues will still prevail IMO. You will still only be featured if you either know someone or use some of their latest features/libraries. You will still not be able to do a lot of things because of Sandbox. You will not be able to reach the majority of target market (Google is your friend there) And there are plenty of other great solutions for distribution out there. Just my five cents. P.S. If you are serious about developing for the Mac but don't have a project. Contact me I am expanding my product line and could use a good osx dev.
jason_slack 11y ago
Developing and distributing OS X apps has long preceded the App Store, though. Actually, some of the apps that I am very loyal to still don't distribute on the App Store or they offer both options. I still have a very popular OS X app and I don't distribute it through the App Store at all (primarily because it works on OS X, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD). This is a bit of freedom for me as I can do interesting things to gain functionality that the App Store would deny.

exabrial 11y ago

Now if they can reverse the momentum on the "War on Ports" on their "pro" models of crap. And get rid of the damn trash can design for the Mac Pro.

robterrell 11y ago

No mention of Eddie Cue? He was previously in charge of the store, right?

oddevan 11y ago
As far as I can remember, yeah.
georgespencer 11y ago
Yes. IMO: Optically, Cue has been peculiar in the last year. The night before the keynote introducing Apple Music, he was photographed at a basketball game. The keynote was a disaster: he was easily the least polished presenter; the segments didn't flow together; he stumbled a few times; he did awful dad dancing and cracked jokes which folks didn't laugh at; Drake (?) and Jimmy Iovine had clearly not told anyone what they were going to say. The product has not been a smash hit success, either. There was so much heat over how bad it was that some of Apple's best-known cheerleaders in the press and blogs were battering it for being unusable and buggy. This is a logical clipping of Cue's wings. Apple Music + Beats 1 are a significantly different challenge to iTunes which was buoyed by rapid expansion of a category (iPod -- which lest we forget forced Amazon to have a product page for "non-iPod MP3 players") and a low threshold to entry. Apple Music is a wartime product competing against Spotify's headstart. Schiller has for years been better at courting developers. He's more at ease scaling from macro perspectives on Apple's philosophy down to nerding out over software.
- eridius 11y ago
  Eddie Cue is doing a lot of things (including being responsible for iCloud and the Maps backend IIRC). And really his strength and the reason why he was instrumental to iTunes lay in his ability to negotiate and drive deals with all of the music industry players.
  - bonaldi 11y ago
    Deals which are visibly not getting made for the Apple TV service, by most accounts

ebbv 11y ago

I really hope this comes with big changes. The App Store on all platforms has been a disaster for years, IMHO. Overrun with junk ware, it really needs some serious people power put into curating categories to help you find what you're interested in. Years ago I used to download new iOS apps all the time, I rarely do any more. Every time I go on the store all I see is junk apps loaded with in app purchase traps.

matwood 11y ago
The app store has a whole section of apps without IAPs. Unfortunately it lacks a method of try before buy, but someone at Apple is occasionally listening.
nacs 11y ago
The iOS app store is actually pretty clean if you look at Google Play -- now that is truly overrun with junk ware. Same with the Chrome extension store.

stephgonnasteph 11y ago

Where's the diversity though...