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> A lot of people here are fixating on the $100/year fee -- and don't get me wrong, that's a problem How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, h

> A lot of people here are fixating on the $100/year fee -- and don't get me wrong, that's a problem How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? > Apple is demanding what amounts to a non-trivial amount of creative control over the visual appearance of games Where did you get that from? How is that different from Steam, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony not allowing certain types of content on their platforms? For example, you can't show explicit pornography in your game and expect it to be approved anywhere. As for not allowing "blue screens of death, simulated error, glitch art, brokeness" that TFA complains about: Have you seen those "YOUR PC IS INFECTED BY 42 VIRUSES!! CLICK HERE TO CLEAN SYSTEM32! PERMANENT HARD DISK DELETION IN 2 SECONDS!!!" ads? What if apps start doing that for fun then charge in-app purchases to clean the in-game viruses? Would you want the job of being an arbiter over whether something like that is malicious deception which preys upon user naïveté, or just a cute quirky joke?

q3k 7y ago
This is not about the macOS store, but about notarizing off-store apps.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  But that doesn't include any 'creative control over the visual appearance of games'.
innocenat 7y ago
They are not even talking about App Store. The change is that you now need $100/year even if you distribute outside the app store.
heavyset_go 7y ago
If I want to distribute my app on my own website, I need Apple's approval and to give them $100 every year to do so.
- dkonofalski 7y ago
  Only if it's important to you and your users that they aren't told that no one has vetted the app except you and them. You don't have to pay the $100/year to run the apps distributed on your website but you do if you don't want them to get a message that says it's from an unverified developer. That seems to me like the system is working exactly as intended.
  - simple_phrases 7y ago
    > That seems to me like the system is working exactly as intended. Not for me, the end user. Less developers releasing applications for my Mac means less options for me.
    - dkonofalski 7y ago
      That's not what's happening, though. The same number of developers can release their applications. The only difference would be that some applications will say that they come from a source that's known to distribute reliable software. You can still release apps without notarizing them. You just can't get around the warning message that the application hasn't been verified because, well... it won't have been verified. You can still release it and users can still run it.
      - simple_phrases 7y ago
        This thread is full of developers considering or actively abandoning macOS as platform. That means less options for end users like me.
        Razengan 7y ago
        This thread is also full of people arguing with them. Meanwhile for end users like me, I see only benefits if Apple keeps the bar high. If I really want to run an app that is not notarized and I trust its developers, I can always manually allow it to run.
teraflop 7y ago
> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? As others have already pointed out, I'm talking about the fact that Apple charges $100/year to make your software runnable on a Mac, regardless of whether you want to use their app store. > Where did you get that from? From the blog post that we're all supposedly discussing: "The next reviewer saw the “blue screen of death” art and said that it conflicts with copyright (it’s Microsoft) as well as simulated error not being allowed. So I changed that too. After that it got arbitrarily rejected for another reason… so at this point I changed so much about the game that it wasn’t even my work anymore. It didn’t reflect any of the things that were important to my work. Simulated error, glitch art, brokeness, historic UI’s are deeply important to me because they reflect a computer history. None of that was allowed. I had to change my games." > How is that different from Steam, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony not allowing certain types of content on their platforms? Steam is a free service that doesn't prevent me from running non-Steam software on my computer. As for your other examples, I don't think it's different. I think restrictions on user freedom are made worse, not better, by the fact that lots of companies are engaging in them.
- uriro9n 7y ago
  Look the point stands: it’s a non-free as in speech & beer platform Go work with Purism if you want to ship whatever What a shock Apple is also nickle & diming for services as hardware sales atrophy. This is business 101. If we don’t like how businesses work we should stop working for them. Paying for beer & leaving speech free never works. We end up talking about supporting paid beer. Free speech becomes all about what we buy & sell. If you want a free society that doesn’t end up in a nickle & dime system of inequality a test should be is life free as in speech & beer? Organized around resource distribution sure, but free of coercion to support paid speech all day (where to be viable in the eyes of society work must earn money). That’s the DNA of our culture. These are not random things. This is what we and Apple talk about all day: financial justification for behavior. That’s a complete corruption of free speech.
badrequest 7y ago
> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? Those are things Apple provides for its users' sake, not for developers. The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO.
- Razengan 7y ago
  > The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO. You're in luck!! The amount you have to pay to allow users to run your app on their machines, is still ZERO. Whether you can make them trust you enough to manually allow your app to run without notarization, is another matter.
  - w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago
    It's not a about trust. Apple apps ran on mac for 40 years or some without any epidemic issue as it could have been the case with Windows. It's about money. They want to close down the platform like iOS, as they said a few years ago, in order to bring the business model of the mobile platform to MacOS by forcing them to intall everything through the app Store. Now there is notarization, but it will not last. They're just boiling the proverbial frog slowly, step by step. In 2 or 3 years, it will also disappear. It's not only the game but a shitload of little utilities which will get lost with notarization Once the users get used to not having as much third party software as before from outside the app Store, except big name like mozilla or google, they will stop notarization altogether and impose a 30% fee for every software sold on the platform. With the system partition permanently set as read-only device, as they currently test on catalina, even if you can still currently mount it in read-write, MacOS bill be lock down like iOS. The only way to install a software outside of Mac App Store will be to jailbreak it thank to a "security flaw". As i said, it's just about money. Only technically naive users will stay on the platform and developer whishing to take advantage of them with softwares paid through subscription model.
    - deleted 7y ago
fivefive55 7y ago
FYI Steam doesn't even have content restrictions on the marketplace now. There's a ton of adult games on there now. So not the best point.
- Razengan 7y ago
  Yes, Steam allows lewds, but, and I'm not trying to move the goal posts, just reiterating the core point: Can you get away with something that hatefully targets a racial or social group etc.? The point is there are always going to be limits to what you can release on any platform. Does that count as creative control over developers? If there truly are no restrictions on what you can publish on Steam, then my initial list of examples is wrong, but that still doesn't make Apple the sole company with restrictions for their platform.
mnm1 7y ago
> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? You seem to think that 30% of earnings is not enough for this ... so yeah, how much should you have to pay for that? 50%? 75%? 100%?

