4 ms·

> If I were to make a list of the main apps people buy Macs to run, it's pretty much the same list. That is exactly the point. The apps you listed are used in

by mike_d 7y ago

> If I were to make a list of the main apps people buy Macs to run, it's pretty much the same list. That is exactly the point. The apps you listed are used in tons of corporate environments and fairly well vetted, usually with bug bounty programs or full time security teams backing them. It's the smaller one-off apps that people aren't putting eyes on regularly that get sandboxed.

robenkleene 7y ago
To me, that's the absolute worst possible outcome: All of the important software use cases become owned by the existing players forever, because no other competitor can gain traction without Apple's marketing help by being in the App Store, but then they can't become powerful enough to truly compete with the big players by being outside the sandbox. That's exactly what happened with Pixelmator, and it's happening now with the Affinity Suite. Before the sandbox, Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor, but now they're mainly for people who don't want to pay for Adobe's subscription. And, the real Adobe competitors are more likely to come from somewhere else, like the web with Figma. The funny thing is that now Figma is usable on an iPad, because it's a web app, and Sketch, which is an all-Apple technology AppKit app, isn't. Because web apps can avoid the sandbox, even on iOS. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of Apple's security strategy are poised to be some of the apps least invested in Apple's platforms.
- bitwize 7y ago
  Yeah. That's kind of the point. Don't expect to buy or write alternatives for the established, trusted apps. Just consume product and get excited for next product.
- djrogers 7y ago
  > Before the sandbox, Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor, but now they're mainly for people who don't want to pay for Adobe's subscription. Can you point to any evidence that the macOS sandbox is what’s holding Pixelmator back from dethroning the undisputed 20+ year king of professional photo editing?
  - robenkleene 7y ago
    I wrote an analysis of the most popular creative apps across various industries[0], none of them are sandboxed, and all of them support plugins of some kind, which is the main type of functionality that sandboxing makes difficult. Also, Photoshop was once also the undisputed king of user-interface design, but they were dethroned by Sketch, an app that was first released one year before sandboxing came into effect. Is any of this conclusive? No. But do I see a pattern sandboxing putting a ceiling on how successful a creative app can be? Overwhelmingly yes. [0]: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-have-failed-creative-apps/ https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-ha...
    - pjmlp 7y ago
      The way things are going across all consumer OSes, running without a sandbox will eventually something only available in FOSS OS clones. And I seriously doubt that applications like Photoshop will migrate to them just because of that.
      - badsectoracula 7y ago
        If that happens then interesting new applications and ideas will start appearing on these FOSS OSes since those will be the OSes where such things will be possible. People do not use computers for their OSes, they use computers for the applications they can run on them and if all the new interesting stuff comes out in the free FOSS OSes then people will start migrating to using those OSes. Nowadays this doesn't happen much because there is no incentive.
        pjmlp 7y ago
        I remember that speech when DX 10 was not available on XP, I also used to believe in Desktop Linux dream, nowadays I just use Apple, Google, MS desktop and mobile platforms.
        badsectoracula 7y ago
- zimpenfish 7y ago
  > Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor I am, at best, a journeyman in the ways of graphic editing and someone who bought Pixelmator the instant it arrived but this isn't right - it might have become a real Photoshop competitor for people who needed basic graphic editing facilities once or twice a month, yes. Same with Affinity Photo. Without a laser focus on quality-of-life tweaks and jank removal (haven't seen it in either yet!), they're both doomed to GIMP-level "coulda beena contender!" existence.

by mike_d 7y ago

robenkleene 7y ago

To me, that's the absolute worst possible outcome: All of the important software use cases become owned by the existing players forever, because no other competitor can gain traction without Apple's marketing help by being in the App Store, but then they can't become powerful enough to truly compete with the big players by being outside the sandbox. That's exactly what happened with Pixelmator, and it's happening now with the Affinity Suite. Before the sandbox, Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor, but now they're mainly for people who don't want to pay for Adobe's subscription. And, the real Adobe competitors are more likely to come from somewhere else, like the web with Figma. The funny thing is that now Figma is usable on an iPad, because it's a web app, and Sketch, which is an all-Apple technology AppKit app, isn't. Because web apps can avoid the sandbox, even on iOS. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of Apple's security strategy are poised to be some of the apps least invested in Apple's platforms.

bitwize 7y ago
Yeah. That's kind of the point. Don't expect to buy or write alternatives for the established, trusted apps. Just consume product and get excited for next product.
djrogers 7y ago
> Before the sandbox, Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor, but now they're mainly for people who don't want to pay for Adobe's subscription. Can you point to any evidence that the macOS sandbox is what’s holding Pixelmator back from dethroning the undisputed 20+ year king of professional photo editing?
- robenkleene 7y ago
  I wrote an analysis of the most popular creative apps across various industries[0], none of them are sandboxed, and all of them support plugins of some kind, which is the main type of functionality that sandboxing makes difficult. Also, Photoshop was once also the undisputed king of user-interface design, but they were dethroned by Sketch, an app that was first released one year before sandboxing came into effect. Is any of this conclusive? No. But do I see a pattern sandboxing putting a ceiling on how successful a creative app can be? Overwhelmingly yes. [0]: https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-have-failed-creative-apps/ https://blog.robenkleene.com/2019/08/07/apples-app-stores-ha...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    The way things are going across all consumer OSes, running without a sandbox will eventually something only available in FOSS OS clones. And I seriously doubt that applications like Photoshop will migrate to them just because of that.
    - badsectoracula 7y ago
      If that happens then interesting new applications and ideas will start appearing on these FOSS OSes since those will be the OSes where such things will be possible. People do not use computers for their OSes, they use computers for the applications they can run on them and if all the new interesting stuff comes out in the free FOSS OSes then people will start migrating to using those OSes. Nowadays this doesn't happen much because there is no incentive.
      - pjmlp 7y ago
        I remember that speech when DX 10 was not available on XP, I also used to believe in Desktop Linux dream, nowadays I just use Apple, Google, MS desktop and mobile platforms.
        badsectoracula 7y ago
zimpenfish 7y ago
> Pixelmator looked like it would one day be a real Photoshop competitor I am, at best, a journeyman in the ways of graphic editing and someone who bought Pixelmator the instant it arrived but this isn't right - it might have become a real Photoshop competitor for people who needed basic graphic editing facilities once or twice a month, yes. Same with Affinity Photo. Without a laser focus on quality-of-life tweaks and jank removal (haven't seen it in either yet!), they're both doomed to GIMP-level "coulda beena contender!" existence.