q3k 7y ago

This is not about the macOS store, but about notarizing off-store apps.

chrisseaton 7y ago
But that doesn't include any 'creative control over the visual appearance of games'.

innocenat 7y ago

They are not even talking about App Store. The change is that you now need $100/year even if you distribute outside the app store.

heavyset_go 7y ago

If I want to distribute my app on my own website, I need Apple's approval and to give them $100 every year to do so.

dkonofalski 7y ago
Only if it's important to you and your users that they aren't told that no one has vetted the app except you and them. You don't have to pay the $100/year to run the apps distributed on your website but you do if you don't want them to get a message that says it's from an unverified developer. That seems to me like the system is working exactly as intended.
- simple_phrases 7y ago
  > That seems to me like the system is working exactly as intended. Not for me, the end user. Less developers releasing applications for my Mac means less options for me.
  - dkonofalski 7y ago
    That's not what's happening, though. The same number of developers can release their applications. The only difference would be that some applications will say that they come from a source that's known to distribute reliable software. You can still release apps without notarizing them. You just can't get around the warning message that the application hasn't been verified because, well... it won't have been verified. You can still release it and users can still run it.
    - simple_phrases 7y ago
      This thread is full of developers considering or actively abandoning macOS as platform. That means less options for end users like me.
      - Razengan 7y ago
        This thread is also full of people arguing with them. Meanwhile for end users like me, I see only benefits if Apple keeps the bar high. If I really want to run an app that is not notarized and I trust its developers, I can always manually allow it to run.

teraflop 7y ago

> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? As others have already pointed out, I'm talking about the fact that Apple charges $100/year to make your software runnable on a Mac, regardless of whether you want to use their app store. > Where did you get that from? From the blog post that we're all supposedly discussing: "The next reviewer saw the “blue screen of death” art and said that it conflicts with copyright (it’s Microsoft) as well as simulated error not being allowed. So I changed that too. After that it got arbitrarily rejected for another reason… so at this point I changed so much about the game that it wasn’t even my work anymore. It didn’t reflect any of the things that were important to my work. Simulated error, glitch art, brokeness, historic UI’s are deeply important to me because they reflect a computer history. None of that was allowed. I had to change my games." > How is that different from Steam, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony not allowing certain types of content on their platforms? Steam is a free service that doesn't prevent me from running non-Steam software on my computer. As for your other examples, I don't think it's different. I think restrictions on user freedom are made worse, not better, by the fact that lots of companies are engaging in them.

uriro9n 7y ago
Look the point stands: it’s a non-free as in speech & beer platform Go work with Purism if you want to ship whatever What a shock Apple is also nickle & diming for services as hardware sales atrophy. This is business 101. If we don’t like how businesses work we should stop working for them. Paying for beer & leaving speech free never works. We end up talking about supporting paid beer. Free speech becomes all about what we buy & sell. If you want a free society that doesn’t end up in a nickle & dime system of inequality a test should be is life free as in speech & beer? Organized around resource distribution sure, but free of coercion to support paid speech all day (where to be viable in the eyes of society work must earn money). That’s the DNA of our culture. These are not random things. This is what we and Apple talk about all day: financial justification for behavior. That’s a complete corruption of free speech.

badrequest 7y ago

> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? Those are things Apple provides for its users' sake, not for developers. The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO.

Razengan 7y ago
> The amount I should have to pay to allow users to run my app on their machines, is and always has been ZERO. You're in luck!! The amount you have to pay to allow users to run your app on their machines, is still ZERO. Whether you can make them trust you enough to manually allow your app to run without notarization, is another matter.
- w1nst0nsm1th 7y ago
  It's not a about trust. Apple apps ran on mac for 40 years or some without any epidemic issue as it could have been the case with Windows. It's about money. They want to close down the platform like iOS, as they said a few years ago, in order to bring the business model of the mobile platform to MacOS by forcing them to intall everything through the app Store. Now there is notarization, but it will not last. They're just boiling the proverbial frog slowly, step by step. In 2 or 3 years, it will also disappear. It's not only the game but a shitload of little utilities which will get lost with notarization Once the users get used to not having as much third party software as before from outside the app Store, except big name like mozilla or google, they will stop notarization altogether and impose a 30% fee for every software sold on the platform. With the system partition permanently set as read-only device, as they currently test on catalina, even if you can still currently mount it in read-write, MacOS bill be lock down like iOS. The only way to install a software outside of Mac App Store will be to jailbreak it thank to a "security flaw". As i said, it's just about money. Only technically naive users will stay on the platform and developer whishing to take advantage of them with softwares paid through subscription model.
  - deleted 7y ago

fivefive55 7y ago

FYI Steam doesn't even have content restrictions on the marketplace now. There's a ton of adult games on there now. So not the best point.

Razengan 7y ago
Yes, Steam allows lewds, but, and I'm not trying to move the goal posts, just reiterating the core point: Can you get away with something that hatefully targets a racial or social group etc.? The point is there are always going to be limits to what you can release on any platform. Does that count as creative control over developers? If there truly are no restrictions on what you can publish on Steam, then my initial list of examples is wrong, but that still doesn't make Apple the sole company with restrictions for their platform.

mnm1 7y ago

> How much should you have to pay for unlimited bandwidth, hosting, downloads, user ratings, reviews, feedback, crash logs, showing up in searches, the chance to get featured, and other features like CloudKit etc.? You seem to think that 30% of earnings is not enough for this ... so yeah, how much should you have to pay for that? 50%? 75%? 100%?